1. 1st international conference of women in science without borders

A.Badre - Gender in Science: Remaining Challenges from Education to Profession Transition in MENA Region - Suggested Policy Initiative

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The Egyptian Academy of Science and Technology

1st International conference of women in science without Borders

Bridging the gender gap in STEM in favor of sustainable development Cairo, Egypt from 21-23 March 2017

Gender in Science: Remaining Challenges from Education to Profession Transition in MENA Region - Suggested Policy Initiative

Abdeslam Badre, PhD Social Sciences – Mohammed V University

Abstract

Like her sisters in the West, the Arab female scientist has made discernible successes in science, especially, Science and Engineering (S&E); however, her achievement has yet to be completely translated into the S&E workforce. 2016 Data from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, highlight the increasing number of degrees earned by women in science and engineering, especially in the Middle East North Africa Region (MENA), but when all the S&E disciplines are aggregated, it is easy to overlook both the advances in education attainment women have made in the life sciences, as well as the continuing challenges women face in some of the physical sciences and engineering fields. The present paper sheds lights on the current professional situation of Arab female scientists in the Middle East North African (MENA) region. The paper argues that women in science in the MENA region, on the one hand, have been and are being heard and seen through their: a) outstanding contributions and innovative outputs in in applied sciences (STEM) and beyond; b) participation in various international scientific gatherings; c) winning of a number of internationally recognized honors and prices; and d) securing substantial amounts of research external funding establishing transnational collaborations for launching scientific undertakings. On the other hand, Arab female scientists in the region still suffer inequality in terms of involvement in science-based professions, decision-making and power-sharing positions, which is why although the number of Arab female enrolments and graduations in post-graduate science education have increased during the current decade, many of these scientists do not make their career paths into science profession and industries, because once there, most of them are faced up with a public sphere governed by androcentrism. The paper suggests two programmatic recommendations for bridging the gap between women’s transition from education to career building in scientific fields.


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1. Introduction

As the growing demands for higher education due to the skyrocketed rate of

undergraduates’ enrolments in the Arab states outpace the available infrastructure and human

capital, increasing the number of especially female PhD students and graduates within universities

is no more a luxury, but rather a “MUST”. Because undergraduate enrollments have expanded by

9.6% annually during the last decade, postgraduate enrolment both in masters and PhD programs,

among women, makes up only for 8% of the total enrolment. For the decade ahead, a record

number of youth bulge will fuel tertiary education system. Therefore, to reach the goal of driving

the MENA region towards a knowledge-based economy, the proportion of female PhD holders

and university teachers ought to increase, because these are the brains who will enhance the future

of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and transform Arab youth into a qualified skilled

force. On this ground, this paper identifies three main challenges that hamper the growth of

female PhD holders’ number especially in IT, and Engineering; and thus, making their career

paths into research and academia. Then, two programmatic interventions are proposed as an

alternative for optimizing the annum rate of MENA female PhD holders, particularly in science.

Before that, it is worthwhile sketching out a brief overview on the current trends and state of Arab

women’s postgraduate education.

2. Current Situation in the MENA region

Of the 345.5 million people in the Middle East and North Africa region women currently make up

49.7%; and according to the UNESCO Science Report: 2030, women now account for 53% of the

world’s bachelor's and master's graduates and 43% of PhDs. In the Arab world 37% of

researchers are women, compared to 33 % in the European Union. Algeria is now at complete

parity; Palestine, Libya, Tunisia, Kuwait and the United Arab of Emirates all show slightly higher

enrolment rates for women than men. The same progress is witnessed in the Gulf countries. In

fact, in some Gulf States, namely: Qatar and Oman, female enrolment tracks ahead of male

participation in higher education, at the rate of 60%. These trends reveal a changing dynamic

toward gender in education that is starting to be viewed as essentially a female sphere. Yemen,

however, appears to be the furthest behind of the Arab countries in granting women access to

higher education; the same applies to Saudi Arabia.


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3. Remaining Challenges facing Arab Women’s Post-Graduate Education

But despite the many advances made in terms of closing the gender gap in health, political

representation, and labor force participation, many other barriers remain. UN, UNSCO, or WEF

statistics often mask wide intraregional variations and although the gender gap in the Middle East

and North Africa has closed dramatically in recent years, there remains a lag in women’s

participation in higher education throughout the region. For instance, accessibility and success for

women studying in Qatari institutions does not reflect an equal access to job market. That is to

say, university studies are equally available to men in Qatar but the lack of a university

qualification does not appear to impair the career prospects of men, many of whom simply enter

the workforce directly after secondary school. Conversely, women, for whom senior positions and

further training opportunities are still less available; appear more inclined to pursue higher

education as a way of strengthening their career prospects.

And yes, although political empowerment has improved in the region, apparently more than

doubling the rate in 2006, according to the WEF Gender Gap Report, but it is still very low.

