Journal of Feminist Family Therapy

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Challenges to the Choice Discourse: Women’s

Views of Their Family and Academic-Science
Career Options and Constraints

S. S. Canetto, C. D. Trott, E. M. Winterrowd, D. Haruyama & A. Johnson

To cite this article: S. S. Canetto, C. D. Trott, E. M. Winterrowd, D. Haruyama & A. Johnson

(2017) Challenges to the Choice Discourse: Women’s Views of Their Family and Academic-
Science Career Options and Constraints, Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 29:1-2, 4-27, DOI:
10.1080/08952833.2016.1273174

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JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY
2017, VOL. 29, NOS. 1–2, 4–27
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2016.1273174

Challenges to the Choice Discourse: Women’s Views of

Their Family and Academic-Science Career Options and
Constraints
S. S. Canettoa, C. D. Trotta, E. M. Winterrowdb, D. Haruyamaa, and A. Johnsona
a
Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA; bDepartment of
Psychology and Neuroscience, Regis University, Denver, Colorado, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Women are underrepresented as tenure-stream faculty in academia; career; family;
U.S. academia, particularly in science fields, despite the growth science; women
of women among doctorate holders. The decision to pursue an
academic career matures during the graduate-school years.
What are female science graduate students’ views of an aca-
demic career, and what values and priorities influence their
career intentions and choices? Twenty-five women in a
U.S. science graduate program were interviewed about these
matters. A dominant theme in these interviews was that an
academic career would best fulfill their science interests and
aspirations. However, an academic career was viewed as requir-
ing, of them as women, giving up family life—mainly due to the
belief that household and family work are women’s responsibil-
ities as well as the expectation that science requires relentless
focus. Frustration about the lack of options, for women, to
pursue their dream of being a scientist while having a family
was another recurrent theme. These findings, together with
those of other studies, suggest that it is not by choice, but
because of gender ideologies and practices about work and
family at the disadvantage of women, that women give up on
academic-science careers.

Introduction
In 2014, women constituted 40% of tenure-stream faculty in colleges and
universities in the United States (American Association of University
Professors [AAUP], 2014), though women have been earning about half of
doctorate degrees since at least 2004 (NSF, 2016). The higher the academic
rank, the fewer the women—a phenomenon that has been called “the leaky
pipeline” (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010). According to a 2013–2014 AAUP
survey of 1,159 U.S. institutions of higher learning, women represented 51%
of assistant professors, 44% of associate professors, and 29% of full professors
(AAUP, 2014). For historical context, it is important to remember that
U.S. women were formally and/or informally barred from higher education

CONTACT Silvia Sara Canetto silvia.canetto@colostate.edu Department of Psychology, Colorado State

University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 5

until the 1800s. Only in 1833 did a male-only institution, Ohio’s Oberlin
College, open to female students. Access to doctoral education, the typical
credential for being a faculty in academia, was not accessible to U.S. women
until around 1870 (Solomon, 1985).
Women’s representation among doctorate earners and academic faculty
varies by field. In the United States, female faculty and doctorate holders are
best represented in education, health, and humanities departments, and least
represented in agriculture, business, computer science, fine arts, economics,
engineering, geoscience, music theory and composition, philosophy, physics,
and physical-sciences departments (American Academy of Arts & Sciences
[AAAS], 2016; Ceci, Ginther, Kahn, & Williams, 2014; NSF, 2016). For
example, between 2004 and 2014 women earned fewer than 23% of docto-
rates in physics and computer science (NSF, 2016). A common denominator
across many disciplines where there are few women among doctorate holders
and faculty is that they are math-intensive. However, women are also a
minority among doctorate holders and faculty in some non-math-intensive
disciplines (Ceci et al., 2014). For example, in 2014, women earned only 31%
of doctorates in philosophy (AAAS, 2016).
There is also significant variability in women’s participation in academia,
as doctorate earners and faculty, by country. Most importantly, there are
country-specific patterns of female participation in academia by field
(Scientific American, 2014). Women may be a minority among doctorate
earners or faculty in a field in one country, but the majority in the same field
in another country. For example, in 2010, only 26% of math and computer
science doctorates were awarded to women in the United States. By contrast,
in the same year, the proportion of math and computer science doctorates
awarded to women was 60% in Lithuania and in Saudi Arabia, and 12% in
Switzerland (Scientific American, 2014).
The variability in women’s participation in academia by field, within and
across countries, and over time, are evidence of the influence of cultural
factors. This is a critical fact to consider when interpreting the evidence, in
order to avoid misattributing women’s underrepresentation in a discipline, for
example, in computer science in the United States, as a sign of women’s
“natural” disinterest in that discipline, or women’s “innate” lack of talent for it.
In the United States, significant attention has been given to women’s
underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM) fields. This attention is likely due to the importance of STEM fields
for economic development and national security, as well as the low participa-
tion in STEM fields by both women and men in the United States, relative to
other industrialized countries (Byars-Winston & Canetto, 2011). Once again,
it is important to note that U.S. women’s underparticipation is not uniform
across STEM disciplines. For example, in 2014, U.S. women represented a
much larger percentage of the faculty in the biological/life sciences (38%)
6 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

