Poor pay. Long hours. The two-body problem. Family-unfriendly environment. Having to move repeatedly. The grant grind. Sexual harassment. These are some of the reasons that female physicists and astronomers leave academia, according to an ongoing survey launched in early March.
The survey asks why people left, whether they felt gender discrimination, and how happy they were before and after leaving academia. By press time, some 75 women from all rungs on the academic ladder had filled out the survey.
The most interesting trend, says survey author Sherry Towers, a postdoc in particle physics at Fermilab, “is that women who left academia after doing at least one postdoc appear to be far more unhappy with the field upon leaving than women who leave academia immediately after finishing their PhD.” None of the respondents, she adds, said they left academia because they felt they couldn’t match the performance of their male peers....
