to stay or go…

The South African Mail and Guardian Online just published another article on the “leaky pipeline”:
Leaving the lab
JESSICA SHEPHERD – Jan 29 2009
They note that women are still leaving the lab at a rate higher than men:

A study for the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Chemistry has found that although 72% of the women surveyed intended to pursue a university career in the first year, by their third year this had slumped to 37%.

This was not the case for their male peers. The study found 61% of them wanted to pursue a university research career in their first year; this fell to 59% by their third year.

Some of the reasons are:

Two recently published studies investigate why these women are leaving. About 450 molecular bioscientists (all female) and 610 chemists (male and female) took part. All were either studying for PhDs or had just finished.

More women than men had come to view academic careers as too solitary and the fight for permanent posts too competitive. One in 10 of the men felt “powerless to resolve significant issues” with their supervisors, whereas this was the case for 17% of the women.

More women than men felt isolated or excluded from, and sometimes even bullied by, their research group. When their experiments went wrong, the women were more likely to “internalise failure”. And more women than men were discouraged by the “all-consuming nature of science”.

However, one post-doc claims:

“I don’t see women leaving academia as a defect or as cowardice. I see it as wisdom. With a science PhD, it’s possible to do a host of other rewarding and important jobs. Women now feel they can give up gracefully and go on to do something more fun.”

let’s make lemonade out of the lemons…