Keeping Women in the Science Pipeline - Berkeley Law.pdfVIP

Keeping Women in the Science Pipeline Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden, Karie Frasch* University of California, Berkeley Premier science largely depends on the quality of the pool of future scientists. For this reason the United States has made a major effort over the past 30 years to attract more outstanding U.S. students, particularly women, into research science.i Women have risen to the challenge with significant increases in all physical sciences and engineering, and they have made a huge advance in the life sciences, where they now receive more than 50 percent of all Ph.D.s.ii Women now represent a large part of the talent pool for research science, but many data sources indicate that they are more likely than men to “leak” out of the pipeline in the sciences before obtaining tenure at a college or university.iii The loss of these women, together with serious increases in European and Asian nations’ capacity for research, means the long-term dependability of a highly trained U.S. workforce and global preeminence in the sciences may be in question.iv Our research addresses the effect of family formation on both when and why women and men drop or opt out of the academic science career path and on those who remain on the path. It offers an extensive examination of the experiences of researchers as well as the role that institutions of higher education and federal granting agencies play in regard to the leaky pipeline in the sciences. We collected data from a number of sources: A national longitudinal survey, the Survey of Doctorate Recipients, created by NSF; v and several original surveys. Our surveys covered four academic researcher populations in the University of California system, including doctoral students, postdoctoral scholars, academic researchers, and faculty; a survey of the 62 member institutions of the Association of American Universities, a nonprofit organization of leading