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Motherhood hinders science careers
USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2004
It is not a lack of math proficiency keeping women from careers in science and engineering, nor is it the lack of other college-prep classes. Motherhood is the problem, maintain Kimberlee Shauman, University of California, Davis, and Yu Xie, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes. The authors document the tremendous progress women have achieved in the scientific labor force over the past four decades, but there is a critical barrier that keeps them from advancing further.
"We find that it is not marriage per se that hampers women's career development," Shauman and Xie report. "Rather, married women appear to be disadvantaged only if they have children." Moreover, relative to their male counterparts, fewer women seek science and engineering degrees. Then, once they have children, females tend to participate less in the labor force, are less geographically mobile, and lose promotion potential.
In addition, Shauman and Xie claim that compared to other professions where gender inequality has declined more rapidly, scientific careers, by their very nature, hinder a balance between family and work. "More than other careers, women in [the science field] do not bounce back from periods of inactivity for such things as childbearing," Shauman asserts. The trouble is, she points out, research often cannot be put on hold for maternity leave; progress in research is dependent upon a scientist's success in securing funding year after year; and science careers require extensive and intensive investments of time in education during prime child-bearing years.
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