Of the participants to the NASA Space Radiation Biology Summer School in Brookhaven (NY), last month, 12 out of 15 were ladies. This school is conceived for PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, so the questions arises: given that most Faculty members are male, where do all these (bright) women go? Or, put differently, at what stage of their careers do they encounter a glass ceiling?
For the case of the United States, one cannot avoid looking in to the AWIS resources to try and answer these questions. A search on the Nature Network for ‘Glass Ceiling’ returns this and the Guardian science weekly podcast asks one of the recipients of the L’Oreal awards what impact these awards have on the careers of women in Science.
What about the Bel Paese, a country that so heavily relies on the institution called family?
As Rossella Palomba1 puts it, from a study on the staff at the Italian CNR, The National Resourch Council:
In the absence of gender discrimination in career trajectories, and assuming that the quality of scientific work done by women is comparable to that of men, the increase in the female presence at the entry level should result in an increasing female share in the top scientific grades.
In order words, wait long enough and you’ll see many more female faculties, rectors, and so forth. But after factoring in all parameters, Palomba reports:
...men are twice as likely as women to become associate professors and have a 30% better chance of becoming full professors.
and the only reason left is: gender. By not adjusting to the reality of current times, my country is wasting a huge resource. And they are often so much better than the blokes.
1 Women in Scientific Careers: Unleashing the Potential By Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Oecd, pp 133-137, ISBN 9264025375