Science is a tough career, beginning with the long road to completing a PhD and continuing with issues of short-term funding cycles with low chances of success, and the reality that a particular area of expertise may limit career progression opportunities to a few institutions scattered across the globe – not exactly family-friendly stuff. It’s little wonder, then, that a survey of professional scientists last year (AS, Jan/Feb 2017, p.41) uncovered concerns about fatigue, remuneration and the impacts of cost-cutting on scientific capability.
Gender equality remains a concern in a sector popularly imagined as the domain of bearded old men in white coats. When a research career is largely measured by scientific papers published, the pause that many female scientists face when commencing a family puts them at a professional disadvantage. Two reports have put this into perspective, one revealing large pay and seniority discrepancies in science and the other a gender bias in the peer review process.
The Workplace Gender Equality Agency – a statutory agency of the Australian government created by the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 – has captured data from 12,000 reporting organisations employing more than four million Australians – 40% of the workforce. An analysis of the 2015–16 data by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (...
