Career Issues: Science and Motherhood

Ruth sent me this article written by Virginia Gewin for Nature discussing the effect of motherhood on a woman’s career in science. Coming from a scientific background myself, I can concur with the points Ms. Gewin raised. I have seen and experienced the choices women in the academe have to make between career development and childbearing. Some telling statistics:

...in the United States most women sacrifice the career. Although women receive 50% of all scientific PhDs in the United States, only 30%, at best, of tenure-track professorships are filled by women. In the United Kingdom, as few as one in 20 professors in science, engineering, technology and maths are women.

These numbers pan out in my experience. Women are still outnumbered in the vast majority of university departments. I have seen women choose to remain childfree in order to focus (successfully) on their careers. Among those who do have children, there are students who cut their studies short and PhD candidates who opt to convert to Masteral programs instead. Factors that do help a woman’s decision to remain in the field include accessible child-care (or a stay-at-home dad), a supportive mentor and a partner who is willing to share household responsibilities. For students and post-docs, affordability of child-care is an additional consideration.

Successfully balancing the demands of the academe and family requires generous measures of efficiency, dedication and resourcefulness, as well as a flexible schedule. Consider this “crazy hours” routine given by one of the interviewees for the article:

Up at 5 in the morning to set up experiments, home for breakfast with the family, back to work until dinner and bedtime, then back to work until late in the night.

Whew.

And what of those who desire to stay at home for their children’s early years? There are very few work-from-home choices for those coming from a science background. Tutorial science lessons and editing manuscripts are the only things that come to mind. And what about bench skills? And keeping up with the fast-evolving advances in techniques and equipment? One of the things I knew I had to deal with, in making the decision to be a SAHM, is the rusting of laboratory skills accumulated painstakingly over the years. I can’t very well set up my own bench and perform experiments, unless I want the Feds knocking at the door.

There are signs, thankfully, that family-friendly policies addressing these issues are being given more attention. There are available programs, including part-time tenure-track options, that aim to prevent the loss of highly-trained women scientists from the academe. The article cites the following as examples:

NSF Advance
EMBO Long-Term Fellowship
HHMI Janelia Campus
Center of Excellence Women and Science
Daphne Jackson Trust
UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology

[Thanks to Ruth for sending me the article.]