Is university-industry collaboration biased by sex criteria?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper studies the attitudes and decisions of research groups led by men or women towards the collaboration with firms in research and development joint projects. We worked with a sample of 420 research groups of eight regions of Spain, France and Portugal in a sequential process. First, we studied the interest of the research groups to collaborate and, then, if the final decision of collaborating with firms changed according to the sex criteria. The results show that women are worse positioned in the social networks of collaboration and commercialization with industry than men are. Research groups led by men have around 10% higher probability of showing interest in R&D cooperation with firms. However, when men and women leaders of research groups have the same motivation to collaborate, they do not differ in their decision of collaborating. These results evidence different initial attitudes towards university-industry collaboration according to sex criteria.