Abstract:
As society continues to become more dependent on science and technology, the disparity between men and women in the sciences represents a waste of human capital and is problematic in terms of principles of gender equity. Yet, despite more than three decades of equal opportunity legislation, women remain under-represented in the public sphere and this is particularly evident in the sciences. This paper builds on earlier research and investigates some of the reasons for the continued gender imbalance in the sciences as more and more women eagerly enter the sciences, achieve academic success and enrol as PhD students, but ultimately do not remain in their chosen scientific field. More specifically, we use storying as a way of presenting the doctoral experiences of several women who, despite the unambiguously gender based harassment they experienced during the period of their candidature, have successfully completed their PhDs in the sciences in Australian universities. Their, up-to-now, hidden stories are powerfully told through their own voices and show how, as a direct consequence of their experiences, these women left their chosen research areas because they felt that they had little or no choice. We suggest that their stories are not idiosyncratic but are illustrative of more general and wide-spread societal positions and concerns.