than in engineering (16%). Within disciplines, there is also variability. For

example, in engineering, women’s lowest presence among doctorate holders
was in mechanical engineering (15%), and their highest presence was in
industrial engineering (31%; NSF, 2016).
In this article, the authors report on the findings of a study about the views
of an academic career by women in atmospheric sciences’ (ATS) graduate
studies in the United States. ATS is an interesting case with regard to
women’s representation among its doctorates, and as faculty in academia.
While there has been important growth in female ATS-doctorate holders, the
percentage of female faculty in ATS departments has remained low. In the
United States, women started earning 25% of ATS doctorates in 2002. The
proportion of ATS doctorates awarded to women reached a peak of 38% in
2007, declined to 20% in 2008, and rose again to 33% in 2014 (Charlevoix,
2010; NSF, 2016). With regard to female faculty, slow growth, if not inertia
(Marschke, Laursen, Nielsen, & Rankin, 2007), seems to be the pattern in
ATS. For example, a study found that in 2009, women represented 17% of
U.S. ATS tenure-stream faculty at doctorate-granting universities (MacPhee
& Canetto, 2015).
The graduate-school years are a critical stage for an academic career. It is
typically during graduate school that career paths are evaluated, and commit-
ments are made to types of training and to family roles, such that options for an
academic career expand or shrink as a result (Mason, Wolfinger, & Goulden,
2013). The professional (e.g., pursuing a post-doctoral scholar position) and
personal (e.g., having children) choices made in graduate school may be more
impactful on an academic career in ATS than a career, say, in political sciences,
given the greater importance, in ATS, of the sustained practice with
grant funding application that is facilitated by an uninterrupted research career
path.
There are indications, from survey studies conducted across STEM fields,
that STEM women’s disinclination for an academic career matures during
the graduate school and post-doctoral years. A survey of scientists (684
graduate students, 504 postdoctoral scholars, and 1,315 faculty) in the top
20 doctoral programs in astronomy, physics, and biology at research uni-
versities found that four times as many female as male graduate students
(and nearly twice as many female as male post-doctoral scholars) expressed
concern that an academic-science career would keep them from having a
family. In this study, female post-doctoral scholars were also significantly less
likely than male post-doctoral scholars to consider a tenure-track position at
a research university (69% of women vs. 84% of men; Ecklund & Lincoln,
2011). Similarly, a Web-based survey of more than 1,300 biological-sciences
post-doctoral scholars at the National Institutes of Health showed that
women’s most common reasons for not pursuing a principal-investigator
position and an academic career were concerns about time for family. To
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 7

start with, more than 21% of women, but only 7% of men, said that plans to
have children, or to have more children, were extremely important in plan-
ning their career. The demanding schedule of an academic research-career
was a factor that women weighted significantly more heavily than men,
particularly married women (46%), with no difference between married
and single men on the importance of this issue (22% for both). Concerns
about part-time options, about the travel requirements of an academic career,
and about child care, were other issues women weighted significantly more
than men in planning their career. Finally, women more than men were
concerned about finding a spousal job in the same location, with a signifi-
cantly higher percentage of heterosexually-married women than heterosexu-
ally-married men stating that they would make changes in their career to
accommodate their spouse’s jobs (Martinez et al., 2012).
With regard to the reasons for specific science-career intentions, an inter-
view study of female graduate students in chemistry found that these stu-
dents linked their disinclination for an academic career to their view that
such a career is all consuming and solitary, and incompatible with having a
family life. Female chemistry students also said that they did not identify with
their female chemistry professors because they believed that these professors
had renounced a personal life (Newsome, 2008). Another interview study of
19 female and nine male graduate students in STEM, including three women
in the geosciences, generated the metaphor of the glass obstacle course to
describe the ideological and structural constraints experienced by women in
STEM academia. With regard to career and family, a main concern for the
female graduate students interviewed in this study was that of competing
clocks, the tenure and the biological. According to the authors of the study,
“the dedication … [female students] saw as required to achieve tenure” led
many to express hesitation about an academic career (p. 585). In fact,
“several joked that the only way a woman could have a child and achieve
tenure simultaneously was to have a ‘stay-at-home husband’ or ‘a wife’” (De
Welde & Laursen, 2011, pp. 585–586). Finally, in an interview study, women
in an astronomy doctoral program spoke of their hesitancy at pursuing a
research-professor career because of family concerns. The five women who
participated in this study viewed the science professoriate as requiring single-
minded devotion, and therefore, as incompatible, for a woman, with having a
family. They said that academia seemed designed around the lives of men
who have an at-home wife who takes care of all of their family and personal
needs, and who is willing to move wherever he wants to go to advance his
academic career (Barthelemy, McCormick, & Henderson, 2015).
These findings about female STEM graduate students’ views of an aca-
demic career are congruent with the findings of studies of women in STEM
professions (for reviews, see Goulden, Mason, & Frasch, 2011; Hill et al.,
2010), as well as the findings of studies about women on various disciplines’
8 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

academic paths (e.g., van Anders, 2004; Wolfinger, Mason, & Goulden,
2009), as well as women in other “fast track,” prestigious professions (e.g.,
Stone & Lovejoy, 2004). A theme in these studies is that family formation—
primarily heterosexual marriage and children—accounts for the greatest loss
of women from these professions.
Feminist family theory and research have made critical contributions to
making visible the gender ideologies, practices, and systems responsible for
women’s work and family tensions (e.g., Baker, 2008, 2010). However,
feminist perspectives have not consistently informed the research on
women in STEM in general, and the research on women in STEM academia
specifically (for examples of exceptions, see Bailyn, 2003; Barthelemy et al.,
2015; Canetto, Trott, Thomas, & Wynstra, 2012; De Welde & Laursen, 2011;
Duberley & Cohen, 2009; Goulden et al., 2011; Nielsen, Marschke, Sheff, &
Ranking, 2005). This has had negative implications for the theory and
recommendations that much of the research on women in STEM has gen-
erated—for example, its disproportionate attention to individual factors and
solutions.
Research on graduate students’ career intentions and behavior in ATS
specifically has been limited. The available studies revealed that, upon com-
pletion of the doctorate, women are significantly less likely than men to take
a position in academia (MacPhee & Canetto, 2015; Tucker, Ginther, &
Winkler, 2009; Winkler, Tucker, & Smith, 1996). With regard to graduate
school experiences, a retrospective study of 316 Canadian and U.S. female
geoscientists (who include atmospheric scientists) found that 45% reported
that graduate school had a negative impact on their family life. Thirty-one
percent also recalled being concerned about job prospects while in graduate
school, and 12% felt that job opportunities were especially poor for women
(Larocque, 1995). Finally, with regard to career-choice explanations, an
interview study of 10 ATS female and male graduate students’ career motives,
goals, and challenges revealed that family goals and responsibilities were
perceived by women, but not by men, as a major career challenge. A theme
for the women in this study was that they would put their male partner’s
occupational needs and goals first, and that doing otherwise would be selfish.
None of the men mentioned their female partners’ career wishes or goals as a
challenge to their own career development or as something to consider in
career planning, even though three out of the four men interviewed were in a
committed relationship, and one had children (Canetto et al., 2012).

