Women are less likely to hold positions in the academic sciences because the timing in which the field is most competitive overlaps with added family responsibilities typically assumed by the matriarch of the household, according to a study by Dr. Shelley Adamo, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Dalhousie University.
The findings of the study, which appears in the January edition of BioScience, run counter to the common narrative that women often avoid stressful jobs with long hours that make it difficult to balance career with family life.
If this were true, the number of female physicians and medical students would be much lower, which is what Adamo said inspired her to research the issue further.
“In Canada the new incoming medical class for 2012 had more women than men and what we’re seeing is this has been the case for the last few years,” Adamo said. “What I decided to do was to try to find out by comparing the differences between medicine and [academic] science to understand why science has a tough time recruiting and retaining women.”
While academic science careers tend to involve fewer hours and have more flexible schedules, the reason more women are successful in medicine is due to the timing in which the competition is most fierce in both fields, according to country-wide statistics gathered from Statistics Canada, the National Physicians Survey, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers.
In medicine, this occurs when trying to get into medical school.
“At Dalhousie the success rate is less than 20 per cent,” Adamo said. “But the bottleneck occurs very early in a woman’s career. It occurs often in their early to mid-20s and at that point, women usually haven’t got a permanent partner, they don’t have children yet, so in a sense it’s a level playing field in terms of family formation.”
In the sciences however, the competition only heats up later on in a person’s career after achieving a PhD.
“The competition is extremely stiff, as bad if not worse than trying to get into medical school,” Adamo said. “By that time you’re looking at people in their late 20s to early 30s.”
This creates a disadvantage for women, many of whom have partners and children by this point in their lives, she said.
“It’s harder for them than for men to pick up their family and move every two years,” Adamo said. “I think a lot of women bow out at that point, and if you look at the numbers, that’s what happens.”
Dr. Naomi Cappuccino, currently on leave from her position as an associate professor and associate dean for undergraduate affairs in Carleton’s biology department, said she agreed with the study’s findings, noting there are just seven women out of 29 members in her faculty.
“Having a family makes it extremely difficult for women to compete at the same level as men,” Cappuccino said via email. “It’s hard to go jet-setting off to [prestigious international] meetings around the globe when you have little kids, yet this is a measure that is routinely used to rank job candidates or grant applicants.”
Cappuccino said the most successful women she knows in the field are usually single with no children.
“I’m afraid I don’t have a realistic solution to the problem,” Cappuccino said.
“Positions will always go to the candidates who can wow the hiring committee with the longest CV, which will tend to exclude primary caregivers of small children.”
