S. Schmid et al. human capital in science and engineering.” Importantly, ample evidence shows that the slower advancement of women is not due to differences in early career aspirations, mathematical or cognitive abilities, productivity, or other objective performance criteria (c17 Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, 2007). What will have changed to enable this greater diversity and to more equitably harness the talented pool of today’s graduate students? In other words, what are the barriers maintaining the current inequitable situation? Virginia Val- ian, in her book Why So Slow: The Advancement of Women (Valian, 1999), describes two critical factors. The ﬁrst is “gender schemas,” frameworks we all use to differentially perceive the roles and behaviors of men and women in our society. The second is “the accumulation of advantage,” the fact that small differences add up to considerable disparities in advantage and disadvantage over time. The latter point is driven home by a computer simulation in which an equal pool of 500 men and women progress through eight stages of promotion to ﬁll the top ten positions in a hypothetical hierarchical organization. Even if a tiny bias in favor of men— one that accounts for only 1% of the variance— oper- ates at each decision stage, then men ultimately occupy 65% of the top positions (Martell et al., 1996). As Valian puts it, “molehills can become mountains.” Gender schemas exert their inﬂuence largely outside of awareness. Although everyone intends to treat others fairly, gender schemas affect the ways in which we interact with our children, teach our students, mentor and promote our postdocs, hire our colleagues, and assess our peers’ grants and papers. In numerous laboratory studies, when panels or individuals are asked to evaluate identical resumes, career accomplishments, or professional performance, average rat- ings are lower when the subject is identiﬁed as a woman (Handelsman et al., 2005; Valian, 1999). Importantly, this disparity is true regardless of evaluators’ gender. Men and women are equally likely to underrate women. One striking study of review panels of the Swedish Med- ical Research Council found that to receive the same rating in “scientiﬁc competence” women applying for postdoctoral fellowships needed to publish substantially more papers and/or in higher impact journals than their male peers (Wenneras and Wold, 1997). The good news is that judges are responsive to data. Follow-up work demonstrates that since the publication of the landmark Swedish study, there is no longer any disadvantage for women applying to these review panels (Sandstro¨ m and Ha¨ llsten, 2008). In the future, if we do our job right, a career in science will be equally and highly attractive to both girls and boys. Their perception of the stereotypical scientist will be gender-neu- tral. Thanks to a more diverse faculty, a greater appreciation of the value of diversity, and an understanding of how unintentional differences in treatment produce unequal ben- eﬁts, male and female graduate students will be mentored more effectively. Outstanding women and men who dem- onstrate a passion for exploration, and the requisite creativ- ity, intuition, and deductive reasoning skills will be equally encouraged and supported in their pursuit of academic ca- reers. Scientists will work in ﬂuctuating multidisciplinary teams in a spirit of cooperative competition to solve complex problems. Peer review will be rigorous, yet constructive: it will be free of unintended differences in treatment based on sex or race. Institutions will be more ﬂexible in tenure and promotion decisions for both mothers and fathers, realizing that the time they spend raising a family is an important and integral period of a multi-decade productive career in sci- ence. Institutions will provide resources and daycare centers to accommodate parents, so that talented young faculty will be productive and supported. Can we achieve this nirvana? We are optimistic given the enormous progress that has been made in the past decade since the release of a report on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999). For example, at that time there were zero women in the academic administration of science or engineering. To- day the President of MIT is a woman, three of ﬁve current Deans are women, two of six department chairs in science and one in engineering are women; the numbers of women faculty in science and engineering have more than doubled. Having children is now not only discussed openly, but women have actually taken maternity leaves and gotten tenure—for the ﬁrst time in MIT’s history. Finally, there is a daycare center in one of the most prominent and heavily traf- ﬁcked places at MIT. MIT is not alone: other universities have achieved similar results. In some cases these changes were initiated through National Science Foundation ADVANCE grants (Sheridan et al., 2010). In all cases they have required consistent effort and the partnership of women and men fac- ulty with committed administrators, both male and female. To achieve our vision we will need to continue these efforts and ensure that people in leadership positions fulﬁll their mandate to lead. Fortunately, from these positive examples we now know a lot about how to support, recruit, retain, and promote the excellent women researchers who graduate from our Ph.D. programs. 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