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Nearly Half of US Female Scientists Leave Full-Time Science After First Child
- chriskanan 8y agoWhile the title focuses on female scientists, males are also affected. From the article: "...23% of men and 43% of women who had become parents had left full-time STEM employment. ... This compared to 16% of child-free men and 24% of child-free women."
- gotocake 8y agoThat’s even more stark when you put it that way. Men leave at a rate of 9% more than their background rate when they have children, women leave 19% more with kids, over a base rate that even without children exceeds the male rate by 8%.
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- dragonwriter 8y agoWomen left at a higher rate than men. People who had children left at a higher rate than people who did not. Women who had children left at a rate with a greater (additional or multiplier) increase over the rate of women without children than did men with children over men without children.
- eli_gottlieb 8y agoSo basically, post-doctoral STEM employment punishes taking the hours to parent, like so many other professional positions these days.
- abc__cba 8y agoI think that is not clear. Many people want to leave their jobs, men rarely have the option to do so because everyone (usually first and foremost their wives) frowns upon it.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoYou cut the part that explained that some of them merely cut back on their hours rather than "leaving STEM," a point that is repeated at least twice in the article: They either went part time, switched to non-STEM careers or left the workforce altogether.
- mc32 8y agoLooks like offering childcare onsite could alleviate some of this at least in the early years —but may only postpone the inevitable departure. As far as I understand it even at these high perk Santa Clara/Silicon Valley companies childcare isn’t a given. There are waiting lists and other limits. They want to attract women, but they fall short on this aspect.
- zanny 8y agoTheres also plenty of evidence that children flourish way more under the guardianship of parents* rather than at least traditional day care. Having kids should push you out of full time work because raising kids is its own nigh-full time job. The real problems are A. the number of people who can actually do that is way below replacement rates on the current population and B. women are still dropping their workforce participation much moreso than men are. [*] I don't think it needs to be biological parents, more that many-to-one day care, especially with rotating or inconsistent caretakers and especially the younger you get, is harmful to development, Theres a lot of research on "models" of parenting and child rearing and how effective they are at producing the "best" children by varing definitions of best, but classical day care is usually considered by most metrics one of the worst.
- mc32 8y agoI don’t doubt that, but at least marginally some parents will be swayed by convenient childcare, rather than going part time or abandoning the fields.
- User23 8y agoI wonder how much of this is people leaving science to pursue far more lucrative opportunities like running mathematically intricate financial scams for Wall Street banks in order to assure a good financial future for their children. I know STEM PhDs who have left their field to get a bog standard devops job on account of it pays twice as well.
- elliekelly 8y agoYes, all of the women scientists are rushing to Wall Street where the old boys club is welcoming them with open arms. In my time on Wall Street I've had many colleagues with STEM PhDs. I can't think of a single one who is female.
- User23 8y agoParent was explicitly referring to how this also affects male participation rates and I was speaking to that. That said, you should be more inclusive of mothers with STEM degrees when running your financial scams.
- towaway1138 8y agoIndeed, if you stare at the bar chart for a moment, you'll realize that a sufficient explanation is that women more often have the option to reduce their hours or stop working entirely. In our culture, men generally don't have the privilege of doing so. I've lived this myself and also watched many instances of it in friends and colleagues. Is anyone really shocked by the idea that new mothers might decide they'd like to stay home and raise their kids? As a man, I'd almost have killed to stay home and have my wife keep working, but that's just not how it is.
- reader5000 8y agoMembers of a sexually reproducing species find that their instinctual genetic imperative is more fulfilling than current-epoch cultural fads.
- asdffdsa 8y agowhat could be more fulfilling than [disruption|big data|reactive web|microservices|deep learning|tech evangelization|nosql]?
- slimshady94 8y agoVerifiable delay functions!
- asdffdsa 8y agoI knew I was forgetting something!
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- jhanschoo 8y agoUnstated assumption in this claim: this instinctual genetic imperative has a dimension that causes people to leave their jobs, and this dimension disproportionately affects women more than men.
- therealforsen 8y agoI have yet to be told why it is important for there to be as many women in STEM as men apart from statements that I'm sexist for not knowing
- tomp 8y agoBecause men and women are equal (so there's no difference whether a scientist is a man or a woman) /s
- chimpburger 8y agoFor the same reason its important for there to be as many women in mining, oil rigging, heavy industry, and forestry.
