New study underscores challenges of work-life balance for women in academia

Despite flexible hours and extended vacation periods, academia “may be a difficult place to combine career and motherhood,” researchers from Barnard College, a women’s liberal arts institution affiliated with Columbia University in New York, reported June 11 to the American Association of University Professors.

In findings presented last month at an AAUP conference Washington, DC, the Barnard researchers described the stress that women in academia experience while trying to balance the needs of their careers with those of their families, and they recommended systematic changes aimed at capping off the “leak” of women from the academic work-force pipeline.

Erector sets and Barbie dolls

Since Larry Summer’s now infamous remarks in 2005, the underrepresentation of women in science has gained a high level of attention. Harvard’s faculty and graduate students have joined the National Academy of Sciences, the Center for American Progress and other groups to study the reasons behind the underrepresentation of women in science. Now the American Enterprise Institute has decided to weigh in.

At a recent book forum hosted by AEI, Christina Hoff Sommers, an AEI resident scholar, presented her views on the dearth of women in science. Focusing on quantitative disciplines like physics, math and computer science, she argued that the smaller percentage of women in scientific disciplines is the result of innate differences in preference between men and women. Not only is the evidence for Sommers’ argument shaky, but her position creates a rationalization for the removal of policies that encourage the advancement of women in science.

An ongoing conversation: women in science

Several nonprofits, blogs and federal agencies recently have released publications about the women in science. These reports and articles use survey data, anecdotes and personal experience to uncover the reasons women remain underrepresented in science.