The current study

The present study built on prior research about women’s career motives,
goals, and challenges in STEM professions (e.g., Goulden et al., 2011; Hill
et al., 2010) and in other professions (e.g., Stone & Lovejoy, 2004). It aimed at
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 9

expanding on a previous study of ATS graduate students suggesting that ATS

female and male students have different career motives, goals, and challenges
(Canetto et al., 2012). In the current interview study, the focus was on the
perspectives about an academic career of female ATS graduate students. The
research questions were: (1) What are female graduate students’ views of a
science academic career? and (2) What values and priorities do they articu-
late as influences to their career intentions and choices? Interviews were the
method of choice to allow for flexibility in measurement, and specifically, for
the possibility of unexpected content to emerge from the data collection,
given the limited research on ATS graduate students. The single discipline
focus of this study was in recognition of the variability in women’s repre-
sentation across STEM fields, and therefore, potentially, in their views and
experiences, depending on the field.
Prior studies of female STEM graduate students have suggested that family
concerns are a deterrent to an academic career (Barthelemy et al., 2015;
Canetto et al., 2012; De Welde & Laursen, 2011; Ecklund & Lincoln, 2011;
Goulden et al., 2011; Newsome, 2008). More broadly, the dominant popular
narrative about professional women in the United States is that women opt
out of high-power careers when motherhood “calls,” as if in response to a
maternal imperative, because of an inexorable longing for “traditional”
values, or because of their personal preference for family over work (e.g.,
Slaughter, 2012; for critiques of the opt-out-of-career discourse, see Baker,
2008; Beddoes & Pawley, 2014; Hosoi & Canetto, 2009; Stone & Lovejoy,
2004; Williams, Manvell, & Bornstein, 2006). Therefore, in this study, the
authors paid special attention to how ATS female graduate students framed
work and family issues—what they said about their career and family plans,
how they came to those plans, and why.

Method
Participants
Twenty-five female graduate students (14 master’s-level and 11 doctoral-
level) between the ages of 22 and 30 (Mage = 25.13) participated in this
study. All were enrolled in an ATS graduate program at a large state
university in the Western region of the U.S. Most (n = 21; 84%) identified
as European American. The ethnic background of the other participants is
not reported here to preserve confidentiality. For privacy reasons, we delib-
erately did not ask about sexual orientation. However, directly or indirectly,
all but one of the women interviewed referred to heterosexual relationships.
Seven were married to men, 11 were in a committed heterosexual relation-
ship, one was in a committed same-sex relationship, and six were single.
None had children.
10 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

During the 5 years of the study, the ATS department from which the
sample was drawn had 83 to 95 graduate students. The percentage of female
graduate students in the department was fairly constant across the 5 years,
ranging from 38% to 42%. A smaller percentage of women graduated from
the program with a doctoral degree (31%) than with a master’s degree (55%)
during the study period. Finally, during the 5 years of the study, there were
11 to 14 tenure-stream faculty in the department. The percentage of tenure-
stream female faculty varied from a low of 8% (one woman out of 12 faculty)
to a high of 23% (three women out of 13 faculty).

Procedure
Participants were recruited via e-mail invitation, in-class announcements by
faculty, and peer referrals. The study was described to potential participants
as an exploration of their aspirations, expectations, challenges, and resources
as graduate students in a science field. Upon consenting for participation, the
female graduate students were sent a demographic and educational-
background questionnaire, which they were asked to complete and bring to
the interview meeting. Semi-structured interviews lasting 60–90 minutes
were conducted by trained, female psychology researchers, including
the second author. All interviews took place in a private room on campus.
The respondents were given a small compensation ($12) for their participa-
tion in the study. These procedures were approved by the institutional review
board of the university where the study took place.

Measures
The questionnaire
The questionnaire gathered information about the participants’ demographic
profile, including their age, ethnicity, nationality, relationship status, and
number of children. The questionnaire also included items about the respon-
dents’ educational background and career plans.

The interview
Each interview began with a grand tour question (Fetterman, 1989): “What are
the events in your life that led you to where you are now in your education and
career path?” This question was designed to gain the participant’s perspective
on factors impacting their interest and persistence in ATS. More specific
questions about educational and career intentions and goals, as well as sup-
ports and challenges in pursuing ATS graduate studies and various careers,
followed. Additional questions were asked to solicit the values and priorities
that motivated the respondents’ educational and career intentions and plans.
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 11

Data analysis
The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and edited for
accuracy. Interview analysis was based on an interpretative phenomenologi-
cal approach (IPA; Smith, 2004). An all-female team of psychology research-
ers was involved in a multi-phase process of interview coding. Consistent
with the guidelines developed by Quinn and Clare (2008), all team members
(1) identified and named textual segments of interest, using original partici-
pant’s language as labels, wherever possible; (2) organized emerging themes
into hierarchical categories; and (3) created super themes based on synthesis
and integration of emerging themes.
IPA relies on a constant comparative approach. In this study, this approach
was achieved by conducting the first two phases of analysis for each interview
prior to reviewing the next interview. In doing so, all higher-order categories
were applied to subsequent interviews for inclusion and comparison. Novel
categories were added to the coding structure until no new categories emerged,
indicating that saturation had been reached. After the coding structure was
finalized, the interviews were re-coded according to the final coding structure.
Field notes about the interviews (e.g., perceptions of rapport) were also logged
and considered in the analyses (Quinn & Clare, 2008).
The themes reported in this article are the ones that address this study’s
research questions, that is, participants’ views of an ATS academic career,
and the values and priorities that influenced their career intentions and
choices. Whenever relevant, the themes reported in this study are further
articulated by participants’ graduate-school stage (master’s vs. doctoral) and
relationship status (single and unattached; single and attached; married).

