Decision or discrimination; the female deficit in the life sciences

There is a well‐known Country song that starts with the simple line ‘Sometimes it's hard to be a woman’. The song's refrain ‘Stand by your man’ is from a pre‐feminist era, but it recurred to me during the recent meeting on the career prospects of women in the life sciences (see this issue of EMBO reports , ). In fact, the problems that women often encounter in their careers are by no means unique to science, and many aspects of these difficulties are shared by young men. But there is a combination of events that makes it necessary to pay particular attention to the plight of women. Data from many sources show that the overall gender distribution in the life sciences starts with equal numbers at the level of the first degree, but that the percentage of women at each of the subsequent rungs in the career ladder diminishes. Eventually, it ends with a situation where only 10% or even less of the most senior positions in the life sciences are held by women. Nobody would argue that women scientists are less capable than …