Re: "Women, Science, and Academia: A Three-Point Plan"1 You write that the cost of daycare "is dwarfed by the costs to innovation of not having half the world's population adequately represented among scientific faculty members, which is the clear result of a lack of daycare." This is an argument that must be made convincing not as a matter of belief, but as a matter of data and funds accrued.
The counterargument – stated quite clearly to me by a male colleague as I struggled through the last month of a difficult pregnancy and made plans to take a three-month leave of absence from my postdoc position to be with my newborn – is persuasive in a production-oriented profession such as the life sciences. Men can do the job better because they can be there, working, while women are busy with the biological necessities of bearing, and the societal necessities of ...