Trustworthiness
To establish trustworthiness, all interviews were independently coded by at
least three female researchers trained in qualitative analysis. Individual codes
were discussed and revised in coding meetings, with final codes achieved via
a discussion process. An outside auditor provided feedback on coding parsi-
mony, simplicity, and clarity (Brantlinger, Jimenez, Klingner, Pugach, &
Richardson, 2005; Creswell, 1998; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In order to foster
researcher’s reflexivity, all research team members (i.e., interviewers and
coders) wrote about and discussed with the team their personal experience
with, and attitudes about, women in science, to make explicit personal
frameworks that might impact their interview patterns and/or their coding
of the interviews (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
12 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

Results
Theme descriptions and quotations from the interviews with the 25 female
ATS graduate students regarding their perceptions of an academic career, as
well as the values and priorities influencing their career intentions and plans,
are provided below. Themes for the whole sample are reported, along with
information about participants’ relationship status (single and unattached;
single and attached; married) and educational-attainment status (master’s vs.
doctoral level). Statements about the commonality of a theme are for descrip-
tive purposes, and should be interpreted accordingly.

What do you think about an academic career?

An academic career was viewed as the best route to becoming a successful
scientist but also as incompatible with raising a family
A dominant theme in the interviews with the female graduate students was that an
academic career was the best route to pursue their scientific interests, fulfill the
promise of their training, and become a leader in science. Directly or indirectly,
women across relationship and graduate-school status expressed a desire “to do it
all,” that is, to have a science career and a family. However, most women also
viewed academic-science careers as incompatible with having a family—which
they usually defined as raising children, “taking care” of their husband, as they put
it, and managing a household. Specifically, they thought that, for women, an
academic career required sacrificing family life. For many female students in this
study, this was a reason why they did not intend to pursue an academic career.
Here is an example of a statement about the wish to have it all:
In my perfect world, I would love to be able to have kids, a husband, a family, an
adventure, and a [faculty] job. (28-year-old married master’s student)

But, as one participant noted, the world is not perfect, and academic-science
demands can start conflicting with family goals right from the beginning of a
woman’s career:
If I am starting a faculty job when I start having kids, I think time will be majorly
loaded, so that’s something I think about and worry about kind of a lot. (27-year-
old married doctoral student)

Similarly, another woman stated:

To be a professor as a woman seems really hard because you’re trying to get tenure
at the same time that you want to have kids … so that’s been so discouraging … I
don’t think I will become a professor. (27-year-old married doctoral student)

On the other hand, a woman who was considering having children while
in graduate school expressed the belief that such a decision would slow down
her career, but not significantly:
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 13

[Having children] will definitely set [earning the doctorate] back a little bit . . . but I think
it’s possible because I can work from home. (28-year-old married doctoral student)

Of note, many female graduate students believed that their family and career
goals would likely be in conflict no matter what career they chose:

[Having children is] certainly going to slow down whatever professional career I
have … because you don’t want to be too stressed while you’re pregnant . . . or even
when you come home to toddlers or whatever, you don’t want to come home all
stressed and mad; and you don’t want to be on travel so that you never see them.
(25-year-old married doctoral student)
Down the line you have your marriage, you have your husband to take care of, you have
your kids … and now you have to be the parent, you have to be the adult. So, I think
balancing that type of work and play is a whole different level than the work and play I’m
trying to balance now [in graduate school]. (23-year-old single master’s student)

A subtheme was that the female students perceived non-academic career

paths to allow women more flexibility with regard to “life outside of acade-
mia,” as a 25-year-old single doctoral student put it. However, the female
students in this study also acknowledged that not pursuing an academic
career involved sacrificing their dream of becoming a famous scientist. For
example, the same 25-year-old doctoral student said that:

[Women in non-academic careers] are not … becoming … amazing scientists.

And in my mind, sometimes I feel like you have to choose … ‘I’m either going to
be this scientist who’s … well-known for all of their science, and I’m going to
publish a lot.’ Or, ‘I’m going to have my family be more important, and I’m going
to do okay in science, but I’m going to be happy with … my personal life.’ … I
don’t have to choose right now, but I do think that having to choose one day is
going to be a huge problem. (25-year-old single doctoral student)

Another student described her science career and family dilemma this way:

I think what’s hard is [that] in order to do anything … big … in this field, like be
in the top of your field, you have to have your Ph.D. You have to have a good post-
doc. You have to have … gotten your tenure somewhere. … But … the biological
clock is … the big thing, I think, that makes women kind of frustrated and not—
maybe not as successful as men. It’s because … you want to have kids and … that
takes time away. … [ATS] is a pretty time-intensive field. … You have field
projects that can last up to two months, and you can’t just like get pregnant and
leave for two months. … That doesn’t work out right, so … I think that’s probably
a huge thing. (22-year-old single master’s student)

The female students in this study speculated that anticipated or experi-

enced work-family conflict contribute to women withdrawing from the
training necessary for an academic career, starting with not completing the
doctorate, such that few women are eventually eligible to apply for ATS
academic positions:
14 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

I think the whole ‘having a family’ thing starts to pull women away from their
careers because I don’t think atmospheric science as a career has found a way to
really work with women and family that well. … I’m hoping things will start to
change, but it’s a little frustrating. … But the thing that’s kind of interesting …
[is] that many [women] get master’s and … start leaving. … Fewer go on for
their Ph.D. … I think the percentage of women actually decreases … even more
for post-docs; and by the time you get to faculty positions, there are not very
many women who are applying. (27-year-old married doctoral student)

This is how this student summarized the work-family challenges of women

in ATS:
I think … it’s harder for … [women in ATS] to have children … there’s a lot of
men in our department who have had kids. And it’s different for the … women …
because they have to take off from work [when they are a parent]. (26-year-old
single master’s student)

What values and priorities impact your career choice?