Globally, the average percentage of women in parliament is 25%, but across the Arab world as a

whole, women only hold 7% of parliamentary seats. Additionally, while the global average for

women in the labor force is about 50%, female’s workforce participation stands at only 25%,

despite the fact that more and more women are better educated than before, only 17% of women

work in the nonagricultural sector.

4. Forces feeding these challenges: Why

Despite the fact that enrolment in tertiary education is booming, most of the female

students do not make their ways to doctoral education, and the conversion rate of masters’ holders

to PhDs remains low. Identified in this paper are three reasons that feed those challenges:

a. Poor implementation policies; b.Outdated design of PhD programs that does not accommodate Arab women’s social

and cultural lifestyle; c. Inadequate infrastructure

First, the lack of reform implementation in the Arab Region is often lamented as a

problem not of good policy but of poor implementation, which is then attributed to a lack of


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capacity or funds. However, the difficulty actually originates with superficial understandings of

the problem, followed by fluffy political declarations rather than programmatic policies, as well

as a lack of consensus on what to do and how to do it. Considering the general development-aid

funding context, the challenge is to do more systematic, research-informed studies to diagnose

problems in a way that avoids hasty prescriptions.

Second, for decades, extensive coursework, comprehensive examinations, and dissertation

writing have been the major form of training students go through to become PhDs, who find

themselves immersed and inculcated in their closed respective community of academic scholars,

but disconnected from the changing societal demands. While this approach ensure that students

undergo rigorous academic training contingent to the requirement of a doctoral program, many

universities are still struggling on developing and offering alternative blended PhD programs that

combine the academic rigor and flexibility in terms of structure and time as is the case with

universities in Europe or North America; not to speak of the unbearable financial burden

traditional PhD programs maintain on public funding. Furthermore, students remain under

increasing pressure to build a record of significant academic accomplishments, with a lower

probability of securing a full-time position in higher education after graduation.

Third, and finally, scarce funding limits the capacities of universities to implement ample

and quality graduate programs within favorable academic infrastructures. Tight budget, budget

cuts, freezes-in-hiring, and low salaries, and low staff-to-student ratios discourage a great portion

of young men and women graduates from taking up university careers, and chase away many

others to brain drain.

5. Best practice from the African Continent

South Africa tells an inspiring story. Following the publication of the National

Development Plan (NDP) in 2011, SA embraced a knowledge-economy approach, proposing a

discernible increase in post-secondary school enrolments, mainly in the further education and

training (FET) college sector; and improving existing and designing new incentive structures,

notably, for increasing doctoral output, and the proportion of academic staff with doctorates (from

the 2010 level of 34% to 70% by 2030) and the increasing demand for ‘professional’ PhDs in the

financial and services sectors, setting a national target of producing more than 100 doctoral


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graduates per one million of the population by 2030 (NPC 2012). The annual production of

doctorates nearly tripled from 5 152 in 1996 to 13 965 in 2012, showing a 6.4% per annum

increase, while the number of graduates also nearly tripled, from 685 to 1 879, being a 6.5% per

annum increase.

In its efforts to transform its economy through human capital development, South Africa,

in collaboration with other Industrialized countries (including the UK, Canada and Australia

among others), launched the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) site in the Northern Cape: this is a

global science and engineering project to build the world's largest radio telescope that will collect

and process vast amounts of data, which would require and encourage significant advances in

high-performance computing. Furthermore, to help develop technical and artisan skills and

produce a new cohort of young scientists, paying particular attention to gender parity, that would

be the future leaders of the SKA project, 699 students and postdoctoral fellows have been

supported through the SKA South Africa fellowship program.

The project aligns with the African Union's 10-year Science, Technology and Innovation

Strategy for Africa. It promises to drive human capital development on the continent, contribute

to Africa's efforts to build innovation-led, knowledge- based economies, and create jobs not only

during the next decade or so of construction, but also for the next 50 years of operation and

maintenance. Thanks to its determined political will, clear vision and hard work, South Africa

today dominates a snapshot of what a new ranking for African universities could look like,

making up two-fifths of the institutions in the list, and two thirds of research outputs at the

continental level. With the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand

both taking the first and second places respectively in the preliminary top 30, the country emerges

as a key regional education hub, attracting 48% of Southern African Developing Community

(SADC) mobile students to pursuing undergraduate opportunities, with social sciences, business,

and law among others.

6. Proposed initiative

To increase the number of PhD holders and university teachers in synchrony with the

socio-economic and environmental demands of the MENA Region, two suggested policies could


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be pursued in tandem. The first will optimize the number of female PhD enrolment by recruiting

in-country potential candidates who are willing to pay for PhD education, but cannot pursue

fulltime class-based programs due to their professional and social engagements. This could be

done by implementing three reformist measures:

a. remodeling the design (blending traditional course-work with other leadership acquisition trainings);

b. mode of implementation (matching both online and off-line courses), and instructional methods of PhD programs especially vis-à-vis students’ supervision which could aim at encouraging joint-supervision (institutes could offer students the possibility to be jointly supervised by an in-school supervisor – who will obviously ensure the academic norms of the students’ performance- and an independent expert in the industry or field of students’ chosen discipline for providing a rather professional perspective and input to the student’s research;

c. Creating new interdisciplinary tracks and diversifying doctoral program segmentation by introducing and optimizing the number of programs pertinent the local societal need of each Arab country, paying particular attention to alternative medicine, logistical engineering, waster management, to state a few.

