Why Maximum Women don’t like Biology
Do you know according to research more than 80% of the
women leave biology. Why this happening? One common idea about why there are
fewer women professors in the sciences than men is that women are less willing
to work the long hours needed to succeed. Writing in the January Issue of
BioScience, Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada, rejects
this argument. She points out that women physicians work longer hours than most
scientists, under arguably more stressful conditions, but that this does not
deter women from entering medicine.
Why, then, do women leave the academic track in biology
at higher rates than they leave the medical profession? Adamo blames the
difference in the timing of the most acute period of competition in the two
careers. In biology, the most intense competition is for the first faculty
position. This typically occurs when women are in their early 30's. Biologists
have little financial and institutional support for balancing family and career
during this stressful time. Women with children find this pressure particularly
difficult, and it appears to be getting worse, because of a decrease in
available academic positions. Strong career competition in medicine, in
contrast, occurs earlier, before most women have started families.
Once women are in a faculty position in biology in
Canada, they gain tenure at the same rate as men. Canadian universities, unlike
US ones, have mandated maternity leave for women faculty and often allow deferral
of tenure. In addition, the main Canadian agency supporting biology takes
maternity leave into account when assessing productivity. Consequently,
retention of women who have achieved tenure-track positions in biology is
better than in the United States.
Adamo points out that if both countries decreased the
number of graduate biology student positions, making competition for a biology
career occur earlier, this would likely make access to academic positions
easier later, and so increase the proportion of women choosing a scientific
career. But bringing about such a change -- for example, by providing fewer but
better-funded graduate scholarships -- would require a coordinated response
involving granting agencies, universities, and individual professors.
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