A dominant value and priority in career choice was having time for parenting
A theme in career-choice values and priorities for the female students in this
study was having time for parenting. Some students discussed aiming for career
paths (e.g., in consulting; working from home; flexible-hour research positions)
that they perceived as affording them time with their children, even if it meant
that they would have to renounce becoming a leader in science. For example, the
following three women’s comments highlight the importance of flexible work
hours to be able to invest in the needs of the children they wished to have.
If I went into a research field, especially if I went into the government sector, I’ve
heard really good things about women working in labs—that they’re really accom-
modating in terms of … needing time for family. (26-year-old single doctoral student)

I want to be able to be around as much as possible [for my children], so times

when I can work from home is really nice if there’s opportunities for that. … So
I’m open to not being a professor right away if it means I can spend more time
with [my] children. (28-year-old married doctoral student)

I don’t think it’s possible [to have children while] in a tenure track faculty position.
Every female I’ve talked to said: ‘Don’t have kids before you have tenure.’ I also
don’t wanna be raising a teenager when some of my friends are retiring. If I stay in
research, it’s great because you have such flexible hours and you basically work for
yourself … I can stay home and, you know, if the kid is sleeping, I can knock out
three hours on my paper. … My friend’s advisor … got turned down for a very
nice grant because her publishing record after her post-doc was very thin, because
she had three kids right in a row. It’s got trade-offs and balances. … Even if it
comes down to the fact that I’m unemployable because I put my family first, that’s
the way it’s gonna be. (24-year-old married master’s student)
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 15

The students who considered an academic career envisioned postponing

children until they became established, for example, past achieving tenure, in
the assumption that as tenured professors, they would be better able to secure
support and time off for parenting. For example, one stated:
[I see myself as having kids] ideally after tenure because then you know that you
have a job for a long time. [The] university would be more likely to give you that
time off. (25-year-old single and attached doctoral student)

The students in this study, however, also commented how being established as a
faculty member may not be enough for a woman to take on being a parent and
remain professionally successful. One student noted that an at-home dad might be
necessary for a woman to pursue an academic-science career while a mother of
young children.
You have to sneak your freaking pregnancy into your career and you have to have
a partner who’s totally down with being an at-home dad … I feel like you have to
be really well-established. (26-year-old married doctoral student)

Several students also wondered whether there is ever a good time for a
female scientist to raise a child. For example, the doctoral student who stated
that she would have to wait until tenure to have a child also said: “I don’t have
a good feel of when I would have kids.” Many female students in the study
anticipated difficulties with being a professor and a mother, in fact, being any
sort of professional and a mother. For example, a married student said:
I like what I’m doing. I want to keep doing it. Kids would be really, really hard. I
don’t want to go to class pregnant. … Colleagues have kids. But they’re all male. I’d
like to be somewhat established. I mean … [having a child] is certainly going to
slow down whatever professional career I have. (25-year-old married doctoral
student)

Different values and priorities were expressed by women in heterosexual

committed relationships versus women in heterosexual marriages with
regard to their male partners’ work and family values and priorities
A theme among female students in a heterosexual relationship was their
awareness of a tension in reconciling their own and their male partners’ work
and family wishes, values, and priorities. There was a difference by relation-
ship status in how this tension was resolved.
Women in non-married heterosexual relationships typically articulated
an expectation that their male partners would accommodate their educa-
tional and career priorities. For example, a single and attached student
stated:
I moved out here to go to grad school with a boyfriend who resented the fact that I
made the decision without him and just brought him along. When you’re in …
[academia] you have to make a decision based on what’s going to work best [for
16 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

your career], and that doesn’t always work for both people in a relationship. (25-
year-old single and attached doctoral student)

Another single and heterosexually-attached student discussed similar

issues with regard to geographic relocations and her long-distance
relationship:
Now my boyfriend and I are long distance. … It hinders [my career] in that he
can’t really understand what graduate school is or what my research [is about] …
[But] if you want to stay with me, [you have to] figure out a way to make it work.
(26-year-old single and attached master’s student)

By contrast, the dominant theme among heterosexually-married women

was that their career was secondary to that of their husbands’. In their view,
their husbands’ wishes and needs had priority with regard to work, family,
and/or geographic move decisions. For some of these women, accommodat-
ing the husbands’ career, values and priorities included the possibility of
renouncing their own career. As one married student said:
My husband has a job here and my parents are talking about moving out here, and
we want to have a family, and for me, if I can’t [find a job] very close, then I would
have to consider looking at … an alternate career path. (28-year-old married
master’s student)

The same woman went on to explain that she and her husband both
came from “very traditional” families. While she insisted that she did not
see herself solely as a wife, and eventually a mother, she said that her
husband believed that it was her responsibility to raise their children, and
to renounce her career if she could not handle alone her professional and
family roles:
The idea for him, of … staying home with the kids, was not—I could tell—pleasing
at all. It was certainly not something that he’d ever really thought about doing for
permanent. … I’m sure he thought about helping out, but … there will be some
challenges, I think from him, when it comes to my career. (28-year-old married
master’s student)

