Science kind of has a lady problem. While nearly equal numbers of males and females begin the path to a career in Science/Academia, more females drop out as they progress on the trajectory than men. This has been called a “leaky pipeline” – at each progressive career stage, there are fewer women. There are many publications about this and the surrounding causes/effects (I’ve included a non-exhaustive list at the end of the post). One recent “Spotlight” in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution by Cameron et al. caught my eye. In it, they summarize much recent research on the topic – including that women:

– publish fewer papers.

– have lower grant success and receive lower grant amounts.

– get promoted more slowly.

– have lower retention rates.

The reason I’m bringing up this topic at this time is because Cameron et al. raised an issue that really rubbed…