Mind the Gap: Studies find continued disparity in tenure rates between men and women with families

“The hardest year of my life” is how Dr. Daniela Kaufer describes her first year as a faculty member in the department of integrative biology at UC Berkeley, and her third year as a mother. Amidst the demands of her job and her family, she says, “I had to give up everything in life that was not essential.” No one ever said that balancing a family and a career in academia would be easy. But achieving that balance is particularly challenging if an academic starts a family early in his or her career, and if that academic is a woman.