Balancing administrative tasks with research can be tricky, she says. And traditional roles and mores make it difficult for women, particularly, to stake out and protect the time necessary for quality research. We tend to be more invested in meeting obligations imposed by other people. Sitting on search committees, for instance, or screening applicants for graduate programs. Of course, these tasks are also vital to diversifying a department.
Women are much less likely to apply to top graduate programs.
And there's no way to get around the fact that women can get sidetracked by childbearing, which is a hard decision. Still, she says, she' s encouraged to see the numbers of women in science creeping up. It's a huge difference for a young woman, having a female professor. Men get that affirmation all the time. Which is not to say it's easy.