The second will aim at attacking and recruiting more and more Arab female students who

opt for postgraduate studies in private institutes outside the region to rather enroll in doctoral

programs within MENA region institutes, which promises to optimize Arab post-graduates

mobility and brain circulation within the region rather than brain-drain. As mentioned earlier,

among the other reasons why South Africa’s universities succeed in attracting 48% of Southern

African Developing Community (SADC) mobile students is the competitive cost-service quality

rapport offered to mobile students, which is 3 times less than the increasingly prohibitive cost of

American or British universities. Hence, Arab countries should bid on recruiting these students’

segments. This approach ensures, on the one hand, that research undertakings are designed to

respond to the needs and demands of local communities; on the other hand, having Arab

researchers doing research within the region will optimize retaining brain power, and reducing

brain drain.


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7. Implementation options

7.1. Option 1: Remolding design & diversification of PhD programs segments

Process: A competitive fee-based quasi-online and blended/sandwich professional PhD

programs is to be launched in sectors that match the labor market’s evolution as well as the socio-

economic and environmental demands of each MENA country. Knowing that there is a

significant shortage of STEM and applied sciences in-home PhD holders, attention could be

invested in increasing the number of specific professional and interdisciplinary doctorate

programs in Medicine (Nano-Tech for fighting Infectious Diseases), Logistical Engineering;

Territorial Management and Urbanism (e.g.: Decentralized City Planning); Environmental & Bio-

diversity Preservation (Water Desalination & Water Management, Desertification); Service

Sectors (Knowledge Transfer; Banking Sectors & offshoring), among others. These programs

could be first piloted at a departmental level within a leading university in each country to a

manageable number of PhD candidates. To be inspired by existing US, British, and South African

experiences, each of the participating countries could launch two PhD program-lines:

a. A completely distance-based course load with the exception of research supervisor; b. A blended program including both distance learning and class-contacts.

Both programs, however, will include a “sandwich-year” that will allow the students to put into

practice the learned theoretical knowledge and acquire professional experience. To increase

regional students’ mobility, governments could partner in devising a cross-national university

consortium that allow these students to spend the “sandwich-year” in one of the regional partner

countries.

Characteristics: On the one hand, these programs will increase PhD enrolments

especially among already employed candidates. On the other hand, they will alleviate the burden

imposed on the university budgets, infrastructure, and faculty members. To strike a balance

between the flexibility of blended programs and the required rigor and norms of doctoral

program, it is important that the university remains the sole manager for all the curricula, which,

in turn, have to abide by the regulatory and control-quality norms set by the institutional

governing body of each country. The programs’ competitive advantage lays in its provision of

three value-added characteristics: a) market-based blended program that tailor theory to practice;


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b) intra-regional mobility; c) and competitive cost-quality service and flexibility rapports.

7.2. Option 2: Bidding on retaining Students Mobility within Regional Universities

Process: The initiative mainly tries to retain as much as possible the students who are likely

to study in private universities abroad. Following the path of South Africa, this could be done at

two levels. On one level, governments can foster doctoral applied research in specific strategic

areas within their flagship universities by providing incentives for postgraduate institutions and

firms to collaborate in garnering technological capability. Setting up institutions for disseminating

and commercializing the fruits of research will make them more attractive to students from the

Arab world.

On the other level, governments are to encourage good governance and autonomy of tertiary

institutions, both public and private. Governments can stimulate competition among them on a

national and even regional basis by flattening-up their accreditation and bureaucratic processes,

while simultaneously subject all tertiary institutions to quality-based performance assessment

through independent scientific bodies (e.g. Mauritius could the best model in this regard). It is

important to note that the success of this initiative remains significantly contingent to that of

Option 1.

Characteristics: increasing Arab female students’ mobility within the MENA universities

is a win-win situation for the students, the host countries, and the home countries, as this mobility

will cause knowledge and financial capital circulation within the region. Taking advantage of the

fueling costs of postgraduate education in Europe and America, South Africa development policy

documents aiming at launching internationally competitive PhD programs, with advantageous

fee-package, to attract postgraduate students from elsewhere on the African continent. Given that

the annual cost for a PhD student studying at a South African University is 3,000 USD (versus

21,000 USD at Britain or 26,000 in the USA), 48% of SADAC mobile students today peruse their

studies in South Africa. Thanks to this Strategy South Africa’s has managed to maintain an

annual growth of 6.4% in PhD enrolments.


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