The reform and opening-up of China have greatly improved the scale and quality of doctoral education for women. However, female doctors still face the “leaky pipeline” and the “unbreakable glass ceiling” in their development of academic careers. In this study, gender differences are investigated in doctoral graduates’ career choices, the level of educational institutions they attend, and their scientific research productivity after joining the institution. We analyzed the administrative data and scientific research publication information from ten years of doctoral graduates at a top research university in China. Results suggest that compared to their male counterparts, female doctors are more likely to pursue an academic career upon graduation, but they are also more likely to be employed in lower-level institutions as well as to publish Chinese scientific studies with lower influence and poorer quality. Moreover, gender differences in academic disciplines are heterogeneous. While academic career development for doctors in natural sciences is not gender-biased, female doctors in social sciences face the most significant challenges, and these results persist even after controlling for their scientific publications during graduate school. In other words, gender differences in academic career development are likely to result from gender symbols rather than differences in academic ability.
The collapse of the former Soviet Union signaled failure of large-scale experiment in communitarian property. Privatization reform consequently was taken as the start point to transfer the planned economy to a market economy by the post socialist countries. This also occurred in economic transition countries such as China. However, in overcoming the tragedy of the commons privatization might create anticommons problems. Here we develop a nested common-private interface framework from the perspective of resource system and resource units and apply this framework to explain reforms of rangeland property in China and Kyrgyzstan. We confirmed that the root of the dilemma, either caused by commons or anticommons, can be attributed to the interface mismatch between individual elements and common elements. Trying to overcome the dilemma by changing property arrangements alone cannot eliminate the incentive mismatch caused by the common-private interface. Institutions aimed at alleviating the mismatch are accordingly required. Theoretically, this framework converts Ostrom's concept of commons into liberal commons that the members have options to exit, which is becoming increasingly common in the current global context of marketization. In the real world, this framework can serve to understand the property reform progress of transition countries, and may enlighten future property reforms.