As an undergraduate, Elodie Pastural attended Paris’ École Polytechnique, the most prestigious science and engineering school in France. Pastural was one of only 8% of women at the military academy, where she won a coveted scientific prize. She later served a year in the armed services. After receiving her Ph.D. in human genetics from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Pastural seemed well on her way to a promising career. But she decided instead to take time off to rear two young children.

The decision was not easy—but neither were the circumstances. She could not find child care in Paris, and her husband, a businessman, was offered a lucrative position in the French countryside—far from any science hubs. The family relocated.

After four years away from the bench, Pastural was ready to return to science. But much to her chagrin, she found that she was not competitive for most postdoctoral fellowships, and many others were closed to her, with requirements that she be a recent graduate or of a certain age.

Fortunately, she found a lifeline. She applied for and received a ‘restart’ grant from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), which supports scientists who take time off to rear a family. “The EMBO fellowship was the only one adapted to me,” Pastural says. This January, she plans to begin studying cell signaling at the Institut de Biologie et Chimie des Protéines in Lyon.

Lodged on the lower rungs
The EMBO restart grants are just one of a handful of fellowships in Europe and the US intended to kick-start a scientific career after a break. Others include the UK’s Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships, the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Marie Heim- Vögtlin grants, and ADVANCE fellowships from the US National Science Foundation. Most are open to men as well as women, although few men apply. Out of a total of 50 applicants for the EMBO restart program in the last two years, only one was male.

The fellowships aim to patch what’s been called the ‘leaky pipeline’ for women in science. According to a European Commission report in 2000, nearly half of graduate students in the life sciences are women, but few make it to the top. Women occupy fewer than 10% of top positions—equivalent to a full professorship—in the medical and natural sciences. Another comprehensive European report, “She Figures 2003,” and similar analyses in the US show the same process of attrition. The studies debunk one popular explanation for such attrition— they found that the gender gap in the top echelons is not just a result of fewer women entering the field.

Countries spend enormous resources training scientists, notes Nicole Dewandre, head of the European Commission’s women and science unit. When women drop out, it is a “tremendous waste” of those resources, Dewandre says. “It’s not fair if women train as scientists and then cannot get up the ladder.” At the current pace, European women are not expected to reach parity with men in academic science positions until 2050, adds Gerlind Wallon, program manager for the EMBO restart grants.

Grants like those from EMBO are crucial in retaining women in science, but most experts say they barely make a dent in the widespread institutional and cultural barriers that strand womenon the lower rungs, or cause them to abandon scientific careers altogether. “It would be preposterous to say that our restart fellowships are going to change things in a big way,” says Wallon.

Family first—and other myths
Women scientists are thought to drop out of science for two main reasons. First, many women, like Pastural, choose family over career when they find it difficult to juggle both. The second is the proverbial glass ceiling —an institutional matter that raises the thorny issue of discrimination.

Science can be notoriously unfriendly to families. The swift pace of scientific progress discourages absences, the rush to tenure overlaps with child-rearing years, and moving from a country or institution—sometimes necessary to boost a career—can break up a family. In many European countries, such as Germany and Austria, child care is expensive and difficult to find. Both men and women can find themselves beleaguered.

Barbara Belletti, an Italian scientist, found herself temporarily overwhelmed after the birth of her second child while she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Kimmel Cancer Institute in Philadelphia. Belletti says she wanted to spend time with her new baby, but was also determined to stay in science. “I’m quite stubborn and I like my work,” she says.

After eight months at home, Belletti won an EMBO restart fellowship to work at Italy’s National Cancer Institute in Aviano, where her husband has a permanent scientific position. Luckily, she found daycare, a precious commodity in Italy.

One solution often touted as key to keeping more women in the workforce is establishing family-friendly policies. At the Kimmel Institute, for instance, parents can walk down the hall to visit their children at the daycare facility. But good child-care options don’t necessarily translate into greater success for women.

“In the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, where there is very good child care, you still have similar patterns of women not getting into high-level positions,” says Judith Glover, professor of employment studies at the University of Surrey, Roehampton. In fact, argues Glover, countries allowing women to take up to three years off for each child might hinder the jump back into science.

Studies suggest that, like Belletti, as many as 50% of women scientists marry other scientists. When the pair’s careers are at odds, the husband’s career often comes first, surveys report ( h t t p : / / w w w . h a v e r f o r d . e d u / econ/faculty/preston_research.html).

Belletti says that in her family, she does most of the household and child-care work because her husband is trying to gain a foothold as a new professor. She’s not alone: several surveys show that like their counterparts in other professions, women scientists often shoulder more of the burden of childcare and household work.

Despite that, numerous studies show that female scientists with children are just as productive—whether in publishing papers, gaining grants or other criteria—as their childless female peers (N. Engl. J. Med. 335, 1282–1290; 1996 and Ann. Intern. Med. 129, 532–538; 1998). Still, if men shouldered more domestic tasks, Belletti says, “women would have more time for their science.”