- monochromatic 8y agoDon’t forget garbage collection and janitorial.
- jriot 8y agoExcept there isn't.
- phil248 8y agoAre you being facetious? Obviously labor intensive work does not reap the same benefits from diversity of perspectives as scientific or creative fields.
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- chimpburger 8y agoAre you being facetious? How does science benefit from a diversity of genitalia? I'm not saying women should or shouldn't do this or that.. but the irrational compulsion to force equity between the sexes is stupid. Providing equal opportunity is good. Forcing equal outcome is evil.
- microDude 8y agoMy wife's experience: PI: "You put your kid in front of the TV for 2 hours a day to get stuff done? That's terrible parenting." PI: "You will be late 1 day for a meaningless group presentation to your own lab, because your child is sick and can't go to daycare? Get your priorities straight."
- lixtra 8y agoWhy was it your wife’s problem when the child was sick and not yours? EDIT: Sorry, I just assumed that you didn’t equally stay at home when the kid was sick. How did your boss react when you didn’t show up?
- gbear605 8y agoNote that it wasn’t him criticizing her - it was her boss, at least assuming PI means principal investigator.
- throwawayloco 8y agoIt's perfectly valid option for a couple to choose together that the mother will take on a more significant role in caring for their children.
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- zanny 8y agoRaising children is a full time job. The broader problem is that the discipline is not at all treated as a profession. Instructors for those children are recognized professionals, but the guardians are not. If you want to be good parents though, it is your imperative to put your kids above all else, which will naturally dissatisfy any members of the "all else" who don't have your well being and success as their priority.
- noelsusman 8y agoThis is what husbands are for.
- ancorevard 8y agoLife is short, few things are more meaningful and rewarding than raising human beings.
- User23 8y agoIt's also a net gain averaged out over time if the couple produces more than 2 children. It's a very rare person that can individually contribute more to their society than 3 or more well-raised new individuals. Obviously this is a decision for couples to make for themselves, not for bureaucrats, economists, or activists to make for them.
- commandlinefan 8y ago... which is why civilization built up a particular way over the course of 10,000 years ...
- elliekelly 8y agoMany modern anthropologists now believe that to be a myth attributable to, wait for it... implicit gender bias among male scientists in the early 1900's. You should check out the book "The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory" it's a very interesting read.
- noelsusman 8y agoCivilization built up a lot of things over 10,000 years that aren't very good.
- kevincrane 8y agoThen why don't men leave their fields in the same numbers as women after they have a kid?
- jhwang5 8y agoAt least in Asia, there's pressure for men to be providers (and they get socially disrespected if they can't). Not sure about the U.S. though.
- zxcvvcxz 8y agoSo the heck what. Seriously.
- b_tterc_p 8y agoI would bet this is a symptom of STEM PhD holders being educated and tending to have wealthier partners. It’s not that they must leave STEM, it’s that they can, and many many people would prefer to raise a family than work
- alkibiades 8y agoyes. everyone assumes that disparity == discrimination and that women have no choice.
- mxcrossb 8y agoIt’s interesting that the “moved to non-stem career” part seems equal for men and women.
- rb808 8y agoIts kinda interesting to see the related articles on the same site: about how many of the smartest scientists are more successful doing other stuff (like finance). https://www.nature.com/news/life-outside-the-lab-the-ones-who-got-away-1.15802 https://www.nature.com/news/life-outside-the-lab-the-ones-wh... Perhaps there is a common theme that Full-Time science isn't necessarily the best life path for many people and the "US Female Scientists who leave" are actually happy with the outcome rather than symptom of a problem. You can phrase it another way - "Many Male Scientists stuck in their job and unable to change their STEM careers".
- dogma1138 8y agoIt’s pretty universal it’s jusy like asking where are all the US soccer superstars when the answer is that they are they are playing in the NBA and the NFL. Elite athletes are going to be elite athletes the sport itself is secondary, smart people are going to be successful in any field and the field of choice is also nearly always secondary to their success.
