Career Options

As a tenure-track oceanographer, Margaret Mulholland feels like a pioneer.

A department's culture dictates whether a pregnant graduate student will be supported or scorned. For every adviser who demands data delivery from a returning new mother, there is an understanding mentor paving the way.

David Kimelman, a developmental biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, points out two concerns that come to mind when a student reveals a pregnancy. How will the baby affect the timing and progress of a graduate degree? Will it affect the student's overall interest in the lab?

"The individuals who can become extremely efficient and balance their time are going to be most successful," says Kimelman, noting a trend in recent years towards men playing a more active role in child-rearing. Indeed, one of Kimelman's recent students attributes her effectiveness in the lab to a helpful husband and access to day care nearby.

Frank Moore, associate dean of science at Oregon State University, has also noticed the 'daddy day care' trend. His two most recent male doctoral students shared child care responsibilities with their partners.

"This is the good news," says Bob Drago, professor of women's studies at Pennsylvania State University. "For the highly educated in two-parent dual-career relationships, men are doing almost half of the child care," he says. "That's a big improvement that has helped a lot of academic women."

Otherwise, affordable child care is a major stumbling block for most — particularly when good day care options can use up a postdoc stipend. Some campus organizations address the issue. In Britain, the University of York's graduate student association subsidizes nursery care. More often, graduate students use their only other currency — a flexible schedule.

Martha Merrow did just that when she had her children as a graduate student at Tufts Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. While a postdoc, Merrow, now at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, sometimes worked "crazy hours" to maximize family time. Up at 5 in the morning to set up experiments, home for breakfast with the family, back to work until dinner and bedtime, then back to work until late in the night.

Thankful for supportive mentors and a stay-at-home husband, the biologist in Merrow points out that she would have had to "protect her genetic investment" if she had been put in a position of making difficult choices early on.

Indeed, early career decisions prove most pivotal, leading to a loss of female researchers before they reach tenure-track stage. "All of our evidence suggests that entering into tenure-track positions is the biggest leak in the academic pipeline," says Mark Goulden, a family-studies researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He and Mary Ann Mason, dean of Berkeley's graduate division, have shown that women having babies during PhD or postdoc years are less likely to enter tenure-track positions (M. A. Mason and M. Goulden Academe 88, 21–27; 2002). Alternatively, if you look at those in tenure-track positions, men are much more likely than women to be parents.

A 2004 survey of postdocs by Germany's Center of Excellence Women and Science (CEWS) found that almost half of women professors in Germany remain childless, and most felt children would be a burden to their career. Yet there were no differences in scientific productivity between women scientists with and without children.

Not all European countries have such striking differences. For example, Sweden and France tend towards greater equality. CEWS representative Andrea Löther attributes the difference to better child care options.

Like many, Heather Leslie and her husband Jeremy Rich, postdoctoral fellows at Princeton University in New Jersey, have put off having children until they are more professionally and financially secure. Disheartened by seeing fewer female faces at this stage of her career, Leslie wonders if the increased responsibility and decreased flexibility of a professorship will be stumbling blocks. "I'm beginning to accept the possibility that having children may irrevocably alter my career options," she says.

More senior women also face tough decisions about starting a family while pursuing their career, says Alice Hogan, director of the Advance programme, designed by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the climate for women in academia. "Later in their lives, some find they did all the things they should have for a successful career and were still marginalized," says Hogan.

On the Fringes

Unfortunately, continued marginalization is a reality. Economist Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, caused outrage recently with comments suggesting that "innate differences" play a role in women's under-representation in maths and science.

Margaret Mulholland, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, marvels that, although half of the oceanography graduate students have been women for years, she is only the second women hired as tenure-track member of the 20-odd faculty. "In this day and age it's hard to believe we're still essentially pioneering," she says.

Others, such as UK trade secretary Patricia Hewitt, see the loss of scientifically trained women as a "serious waste of valuable skills, experience and talent". In response to a 2002 study, the Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology opened last autumn to create ways to maximize returns on this human investment. Existing schemes, such as the Daphne Jackson Fellowships, established in 1992, also help women scientists in Britain return to academia.

Many institutions are putting family-friendly policies in place. The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in Heidelberg, Germany, until recently ran a Restart programme, designed specifically to get women back to the bench. This has now been incorporated into EMBO's general long-term fellowship scheme, allowing women to prolong a 24-month fellowship to 27 months for maternity leave or convert it to part-time for up to three years.

Some 86% of US research institutions allow faculty members to stop the tenure clock for family-related reasons, typically being allowed an extra year to meet department expectations. But, as Kimelman points out, no allowances are made in terms of writing grants or publishing papers. As a result, many don't take advantage of the policy for fear that it would have a negative effect on their career.

"You can do it all, just not all at once," says Moore. That is the premise guiding the creation of the new Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm research campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Director Gerald Rubin says that Janelia seized the opportunity to create an alternative research environment that eliminates the teaching and grant-writing burdens. "There are only so many hours in a day," says Rubin, adding that the only long-term solution is to adjust the workload from the currently required 80 hours a week. "We're saying spend that extra 30 hours with your family and spend 50 hours on research. Don't put children on hold. Put teaching, administrative functions and grant writing on hold."

Word of this family-friendly policy does not seem to have got out, as a recent call for applications drew only the usual 15–20% of women applicants.

Hogan says that the NSF's Advance programme was designed to challenge institutions to think about how their practices affect women. Since 2001, the agency has awarded more than $3 million to 19 institutions.

Part-time tenure-track options are also gaining momentum. These arrangements allow a new parent to work half time for half pay and slow the tenure clock accordingly, says Drago. More than 20 US schools, including the major campuses of the University of California system, have adopted such an option so far.

Fortunately for future generations, such proactive schemes take the onus from the individual and put it on the institutions — where it belongs, says Hogan.