That women fall off the STEM career ladder more than men do is hardly a secret.
Although the numbers of women starting STEM degrees has risen over the years – particularly in the biological sciences, much less so in engineering or computing – estimates for how long it will take for parity to be reached range from decades to a century or so.
Not exactly encouraging if you believe, as I do, that discovery and innovation are most successful when teams are diverse in constitution. The mounting evidence shows this is as true for research in the lab as for the bottom line of a company with a diverse board.
What goes wrong? First of all, it is clear that the problem does not simply lie with individual women. Nor does the solution. My book Not Just for the Boys: Why we need more women in science, published last month, explores the evidence of how women have fared in the past and what the current state of play looks like. I argue that the problems are largely cultural and systemic and start essentially at birth.
