I don't dispute the statistics, just the premise. Women: if you want to work you butt off, expected to put in outrageous hours and have no social life, for financial rewards that don't remotely compare to the amount of time and lost earnings you put into your education, this is the career for you!

If you want to write grant proposals, 90% of which will be rejected, then observe the government hand AIG $180 billion, equal to several years of combined NSF, NIH and NASA budgets, go for it.

If you want to become learned in the most arcane knowledge, no good for conversation with non-scientists, but then have the work you actually do decided for you by your corporation's marketing department and MBAs, consider science.

If you want your brain to nearly explode as you read know-it-all essays by Fareed Zakaria or Thomas Friedman advocating 100% open borders for any foreign PhD to come here and compete for you with jobs, as if there weren't enough talent here already, consider science.

Why do so many people who (wisely) chose non-scientific careers for themselves get their underwear in a bunch about gender/race ratios in science? Except for a rare few big-shots who get entrenched in the old-boy network (whether male or female), the prestige of being a scientist, in the REAL WORLD, is virtually nil.

Go find another issue to wring your hands about. I am advising my daughter she'd have to have rocks in her head to do this.

I agree with lolson. My experience is consistent with his/her negative opinion of a scientific career. After getting a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at MIT (one of the top programs in the field) I was unable to find a job in science that would pay enough to support my family. I found better work as an electrical engineer despite having no degree in that field. I consider myself fortunate to still be employed in engineering, despite the fact that many US firms have been off-shoring their engineering jobs to India and China as fast as they can. I wouldn't recommend a career in engineering to boys or girls either for this reason.

Please. Of course a scientific career is difficult and fraught with occasional disappointment. But if you're suggesting that we advise kids to take the minimum-effort path, or that income and social prestige should be the dominant factors in choosing a career, you're suggesting we do them a great disservice.

"Occasional disappoinment"? Do you have any idea what you are talking about? I'm talking 25 years of experience here, foolishly hoping things will someday get better.

Please go philosophize to the dozens of friends (women and men) that I've seen laid off. You can't do much science if you're unemployed. Preach to the assistant professors denied tenure, not for lack of publications, or lack of quality research, or failing to teach; it's solely because they couldn't master grantsmanship fast enough, or weren't in an area deemed important by the powers-that-be at the funding agencies. Tell it to the many who disgustedly left science to get law or business degrees.

Easy to tap dance around the issue of income if, unlike that fellow wavevector, you didn't have to leave your chosen field in order to feed your family. Good grief, the guy holds a science PhD from MIT. That is one of the big-pedigree schools. What does he have to do in order to get a decent job? But, sad to say, his story matches my real-world observation.

My reason for bringing up perceptions of prestige is because I think it ties into the desire to conduct social engineering in science. No one cares much about gender equality in janitorial work or farm labor. Why is that? Oh, and by the way: how many people pushing kids into science fail to directly or indirectly mention the prestige involved?

The thing is, it's not just science careers that lead to these problems. I know many archaeologists, geologists and biologists (I know they're science but I tend to lump them together with other "permitting" type jobs), historians, geographers, etc. who have all gone through identical hardships as you. There are many fields out there which are cut throat competitive in terms of funding, graduate school, grants, publications, etc. but with pay that's disproportionately low compared to MBA or marketing.

I've been in the environmental permitting field for two decades and see the exact same thing. Supposedly our nation values its environment, it's history, it's archaeology, etc. but when it comes to preserving anything or temporarily holding up a project that has clearly disastrous adverse effects, then nobody gives a cr*p. It doesn't matter if they're building a Wal Mart parking lot over a large prehistoric cemetery or Civil War battlefield, we're the bad guys and then are are protests and letters to the editor that we don't want locals to have jobs.

My background is primarily in Biology and Geography, both of which require graduate degrees to get anywhere and where publications are incredibly important even in the private sector. It's all a cut throat battle for grant money, publications, contracts, etc. You may do the best job in the world but all the clients care about is going with the lowest bidder and really doesn't matter since regulatory agencies don't give a crap in regards to how shoddy their work/reports are.

The more I think about it, every career field is going to have the competition, the politics, general BS, lots of required education/publications, and there really isn't anywhere to go to get away from it. I guess that's just life.

Fine: you can find dozens of laid-off friends or failed assistant professors. I can find dozens of people who thoroughly enjoy their academic careers. Does that mean I win? (Of course not.) Yes, some people fail who shouldn't. And yes, unfortunately, there's some game-playing associated with the academic enterprise. But that's life, and the sciences are hardly unique in that regard. Do you really intend to tell someone that, since the scientific world doles out success on arbitrary criteria, they should go into business (!) instead?

Regarding women in science: people care about gender equality in science because it's a competitive field that's traditionally male-dominated. It may not be socially prestigious in the traditional sense--it won't help you get laid, and probably it won't even impress the in-laws like a law degree would--but it IS a highly competitive field, and there's legitimate worry that (a) women get the short shrift, and (b) women feel discouraged to even enter the field. Call me idealistic or even naive; I don't care. But I do think there's innate value in scientific training, and taking steps to increase women's/minorities's access to that training seems perfectly important to me.

"-it won't help you get laid,"

just for the record, i got laid plenty. got devirginated at age 16, and have never been single for longer than a month since. boys seems to like (semi)-rational women with a 0.70 hip to waist ratio. i've been dating my current boy for about 5 years (who i met in a physics class, no less) and we are planning on a family.

I tend to doubt your scientific credentials when you can't even get a ratio right.

what's wrong with 0.7? it's healthy according to my medical doctor.

my science credentials are a BA and PhD in chemistry. i'm currently doing a postdoc in bioanalytical chemistry and neural imaging.

what are yours?

I think what's wrong was you listed a hip waist ratio of .70 (which would indicate a very rotund and not very heart healthy ratio if hips divided by waist was .70) when presumably you meant your ratio is actually waist/hip.

FWIW, I just assumed it was a mental typo.

you're correct, I reversed it--- still really jetlagged, sorry...