An alternative argument for why women leave STEM
Thanks, Karen Morenz, for providing a unified, panoramic view of the ways that the standard academic career progression short-changes many female scientists, even if each step along the way seems to make sense.<p>It&#x27;s worth taking a look at three other professions with long, high-intensity pathways from apprentice to master --all of which have been wrestling with the same challenges. They are management consulting, law and medicine. I&#x27;ve written about them elsewhere.<p>In medicine, there&#x27;s been a surge of female participation (and leadership) in specialties such as dermatology, psychiatry and radiology, where it&#x27;s relatively easier to rearrange hours and training regimens to be family compatible. There&#x27;s been less progress in surgery, where hellish hours are considered part of the journey.<p>In law, some firms have been experimenting with a blurring of the boundaries between associate and partner, so that there&#x27;s a middle level at which women can enter into motherhood without tanking their career chances. (In the traditional model, close to 40% of entry-level associates are female, but few of them stick around to make partner.)<p>I&#x27;m wondering if either of those models is transferable to STEM academia. Are there particular sub-disciplines where professional success and sane hours might be more compatible? Similarly, are there tenure-track or quasi-tenure track job titles that split the difference in tolerable ways?<p>I haven&#x27;t researched these well enough to have clear answers. But it&#x27;s worth discussing.