HOW MOTHERS GET PENALIZED IN THE SCIENTIFIC RACE

ABSTRACT

[...]scientist-mothers are under-represented at the topmost levels of academia in that nation and elsewhere. [...]many scientist-mothers take on more teaching, service or outreach work to build up their CVs, even though they have fewer hours to spare. Aaron Clauset, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder, Allison Morgan, then a doctoral student, and their colleagues documented a publication deficit for scientist-mothers in a 2017-18 survey of more than 3,000 tenure-track faculty members from 450 departments at US and Canadian institutions. The Brazilian group also petitioned for a 'maternity clause' to be added to research grant or fellowship applications "to make the competition more fair for mothers", Staniscuaski says. Since 2018, several Brazilian funding agencies have agreed to the clause, which uses either a longer span of years or a correction factor to equalize the assessment of mothers' productivity with that of their non-parent peers.