HIV Microbicides: Rethinking Research Priorities and Outcomes

The Challenge

Engineering is a field where—despite national and international efforts—women remain underrepresented. While many schemes exist to increase women's participation, few have considered how research foci, funding decisions, and project objectives impact women and men's proportional participation in research.

Method: Rethinking Research Priorities and Outcomes

This case study analyzes how a shift in research priorities in a particular mechanical engineering lab led to increased numbers of women working in the lab. Women were drawn to applied physicist Andrew Szeri's lab when research came to focus on the fluid mechanics of gels to deliver female-controlled HIV microbicides. Increasing women's participation in engineering may require reconceptualizing research to include methods of sex and gender analysis in creative and forward-looking ways.

Gendered Innovations:

  1. 1. The proportion of women in one mechanical engineering lab was significantly increased when research priorities were changed to focus on projects with direct potential to improve human health. At the same time, this change in priorities expanded research in the field of fluid mechanics.
  2. 2. Woman-controlled HIV protection is being developed in order to assist women in cultures where they may have less power to say "no" to sex or cannot rely on their partners to use condoms. This new technology represents an innovation that could help prevent the spread of HIV.
  3. 3. Understanding how sexual practices differ across cultures is further refining developments in HIV prevention. These developments could further help sub-Saharan women and also men who have sex with men.