Nautilus has featured many posts about gender issues in scientific research, as can be seen at this link. The question of opportunities for women is one that endures: hard on the heels of two studies in EMBO Reports last November comes a Feature in February’s issue of Nature Geoscience, Gender imbalance in US geoscience academia, by Mary Anne Holmes, Suzanne O’Connell, Connie Frey and Lois Ongley (Nature Geoscience 1, 79 – 82; 2008). From the article:
“We could wait for the pipeline to supply more women by having more women enter our programs, but the wait will be a long one: the proportion of women on the faculty will never equal the proportion receiving PhDs if we do not intervene to stop women’s exodus from academia. The problem is not only the supply of women into geosciences majors, but the continual loss as more women drop out and head for other fields or other careers instead of tenure-track jobs and tenure. The processes by which our students complete a PhD and go on to achieve tenure may not be selecting for all traits that can contribute to the best science and teaching. We assert from our own experiences and acquaintances that the ongoing loss of women from the geosciences is not ‘best selection’, but a brain drain.”