Another married student justified her husband’s career coming first on the
ground that he could be happy only doing his “one thing,” while she could be
content pursuing all kinds of work:
His career is gonna come first, not because of traditional gender roles … [It is] just
that I’m very happy doing a whole [lot of] different things, like I would love to go
into education … to do consulting or stay for a Ph.D. My options are fairly broad,
whereas he’s really happy doing the one thing he’s doing. (24-year-old married
master’s student)

Finally, some married students considered leaving graduate school in

order to accommodate their husbands’ perceived or expressed employment
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 17

wishes and needs. Here is how these two married students explained their
situation:
[My husband] was unemployed for a little while. … [So] if he couldn’t find a job
by the time I was done with my master’s then we probably would [have] need[ed]
to move … so that he could find a job somewhere else. I would maybe have [had]
to put my education on hold so that he could find something to do. (28-year-old
married doctoral student)

I’m honestly facing the biggest problem when [my husband is] going to graduate. I
don’t know if I gotta move or not. … Work has never really affected my relation-
ship. It’s more that my relationship affects my work because of location flexibility.
(24-year old married master’s student)

What else influences your career intentions?

The frantic and work-absorbed life of my professors turns me off from an
academic career
Another theme that emerged from the interviews, across educational-
attainment and relationship statuses, was that an academic science career
was perceived as incongruent with having a family life, based on the students’
observations of their professors’ work pace and patterns. To the female
students in this study, an academic career appeared frantic, absorbed in
work, solitary, and incompatible with the kind of personal and family life
they wished for and also felt that, as women, they had to make room for.
When I look at women [in my field], it’s not necessarily what they’ve done in the
science, but what they do personally [that counts for me in terms of what I choose
as a career]. … [In academia] your life isn’t necessarily your own. Your life is this
academic thing … and I think that’s wrong. … It does make me not want to be a
faculty. … It does make me think of a consulting job or a research job. … My
personal life is so important to me … [but for my advisor work is everything; he]
eats and breathes his work. … He has a family, he has a wife, but he is the main
breadwinner there and he travels all the time; and I just think that that’s not what I
want in my life. (25-year-old single doctoral student)

The same student went on to say:

A lot of women in our field, especially faculty … [are] divorced or never married …
[How I interpret it is that] their personal life is not part of who they are as a
scientist … [That’s] a barrier for me in this field.

Several master’s-level students explained their decision not to pursue the

doctorate in light of what they perceived as the family challenges of, and/or
the personal sacrifices made by, female faculty. Reflecting on her observa-
tions of female professors participating in a “women in science program”
aimed at connecting female students and professionals, a master’s student
put it this way:
18 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

I don’t know if [my involvement in the program] really helped or hurt. … It was
really great [seeing] women achieving in the field I wanted to go into. But, at the
same time, we’re just still not caught up with the work-life balance. On some
degree, it kind of hurts. I was like: … ‘It’s great to see that you’re succeeding, but
you also had to sacrifice a lot that I’m not willing to sacrifice.’ (24-year-old married
master’s student)

The female students who planned to pursue an academic career reported

being motivated by role models who appeared to have both a rich family life
and a rich academic life.
I’m always impressed if [the professors] can handle their personal life and their
academic life. Because I think it really is a balance, and that if you don’t take care
of the people around you, but you’re really good at school, it doesn’t really mean a
whole lot. (23-year-old single master’s student)

Having a female faculty who was a parent was reported as critical to

considering a career in academia as an option.
I try to ask … women faculty what they’ve done [about having children]. And I feel
like everyone has done something a little bit different, which means that there is
flexibility. (25-year-old single doctoral student)

My advisor … has children and she’s managed to be really successful. … She’s

brilliant and she has a family. (22-year-old single master’s student)

Other female students reported that conversations about family issues

with female faculty were critical in their staying in the program at a time
when family challenges made them doubt they should complete a
doctorate:
The only female [ATS] professor I’ve had … was influential because I went to talk
to her one day about a homework problem, and we ended up talking about what I
wanted to do with my life, and how I will fit kids in, and how she managed that …
and that made a big difference in my mind in thinking about whether I wanted to
stay and get my Ph.D. (28-year-old married doctoral student)

The same student expanded on her observation of a female model as

follows:
I like how [my female ATS professor] did it. She really wanted to be a professor,
but she kind of put that off until her children got older. … Until then she was a
research scientist, which isn’t as strict [in terms of productivity. As a research
scientist] … she could come in early and leave early … and be home when the kids
got home. (28-year-old married doctoral student)

Discussion
This study examined, via interviews, the views about an academic career of
female students in a graduate science program. It also explored the values
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 19

and priorities these students identified as influences to their career intentions

and decisions.
A dominant theme in the students’ responses to the interview questions
was that an academic career would be the best path to realize their scientific
interests and goals, fulfill the promise of their training, and become a leader
in science. Directly or indirectly, the female students in this study expressed a
desire “to have it all,” an amazing scientific career and a rich family life.
However, they also viewed an academic career as too demanding in terms of
time, as well as too rigid in terms of its advancement structure—and there-
fore, incompatible with having a family life. More specifically, they thought
that academia required both women and men to sacrifice family life, but in
significantly different ways, and at a significantly higher personal cost for
women.
Based on observations of their heterosexual male professors, the female
students in this study came to the conclusion that for men, an academic
science-career mostly meant delegating family responsibilities. Since, in their
experience, male professors seemed to count on their wives to take care of
the household and children, for men the personal sacrifice made for the sake
of science was to not take an active role in their family. In other words, the
female students in this study did not perceive male faculty as having given up
on having a family (i.e., having a spouse and children) in order to do science.
By contrast, the female students in this study mostly believed that for
women, an academic science career meant completely giving up on having a
family. This belief was based on their values and expectations about women’s
and men’s roles in the family, as well as their perceptions of female profes-
sors. Some simply thought that family work is women’s work. Others
expressed a wish that men would be in charge of, or at least share family
work, but doubted that their male partners would do so, even if asked (“The
idea for him, of … staying home with the kids, was not—I could tell—
pleasing,” said a married student). Many also endorsed the view that in
heterosexual relationships, a women’s career is secondary to her male part-
ner’s career. However, they also rejected the idea that their not pursuing an
academic career represented acquiescence to ideologies, practices, and sys-
tems that privilege men. In fact, some went a long way to justify their
intention not to pursue an academic career in terms of personal preferences
and options (e.g., “My options are fairly broad, whereas he’s really happy
doing the one thing he’s doing,” said a married student). At the same time,
some even sanctioned a hierarchical structure of marriage, with women in
the secondary role with regard to career priorities (e.g., “Down the line you
have your marriage, you have your husband to take care of, you have your
kids … and now you have to be the parent, you have to be the adult”; and
“His career is gonna come first,” stated a single student and married student,
respectively). The findings that female students in this study endorsed
20 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

