PARIS: In a survey covering five west European countries published on Wednesday, two out of three respondents said women don’t have what it takes to become top-tier scientists.

When asked to choose one or more abilities women lack that would prevent them from “becoming a high-level scientist”, 67 per cent of those surveyed ticked off at least one.

A quarter opined that women didn’t have enough self-confidence, while 20 per cent said they lacked “a professional network” or “competitiveness”.

In descending order, other abilities found wanting were ambition, an interest in the subject, perseverance, and a “rational mindset”.

Only 33 per cent of respondents said women had all the requisite qualities to join the ranks of the world’s research-grade physicists, chemists and biologists.

The issue of women in science jumped into the headlines earlier this year when British Nobel laureate Tim Hunt was forced to resign from an honorary university position after remarks he made about collaborating with women.

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls”, the 72-year-old Hunt was reported as saying at a World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea, in what he later described as an apparent attempt to be forthright and entertaining.

“Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”

Elizabeth Blackburn, an American of Australian origin who shared a Nobel in medicine in 2009 for work on chromosomes, said that women are frequently confronted with sexism in the laboratory.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2015

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