96 CAREER ADVICE FOR LIFE SCIENTISTS
Why Women Leave Science
Caroline M. Kane
University of California
BerkeleyConsider the following statistics from the recent past^1 :- Women were 51% of the U.S. population and 46% of
its labor force, yet they comprised only 22% of the
science and engineering labor force. - Women were 44% of the total number of graduate
students in all the sciences, and 48% of the total
number of graduate students in the biological sci-
ences. - Women earned 40% of the Ph.D.s in the biological
sciences (compared to 33% ten years before). - Women comprised only 24% of the faculty in science
and engineering and only 27% in the biosciences
(while they comprised 44% of the faculty in non-sci-
ence and engineering disciplines). - Of all women who were science and engineering fac-
ulty, 36.5% were at public, 2-year institutions, while
17.5% were at research institutions.
What contributes to the contrast between the nearly
50% representation of women at the undergraduate and
graduate levels to their 26% representation in the life
sciences labor force? Why are women leaving science?
More women than men begin leaving science even
as undergraduates. Many women (and men) enter uni-
versity or college from a supportive high school back-
ground where teachers and advisors have encouraged
the students’ interests and developed the students’
skills in science. Once at the college level, many women
in the sciences feel “pressure, isolation, powerlessness
and the constant need to prove themselves” in the face
of an educational “system designed to induct young
men into an adult male social structure.”^2 That is, the