Dissertation Authors and Their Mentors. Can Gender Diversity in Russian STEM be Achieved?

In Russia, women are underrepresented in STEM, as in many other countries. We looked at authors and mentors of two kinds of dissertations. It allows us to show the gender structure of scientific fields and how it is changing over academic career levels. In all fields, the share of women at the higher level of their academic careers (Ph.D./Doctoral mentor) is lower than at the earlier stages (Ph.D./Doctoral author) — it is typical of both female-domain and male-domain fields.

Three of the five STEM fields belong to the most male-dominated scientific fields - Physics, Technical Science, and Earth Sciences. Chemistry and Biology are closer to gender parity. However, if we look at the dynamics over the years, we notice that the gender structure of Ph.D. authors did not practically change for 20 years. Within the more male-dominated fields, such as Technical Sciences and Earth Sciences, there are a small number of relatively more feminine subfields. For example, Food Technology (in TS) or Geoecology (in ES).

Our data allow us to look at the types of author-mentor collaboration. The rarest combination for all fields is «male author & female mentor.» In the case of doctoral dissertations, the proportion of this collaboration type decreases even more. Also, there are vanishingly few «both female» type collaborations in some STEM subfields for doctoral dissertations. It seems essential since one of the possible approaches towards gender parity is encouraging homophily in mentorship (tendency to same-gender collaboration). Despite male mentorship leading relatively more publishable trainees, same-gender mentorship reduces the «leaking» of young women from the academy, which leads to achieving a potentially more critical component of gender parity. One possible explanation why same-gender mentorship reduces the «leaking» is that a female mentor can be a role model and benchmark that allows young women to move on the academic track and not drop their academic careers or successfully combine motherhood without shifting to teaching.

Thus, gender parity in STEM in Russia looks distant, but this goal may have become even more unattainable. According to various estimates, between 70,000 and 200,000, Tech workers left Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Officials have attempted to stop the exodus and compensate for human capital losses and announced on March 2, 2022: “a military deferment will be provided for those students who will choose STEM programs at universities and work for Russian Tech companies.” Thus, the state promotes the policy of motivating young men to choose STEM degrees. It is a subject of a particular study whether such policy is adequate to the goals of the government to stop the outflow of Tech specialists in a time of war and sanctions. However, with a high probability, we can expect that this policy will lead to reinforcing gender stereotypes and an even more increase in the gender gap in the STEM fields, which is already profoundly male-domain.