moralized gender ideologies that child care is a mother’s responsibility, or

that in heterosexual marriage, a husband’s career take precedence, are con-
sistent with those of other studies of young women interviewed about work
and family (e.g., Baker, 2008, in Australia; Jacques & Radtke, 2012, in
Canada).
The view that, for a woman, an academic career requires giving up on
having a male partner and children was also based on how the female
students in this study perceived the personal life of their female professors.
The students reported observing that their female professors were more likely
than their male professors to be single or divorced, observations which are
consistent with national trends in female and male faculty relationship status
(Ceci et al., 2014). The female students in this study also noticed that when
their female professors had children, they had them later in their career—
another observation that is consistent with national patterns (Ceci et al.,
2014).
Finally, the majority of the students in this study stated that, based on
what they observed and experienced as women in academic science, they did
not intend to pursue an academic career. While some recognized that the
tension between work and family may not be specific to academia, many
believed that jobs in government and industry would afford them the flex-
ibility they sought in order to pursue a career in science without giving up on
family.
The findings of this study of female ATS graduate students’ views of family
and an academic career are consistent with, and expand on those of related
studies of female graduate students in other STEM fields (Barthelemy et al.,
2015; De Welde & Laursen, 2011; Ecklund & Lincoln, 2011; Goulden et al.,
2011; Newsome, 2008). The findings of this study are also congruent with the
findings of research about female STEM postdoctoral scholars’ (Duberley &
Cohen, 2009; Ecklund & Lincoln, 2011; Goulden et al., 2011; Martinez et al.,
2012; Moors, Malley, & Stewart, 2014), female STEM faculty’s (e.g., Beddoes
& Pawley, 2014; Duberley & Cohen, 2009; Ecklund & Lincoln, 2011; Fox,
Fonseca, & Bao, 2011), and female non-STEM faculty’s (e.g., Moors et al.,
2014) views and experiences of family and academia. For example, a brief
report about the Atmospheric Sciences Collaborations and Enriching
Networks (ASCENT) program indicated that work-life interface issues were
the challenge most commonly (42%) cited by the early-career and senior ATS
female program participants (Avallone, Hallar, Thiry, & Edwards, 2013).
Across studies, a theme is that women experience a tension between family
and an academic career because they expect to manage alone the intensive
responsibilities of both. Another theme is frustration, and also guilt, for the
impossible “balance” that they are called to achieve, on their own.
The findings of the research about family-career issues for women in
academia also echo the findings of studies of women in other high-
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 21

education, time-demanding professions, such as law and medicine (e.g.,

Grant-Vallone & Ensher, 2011; Stone & Lovejoy, 2004). The dominant
themes in studies of women in these other time-demanding professions are
also of tension, frustration, and guilt, as related to conflicting expectations
and overload. Collectively, the findings of the research about women in time-
intensive professions challenge the notion that women’s underrepresentation
in these professions reflects women’s individual preference for family over
career; their opting for motherhood rather than career accomplishments;
their personal choice for part-time work over professional advancement
and leadership; or their “feminine” pull toward the direct care of their
children. The rhetoric of choice (e.g., Slaughter, 2012; Williams & Ceci,
2012) obscures the reality that women and men have very different options
in family and work domains, including when they are highly educated and in
prestigious, time-intensive professions. In the United States, women may be
encouraged to pursue a prestigious and time-intensive career, including a
career in academic science, but they are still expected to take primary
responsibility for family and household. U.S. women can have it all if they
do it all. By contrast, U.S. men are not expected to, and do not do an equal
share of household and family work (Canetto, 1996; Goulden et al., 2011;
Stone & Lovejoy, 2004). The fact that women represent a large proportion of
the U.S. paid workforce has only minimally changed men’s contribution to
household and family labor (Williams et al., 2006).
As noted above, it has been argued that female scientists simply “choose
motherhood” over science (e.g., Williams & Ceci, 2012, p. 100). We think it is
telling that we never talk about male scientists “choosing fatherhood” over
science. In fact, the statement “choosing fatherhood” may sound preposterous.
One reason we do not hear the “choosing fatherhood” narrative is that men, so
far, have not really had to choose between work and family, science and having
children. Men, including male scientists, have typically counted on women,
usually mothers, to raise their children. A distinction in the scripts of father-
hood and motherhood is embedded in the English language. Consider how the
dictionary meaning of “to father” is “to become a father by causing a woman
to produce a child” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d., a). By contrast, the dictionary
meaning of “to mother” is “to treat someone with kindness and affection and
to try to protect that person from danger and difficulty” (Cambridge
Dictionary, n.d., b). Our language implies that men fulfill fatherhood by
causing women to produce children, but that motherhood requires taking
care of children.
As noted by Beddoes and Pawleys (2014), it is time to deconstruct the idea
of individual choice in matters of work and family:

The notion of choice and agency requires further reflection and contextualization.
Given that women are so underrepresented among STEM faculty, we do need to
22 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

deconstruct why other options are more appealing to women more often than
men, rather than simply writing it off as a matter of individual priorities. (p. 1581)

