A new book explores how to ¡°expand the family-friendliness of academic science¡±.

Failing Families, Failing Science: Work-Family Conflict in Academic Science is based on a survey of close to 3,500 biologists and physicists in top American universities, followed up by 184 in-depth interviews.

¡°We started out the project interested in women¡¯s experiences, and thought of men as just a comparison group,¡± says Elaine Howard Ecklund, professor of sociology at Rice University, who co-wrote the book with Anne E. Lincoln, assistant professor of sociology at Southern Methodist University. ¡°We weren¡¯t that interested in studying men. And we were completely wrong!¡±

Although she points out that ¡°there is much more of a ¡®motherhood penalty¡¯ than a ¡®fatherhood penalty¡¯¡± for those forging academic careers, today¡¯s ¡°young men are a lot more like women than older men in the importance they place on family life and the tensions they felt in combining it with a research career¡±.

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Unfortunately, the book suggests, academic science (and particularly male-dominated disciplines such as physics) is still in thrall to the image of ¡°the ideal scientist¡± ¨C in essence an utterly single-minded ¡°man with a supportive wife who takes care of all his personal matters¡± ¨C and the notion that, as a source of ¡°ultimate objective truth¡±, science is ¡°the sort of activity that is worth putting everything else on hold to pursue¡±.

Failing Families, Failing Science includes many striking testimonies of what this means for individuals.

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One woman recalls her boss saying to her: ¡°Oh, yes, you¡¯re giving birth next week, and...you know, just don¡¯t do anything, we¡¯ll do everything. But can you write this grant and we¡¯ll submit it in a month?¡± Another reports ¡°hid[ing] the fact that she had chil?dren [during evaluations for promotion] in order to guard against ¡®motherhood discrimination¡¯¡±. A man describes having to choose between picking up a sick daughter and completing a proposal likely to bring in ¡°hundreds of thousands of dollars¡±.

Today, notes Professor Ecklund, ¡°the most successful corporations have day care centres on site and universities are behind the game on that¡±. Given this, as well as generally lower salaries and often ferociously long working hours, it is hardly surprising that ¡°a lot of scientists are leaving academic science for the corporate world¡±.

So what can universities do to combat this loss to scientific research and individual hopes?

One crucial step, according to Professor Ecklund, is to offer their own childcare, since ¡°the life satisfaction of scientists who had day care centres on campus was much better¡±. Also essential was to ensure that ¡°conversations about family life involve both men and women¡±.

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Far too often, she added, ¡°mentoring programmes single out women and put a lot of emphasis on securing female mentors for other women¡±, which can leave those who are?very under-represented?in a field "hesitant to take part¡±. Far better was to make mentoring ¡°more universal¡± and to acknowledge that ¡°cross-gender mentoring can work perfectly well¡±.

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com

Elaine Howard Ecklund and Anne E. Lincoln¡¯s Failing Families, Failing Science: Work-Family Conflict in Academic Science was recently published by New York-University Press.