- mikekchar 8y agoCompletely anecdotal evidence, but every female coworker I've ever worked with has left work to raise their child after the first baby. Every single one of them said that they were definitely coming back before they went on maternity leave (and I believe that they believed it). The main issue in every case was that as the new mothers got to the end of their maternity leave, they started to think about day care. In the end, they felt that they could not trust the day care centres with their child. Similarly the mothers did not trust their own husbands to look after the child because the husband had not spent much time with the child at that point. Because all of the families I knew were relatively well off with dual incomes, they eventually decided that the woman would quit work to look after the child. In my anecdotal data, in no cases was there a salary gap between the man and the woman. Both were making roughly the same amount. Neither was it a case of not being able to afford child care -- although, once they crunched the numbers the cost of child care was a good percentage of one of the salaries, so it made it easier to take the financial hit to move to a single income. As far as I could tell, in all cases it just came down to trust. For this reason, I think there should be some sort of encouraged paternal leave. For example, the government/company in partnership could pay for 80% of the salary for 6 months for the father to look after the child. This would occur immediately after the mother's maternity leave. What this does is provide a financial incentive for the father to learn to look after the child. When the paternity leave is finished, then the choices look very different. I think it's still likely that one parent (in well to do dual family incomes) will choose to look after their child and quit their job (and I see nothing wrong with that). However, now the woman has spent the last 6 months working and it will be a harder decision to quit. The man now has had a chance to show that he can look after the child and the woman will be able to trust him with that responsibility. I honestly believe without that kind of system, there will always be a disparity between men and women when it comes to one parent choosing to quit their job and raise children. I should point out that, personally, I think raising children is a wonderful job, even if it doesn't pay so well ;-) Sometimes I think modern society looks down on that role and I think it's rather unfair. However, I do understand that we aren't quite modern enough to make that job reasonably risk free (you're dependent upon your spouse which is not always going to work out). We've got a long way to go...
- zik 8y ago
- gervase 8y agoMy wife and I are both STEM PhDs, and she left research after our first child was born; we could be a case study for this article. For us, it was because her field (immunology) was simply less lucrative than mine (computer science). Given the differences in gender distributions between both fields, and the pay gap between fields, I think simplifying this as STEM collectively isn't sufficiently granular. I wonder what the rates are for "left CS after child" vs "left biology after child", and how they compare. With that being said, it's likely that there are also systemic/structural differences as well; research (and academia in particular) is notorious for poor work-life balance (prior to tenure). Social undercurrents of expectation towards primary caregivers would certainly have some influence as well. I know it shifts the narrative slightly, but I would also be interested to see the effects of PhDs on birthrates, broken down by field, gender, and country of birth. It seems to me that it would be negatively correlated, but I don't have the data to back up that observation.
- itd00d 8y agoFace it. Your wife went to school (like most women) for a MRS degree. Don't act like you and her had this long drawn out, complicated and deeply researched decision making process. She, like most women, wanted something to do between High School and marriage. The marriage alone still forced her to work...the baby gave her an excuse to quit. I predict in 10-15 years she'll try to go back to work in academia or aim for some management gig and moan about sexism/ageism in the workplace.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoIf I'm understanding the timeline of the study properly, they're looking at parents of toddlers. IMO it would be more interesting to see how many parents were still working part-time or not at all once their kids are old enough to go to school
- gwright 8y agoIt wouldn't surprise me to learn that these findings could be repeated across all/most industries. I doubt that it is just female scientists that make this choice.
- bitL 8y agoThat's very uneconomical and an inefficient allocation of limited resources. Is there a way to "force" them to come back, i.e. by offering 80% off on student loans while raising costs 5x in parallel that can't be repaid by their spouses? There should be some kind of responsibility incorporated to the system. One should not just cherry pick the good parts (status/prestige/free time).
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoMost scientists leave after their PhD, if they know what's good for them. Postdocs suck, PIs suck, and big industry is slashing r+d budgets as fast as they can. Science as it's performed is only appropriate for the truly obsessive.
- borkt 8y agoIs there a problem with part-time science? I am not reading the article and I imagine this is a tangent, but it would actually be interesting if work in true science was thought of as a part time pursuit, at least by practicing engineers and others in technical fields that had ideas they were interested in studying scientifically but their day jobs are far too lucrative to leave for the pursuit of knowledge. That, or the 20% time policy (again, no idea how this works in practice) being adopted at a more national level, somehow creating incentives for companies to allow their talent to pursue science that might be a bit more out there than would traditionally receive a formal grant.
