It’s also striking that the fields where the percent of applicants who are women closely match (again eyeball level) the percentage of degrees (Civil and Electrical Engineering, Physics) have few women, vs. fields (Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics) where fewer to markedly fewer (Biology) women apply for academic positions. I’ll conjecture that it isn’t a coincidence. The women who slog through the process of getting the degree in spite of the crap they encounter on the way, I’ll conjecture, are more like the men they graduate with than is the case in fields like Biology.

I recently had a reminder of something apropos the observations of MartyM’s about women being in his workplace and doing well. This is also the case in mine. There’s a clear generational bias, but also a clear steady progress in fraction of people who are women in my work place as you look at younger ages. The reminder, though, was that my workplace is not necessarily typical. To judge by some other things, it’s wildly atypical. Anyhow, I was recently at three different meetings, regarding three different kinds of things that I work on. (Sufficiently disjoint interests that I was the only person at more than one of the three.) And, at every one of these relatively independent meetings, the fraction of people who were women was between very low and appallingly low. a) although some workplaces have respectable representation from women, many others still, apparently, do not. b) even in workplaces that have respectable numbers of women, the women apparently are not in the end of things that means going to meetings.

Things are definitely better. They still have a long way to go.

One thing, however, which I think is a mistake is to make the family-hostile practices of some workplaces a ‘women’s’ issue. If you have to spend 80 hours a week at work, there’s something wrong with that workplace. That’s true regardless of your gender. At least some of us men, myself for example, enjoy their parenting and want to be (and have been) involved parents.

MartyM you are right, searching for a change is in order. Moving however, changes only ones personal circumstances. A greater change that benefits all is also in order.

I know of no one who says life is easy or fair, but I do know several women in engineering and other professions who balance family and career and seem to be doing well at it. No one circumstance applies to all, so while it’s not easy (and in some cases not possible), if the work environment is hostile or non-conducive to promotion, then search for a change.

Maybe I’m getting conflicting views. While I don’t deny some biases women face in the work place and may be penalized unjustly, I do see women excelling in the work place, which is great and leads me to think that it is getting better for women in general. Isn’t that what this report is saying?

On an individual level, we often attribute these decisions exclusively to the women who make them, and we fail to ask what factors are channeling women into their decisions: leave policies, availability of quality child care, an inflexible tenure and career clock, etc. Would those be “fundamental changes”? Or just reasonable ones?

And from a policy/system level, if you assume that women and men are equally capable, then these numbers suggest that the system is are filtering out a significant percentage of the potential top scientists for non-merit-based reasons. Set aside the politics of gender for a moment and just view it through the cold hard lens of efficiency and productivity: if I told you that your system is losing 10-20% of the people who otherwise would have been the world’s leading scientists, don’t you think “fundamental changes” in the system would be called for?

[It's] necessary to acknowledge that many ladies simply fall out of the pipeline as priorities understandably change between ages 21 and 36. While anecdotes are not evidence, I’ve spent the past several years observing the drop off firsthand as friends and colleagues transition into other professions as they attempt to balance, well, life. Hence, if we are to encourage women to stay in the system, then the system will need to undergo fundamental changes to accommodate more of us. Is that a fair expectation? For that matter, should it be? I’m not sure.