"As one author of the article "Exploring Gender Bias in Six Key Domains of Academic Science: An Adversarial Collaboration," which was featured in your editorial "Women in Science Are Doing All Right" (May 1), I believe yours is an incomplete conclusion to make from our huge study. Yes, women who apply for tenure-track jobs do better than men, and women who apply for grants and submit articles and request letters of recommendation are now doing "all right" -- i.e., as well as men. But women, especially in life sciences, aren't applying to tenure-track jobs in the first place in proportions commensurate with their number of newly minted Ph.Ds.
Some may conclude, "That's their choice."
But the literature says that the major reason women Ph.D.s don't apply to tenure-track jobs is that they look ahead to the four or five years of postdocs required in many fields and the six-year deadline to amass a tenure dossier, compare it to their biological clocks ticking away, and instead choose industry, government or nontenure-track academic jobs.
That is not "all right" if we want our best and brightest, men or women, to be the ones running university research labs and educating the next generation of Ph.D.s.
What I hope readers take away from our article is that knee-jerk cries of sexism or nonsexism need to be avoided.
The situation of women in science academia is complicated -- much better than it was several decades ago, but still hampered by the rigidity of the postdoc and tenure-track systems.
Prof. Shulamit Kahn" [1]
1. Women in Science Aren't Doing 'All Right'. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 04 May 2023: A.16.
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