- jriot 8y agoI was accepted to a PhD in both economics and math, yet I had to turn them down due to being a parent of two small children. My wife stays at home with them, thus reducing my salary to a TA wasn't feasible for 4 - 6 years. Is there a problem with the system when men have to give up opportunities due to having children?
- buttcoinslol 8y agoSomebody is going to point out that you and your wife made the decision to have children as well as having your wife stay at home with them instead of working, so it might as well be me. You made conscious decisions that excluded you from opportunities, sorry.
- jriot 8y agoSeems to be the same for women here. It was their choice to have children thus leaving their field. Why do we care that not everyone is offered the same opportunities? Life isn't fair. Until I see women fighting to take on all the roles men have taken in life, Alaskan commercial fishermen, roughneck oil rig workers, loggers etc... and just not 1 or 2, equal representation throughout I am not concerned with unequal representation in STEM, tech or any of the fashionable areas to be concerned with.
- mav3rick 8y ago"Why do we care that not everyone is offered the same opportunities? Life isn't fair." Does that mean we live with the status quo ? Whether it's institutional racism, sexism or plain fascism, do we not fight against inequalities in society to make it better ? You're lucky to have 24x7 electricity and internet connection, you wouldn't be so gung ho about "Life isn't fair" if you couldn't sustain yourself. "Until I see women fighting to take on all the roles men have taken in life, Alaskan commercial fishermen, roughneck oil rig workers, loggers etc... and just not 1 or 2, equal representation throughout I am not concerned with unequal representation in STEM, tech or any of the fashionable areas to be concerned with." Who are you to gatekeep what they can or can't go in ? I guarantee you most middle class males also won't go for these jobs, demand is often governed by economic opportunities and right now services and software is ruling the roost. Who are you to decide these arbitrary standards for being eligible for "fashionable" sectors.
- jhanschoo 8y agoIt's disappointing to see just how much articles like these inspire some frequenters here to come out with their pet sexist theories on why this is expected and why such studies are not warranted. To address one aspect of criticism, studies like these are not necessarily with an interest toward equal representation for its own sake, nor something that is best dealt with by resigning to the status quo that people are free to make choices and they deal with the consequences of it. There is talent lost in the field when stuff like this happens, and this is a first step to understanding if there are more efficient ways to address a need among families that is not currently being adequately addressed. If these can be addressed efficiently, then people will make different choices, and the consequences of those different decisions may be a net benefit to everyone.
- aaron695 8y agoAnd the greatest trick Keyser Söze ever pulled was convincing women, men have the better deal working full time and not spending time with the children and we should literally campaign telling them they are wrong not to want to work full time and the small benefits you get from that over the lifelong reward of bringing up healthy caring children. But it is best for society... and other suckers not you if they work. Shug, so what's to complain about?
- crowdpleaser 8y agoI wonder what % of these cases could be explained by understanding how much money each parent is making. I'd wager that US Female Scientists probably make less than their partners. I'd wager that it's more likely for a US Female Scientist to stay in her position when she makes more money than her partner. Do US Female Scientists have a preference for starting families with those who out-earn them?
- sadris 8y agoThis is why I think women would birth children first and then decide if they want to raise them or pay someone else to raise them. Pretty stupid to spend 4-8 years of your life and thousands of dollars on schooling only to abandon that investment.
- charliebrownau 8y agoIts almost like WOMEN and MEN are actually different and do choose different work fields and women typically want kids around 25-35
- charliebrownau 8y agoFunny how we NEVER hear about 50/50 discriminating quotas for:- * Garbo * Sewage workers * Mowing lawns * Landscaping * Plumbers * Electricians * Snake catchers * Night Petrol station attendant * Construction * Mining * road crews * IT/PC repair * Power pole repair #equality
- Proven 8y agoThat doesn't prevent SJWs from complaining they get paid less. Clearly every employer knows there's a 50 percent chance they'll lose them a few years later, but we're supposed to believe they're being paid less because they're female.