London

Pity Danielle Ohayon, otherwise known as Miss Jamaica, a contestant in this year's Miss World competition. Already forced to relocate to London following violent protests against the beauty pageant in Nigeria, Ohayon received further bad news last week — she faces institutional sexism if she follows her desired career in marine biology.

Likewise, if Mai Phuong Pham Thi — Miss Vietnam — lives out her dream and becomes a physicist, she may find it difficult to return to work if she wants to take a break to have children. And Chinenye Ochuba — Miss Nigeria — is likely to strike the long-standing and notorious glass ceiling should she achieve her ambitions in computer science.

The gloomy prognosis of young women's prospects in science arrived in a report from Susan Greenfield, director of the London-based Royal Institution of Great Britain. Commissioned by the British government and published on 28 November, the report calls for state funding for fellowship schemes to retrain women who have taken breaks in their career to start a family.

It also calls for funds for family-friendly practices such as part-time working and job-share programmes, which it says would help women to rise through the research ranks.

“Thankfully we have gone beyond bottom pinching, but in some ways the latest form of discrimination is worse,” Greenfield says. “It's hidden, institutional sexism, clearly reflected in the awful statistics.” Just 8% of women academics in Britain's older universities are professors, for example, and more than a third are on the lowest lecturer pay scale. The report points out that there are similar problems in other countries, echoing accounts that sexism persists in the United States, Japan and elsewhere.

The low participation of women in British science is not just a problem for them, the report says, but also for the country, business and society as a whole.

It adds that many of the efforts and initiatives to encourage greater participation are fragmented — and that many women in science are unaware that they even exist. To address this problem, the report suggests that the government should set up a 'working science centre' to draw these programmes and schemes together. The government says that it intends to consider the recommendations and will publish a full response shortly.