Nurturing Women Scientists

Nationwide and institution-sized surveys show a leaky pipeline partially patched, but the reservoir still far from full.

When the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) surveyed its postdoctoral fellows in 2003, more than 1,300 of them answered questions ranging from marital and family status to their views on the value of a good salary, flexible hours, and other workplace issues. One result was particularly worrying. While women and men both felt equally well trained for a career in academic science, women were less confident about their chances to land a position, much less achieve tenure.