Dr Tennie Videler, Co-chair of Cambridge Association for Women in Science and Engineering
Women are under-represented in employment in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM), both inside and outside academia. Even in the biosciences, where women make up over half of the undergraduates, women still account for only 15% of professors. In all STEMM subjects, qualified women are not retained in similar proportions to men with the result that women are severely under-represented in senior positions. For example, among science, engineering and technology (SET) academic faculty in the US in 2003, women comprised 18 to 45 % of assistant professors (26% lecturers and 18% senior researchers/lecturers in the UK in 07/08) and 6 to 29 % of associate and full professors (9% in the UK in 07/08). Not just in academia, but in general SET occupations, fewer women with undergraduate SET qualifications enter SET professional or associate professional occupations. Possible reasons for this are multi-faceted, not easy to solve, but worth exploring:
