To the Editor

I am glad the article “Gender imbalance in US geoscience academia” (Nature Geosci. 1, 79–82; 2008) featured so prominently in your new journal. However, I must take issue with the authors' definition of gender parity for the geosciences: “A department will have achieved gender parity when every student in it can look at the faculty and see at least one person whose life they wish to emulate. A department with only one woman or with five childless female full professors is not there yet.”

So the authors want to ensure that young women know they can have children and an academic career, and that they can see this reflected in the success of the professors they interact with on a daily basis. Yet within my corner of the earth sciences 'blogosphere' I have seen women coming close to breaking point trying to juggle their family and their career. One post I read on a blog by “Sciencewoman”1 concluded: “So for any of you who want to hold me up as an example that we can do it all and it is possible, please don't give me that burden too. My plate's already a little full.”

If gender parity is a department with three or so female assistant professors suffering like Sciencewoman, with students oblivious to what it's really like, then gender parity is frankly unappealing. If gender parity is a department in which female professors with children are no more stressed than their male and childless female colleagues, then I doubt this will be achieved in my lifetime.

Women are still having to choose between a family and a career, and I hope this article will be a wake-up call to the brain-drain occurring beyond postgraduate level.