In February 1999, evolutionary biologist Ashleigh Griffin defended her PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh. Then, one month later, she gave birth. For the next three years, she stayed home caring for her daughter while writing up her research "when I could manage that," she says. She was so poor that she was relying on milk tokens from the government just to get by.
In 2002, she landed a postdoc in Edinburgh, yet only months later she found herself pregnant again. She thought her scientific career was doomed, but managed to keep up with her lab work and landed first-author papers in both Science and Nature. In 2005, she was recognized for her achievements with the Royal Society–funded Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship, which offers salary funding and modest research expenses with the opportunity to work on a part-time basis or switch back and forth between full time ...