In societies in which work and family are organized based on moralized

family ideologies, practices, and systems that privilege men, what individual
women and men do with regard to family is not just a personal decision. As
Baker (2008) put it,

Under conditions of unequal power and subordination (such as emotional pres-

sure and entrenched social demands regarding domestic work, for example), it
may be more accurate to describe acquiescence rather than choice or consent to
prevailing norms. … [C]onsent is never freely or neutrally given in situations of
inequality. … [I]n situations of socially structured constraint, choice is a highly
relative and often unsuitable term which does not account for the conditions in
which people are making decisions and which bestow more ‘choice’ [or better
choices] on some and limit it for others. (p. 58)

This study contributes to making visible how women’s educational and

occupational decisions are constrained by moralized family ideologies, prac-
tices, and systems that advantage men. As observed by Duberley and Cohen
(2009), career development and success in academia is greatly facilitated by
“domestic capital,” that is, “domestic arrangements and resources” that
involve wife-managed home and family-caregiving (pp. 192–193). A propos
domestic capital, one of the female scientists interviewed by Duberley and
Cohen recounted how her department’s head asked her when she wrote her
scholarly papers, and then told her: “I normally write … [my papers] in the
evening to the smell of fresh ironing and cooking … [my] wife’s done”
(p. 193). While the specifics of this department head’s marital arrangement
may be particularly hierarchical, they are not structurally unusual, in the
sense that heterosexual men are far more likely than heterosexual women to
have access to domestic capital in the form of an at-home spouse, with all the
advantages that such capital confers to their career. For most academic
women with a husband and children, there is domestic work awaiting them
at home at the end of the work day, not domestic pampering (Duberley &
Cohen, 2009).
To conclude, this study contributes qualitative data to the quantitative
findings on the views, expectations, and dilemmas about work and family
facing women in an academic-science career path. Several limitations of this
study are to be noted. One is that its sample may have been selective in
unknown ways. It could be that the students who agreed to participate were
the ones who experienced the most concerns about their educational and
career path since the study’s goal to understand choice of, and persistence
in, science higher education was communicated in recruitment materials.
Furthermore, data collected via interviews depend on participants’ verbal
expressiveness. Some participants were articulate and forthcoming, while
 JOURNAL OF FEMINIST FAMILY THERAPY 23

others were tentative and reserved, which resulted in varied quality and
quantity of information across participants. Moreover, students who did not
feel comfortable being interviewed likely did not participate. Additionally, this
study’s data were collected from a single institution, which limits the diversity
of views and experiences represented in this study. Yet another limitation of
this study is that most participants were of European descent. Studies with
ethnic-minority women indicate that they experience cumulative disadvantages
in their academic career path and in their work-family experiences (e.g.,
Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2008; Kachchaf, Lo, Hodari, & Ong, 2015;
Turner, Gonzáles, & Wong, 2011). Still, there is reason to think that the
findings of this study may characterize the experiences of a broad range of
women in academic science due to the correspondence of the present study’s
results with the findings of other studies about women in STEM (e.g., Goulden
et al., 2011; Hill et al., 2010).

Implications for family practice and policy

The results of this study, together with those of related studies, have implica-
tions for family practice and policy. With regard to family practice, they
point to the importance of attending to systemic issues when assessing (and
when planning interventions to address) family-work interface in dual-career
heterosexual couples. Among the systemic issues to consider are, for exam-
ple, the ideology that domestic and family work are women’s responsibility,
as well as the ideology that in a couple, a man’s career takes precedence over
a woman’s career. Making visible to heterosexual dual-career couples such
ideologies, and the negative impact that they have on the long-term well-
being of the family, may go a long way at stimulating dialogue about, and
potentially, commitment to arrangements that facilitate both partners parti-
cipating in, and therefore, reaping the benefits of career and family
responsibilities.
With regard to family policy, the empirical evidence about the family and
work views and experiences of women in academia, and of women across
time-demanding professions, argues for the universal availability of resources
such as family leave and affordable child care. These resources would expand
women’s and men’s options for staying in time-demanding professions while
raising children. Universal access to parental leave and affordable child care
would also contribute to normalizing women and men taking turns at being
the primary caretakers of their children—with benefits for the couple and
children’s well-being, and the society of which they are part. For society,
another benefit of work-family supportive policies is that women would be
retained in the professions in which they were trained, including in acade-
mia, thereby expanding the diversity of the perspectives and skills repre-
sented in those professions.
24 S. S. CANETTO ET AL.

Conclusions
This study’s findings support and expand past findings on women in acade-
mia in general, and on women in academic science, specifically. Together,
this study’s and prior studies’ findings make visible the gendered structure
and expectations of academia. As argued by Bailyn, academia is still orga-
nized around “practices and norms constructed around the life experiences
[and privileges] of [heterosexually married] men” (2003, p. 143). As noted by
many women in this study and in related studies, giving up on having a
family was a price too high for a career in academia. At the same time, the
prospect of not pursuing an academic career to have a family was also viewed
as a high cost, and considered with ambivalence by many women in this and
other studies.
This study’s findings about female science graduate students, together with
those of studies of women in other demanding educational and career paths,
also point to the persistence of ideologies, practices, and systems that force
women to choose between career and family. They suggest that women leave
science academia not by choice, but for lack of reasonable family and science-
career choices.

Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center
for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, managed by Colorado State University
under cooperative agreement No. ATM-0425247 OSP No. 533045. The views, findings, con-
clusions, and recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not
necessarily represent the official views, opinions, or policy of the National Science Foundation.
Earlier versions of this study were presented in 2014 at the Gender and STEM Conference,
Berlin, Germany, at the International Congress of Applied Psychology, Paris, France, and at the
meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, USA.

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