According to ABC, a new study reports that women tend to drop out of research between their postdoc positions and running their own labs. I can't say I'm shocked. While personal anecdotes are not reliable evidence, by age 28 I've already seen this trend firsthand among my peers many, many times. We ladies make up approximately 45% of postdocs, 29% of tenured faculty, and only 19% of those running independent labs. Yes I've written about this topic before, but what's different here is that researchers found no evidence of gender bias, but rather 'women's desire to be with their children trumped that of men's desire.' And most interesting is the suggestion that 'more women mentors could be a solution to the "dropout" problem'. Ummm, yes please.
"I think there is a paucity of 'role models for women' of accomplished researchers who have kids that turn out to be normal, because ...
