Last week the U.S. Commerce Department released a report that highlighted the ongoing lack of women in science, technology, engineering and math jobs. The study showed that the disparity began at university with only 27 percent of degrees in the field being awarded to women in 2009.
Now it turns out that many of those women who do go on to pursue an academic career in science say that their career prevents them from having as many children as they want. In addition, almost a third of young women scientists who took part in a newly-published study worry that their careers will prevent them from having a family.
The study encompassed 20 of the top research universities in the United States and more than 2,500 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, assistant, associate and full-time professors in the fields of astronomy, physics and biology.
“In short, academic science careers are tough on family life because of the long hours and the pressure of publishing and grant-getting needed to get tenure,” said Elaine Howard Ecklund, a professor at Rice University’s sociology department, and one of two authors of the study, which was published at the Public Library of Science. The study’s co-author is Anne E. Lincoln, a sociology professor at Southern Methodist University.
The study found that men, though in lower percentages, also worry about having fewer children.
“Family factors impede talented young scientists of both sexes from persisting to research positions in academic science,” write the two authors in their journal article.
“In an era when the global competitiveness of U.S. science is at risk, it is concerning that a significant proportion of men and women trained in the select few spots available at top U.S. research universities are considering leaving science and that such desires to leave are related to the impact of the science career on family life.”
The study found that almost half of the women surveyed, and almost a quarter of the men reported that they had fewer children than they wanted because of their careers in science. It also found that a quarter of both men and women surveyed “are likely to consider” a career outside of science because of the perceived constraints on building a family.
The authors note that their work adds to existing research that shows that women are more likely than men to “drop out of the pipeline” to full-time tenure track status jobs.
