Women scientists in knowledge exchanges with nonacademic actors: participation gap and emerging gender patterns

Abstract

This paper examines women scientists’ participation in Knowledge Exchange (KE) with nonacademic actors. We compare three KE types –informal engagement, formal engagement and commercialization– and find significant differences in participation depending on type. In informal engagement, women and men participate equally, but women participate less than men in both formal engagement and commercialization. We explore whether academic rank and women peers influence this participation gap. We find evidence of a levelling effect related to academic rank in the case of formal engagement and an emulating effect related to women peers in the case of commercialization. The implications of the emerging gender patterns are also discussed.