Zhang Yifeng is heading into a new chapter of her scientific career. The 39-year-old recently landed a coveted principal investigator (PI) job at the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai. There are only 27 PIs on staff, 23 of whom are men and 4are women. It's a ratio that differs from when Zhang was in university, where gender ratios in her biology classes tended to be fifty-fifty. "Maybe even slightly more women than men," she muses. "I think this a common phenomenon with biology majors, that there's slightly more female than male students."

But university seems to be where this phenomenon begins and ends. While roughly 20 million women make up 37 percent of China's science and technology labor force, according to the China Association for Science & Technology, their numbers dwindle the further up the career ladder they progress.

Even though they earn around 30 percent of China's Ph.Ds, women go on to fill only 25 percent of the country's senior lab posts and less than 10 percent of positions at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. "No one ever told me that I wouldn't do well in some area or I'm not getting a job because I'm female," says Zhang of the imbalance. "[But] if a man and woman with equal credentials compete for a job, the man is more likely to get the job. It's a probability game."

Whether this probability influenced by prejudice is murky, according to Zhang. "Gender discrimination nowadays manifests itself in more subtle ways than I can recognize. [It's] possible that discrimination is now so subtle that the perpetrators themselves don't think they are doing it," she posits. "A male hiring committee member likely feels more at ease talking with a male [job] candidate than with a female one. Perhaps they would have a nice chat about football games, discover they like the same players. It's not conscious discrimination, but it nevertheless results in hiring fewer females [in favor of males]."

Larger life issues, though, can obscure the impact of interview room outcomes. Science is a long-term commitment, one that often pressures women to make tough choices in their personal lives as they put off marrying or having children in order to spend more time in the lab. "I don't feel the pressure, but that's not because there's no pressure, it's simply that I made the choice already," explains Zhang. "I was more or less a workaholic for a long time. [But] I'm starting to rethink that."

That's not to say she feels discouraged working in neuroscience. It's just that "a lack of personal life is no longer needed for me to be good at work," she says. In one of her labs, Zhang recalls, her colleagues would commiserate over how biology was one of least rewarding postgraduate paths, "considering investment of time and money [versus] salary."

Now as a PI, Zhang manages and mentors a group of graduate students, postdocs and research assistants working on neurophysiology and molecular neuroscienceprojects. She enjoys the challengeof studying the brain. "The more unknown there is in a subject, the more fun it is to study it," she says of neuroscience, which is highly interdisciplinary. "What [I] learn today in neuroscience simply helps [me] to ask the right question next time."

On the question of what shape her life outside the lab will take – be it with a different social group, significant other or choosing to have a child – Zhang is happy to embrace the unknowns. "Any of them – or even all of them," she says cheerfully."I'm not picky."

Tech Bytes

➲ The mobile instant messaging service MXit has been ranked number one on Forbes Africa's February list of the top 20 technology startups on the continent. The South African social network system is free and hosts around 45 million users. Other notable names on the list include Ghana's Dropifi, Nigeria's Jobberman, and four Kenyan groups including payment platform PesaPal. But South Africa was the major winner overall: eight of the 20 companies listed are based in the Rainbow Nation.

➲ This month marks the two-year anniversary of iHub, often referred to as the "go-to place for all things techie in East Africa." Based out of Nairobi, the facility is a meeting ground for Kenya's mobile entrepreneurs, programmers and designers. In 2011 alone, the innovation space produced 30 startups, bringing in corporate partners like Samsung and Nokia along the way.