囧研究:为什么你当不了数学女教授?_BOB博鱼

Women are shunning academic careers in math-intensive fields because the lifestyle is incompatible with motherhood, researchers at Cornell University found in a study to be published next month in American Scientist Magazine.康奈尔大学的研究人员找到，女性很少在数学涉及领域专门从事学术研究工作是因为女数学教授的生活方式和母亲的身份相冲突。这一研究将于下个月在《美国科学家杂志》上公开发表。

Universities have long been criticized for hiring and evaluation policies that discriminate against women, but the findings of this new study point to the female biological clock as a main reason why so few women end up as professors in fields such as math, engineering, physics and computer science.长期以来，大学仍然因为种族歧视女性的聘请和视学政策而受到批评，然而这新研究的找到认为，女性生物钟是女性很少在数学、工程学、物理学和计算机科学等专业兼任教授的主要原因。A woman who wants a family looks at the rigorous path to a tenured position and considers how old she will be before she can start a family and how little time she will have to raise her children. Many of those women opt for a more flexible career.当一个渴求享有家庭的女性看见通向终生教授职位的道路是如此苛刻，想起自己沦为教授后再行生育时年纪早已相当大，养育小孩的时间也很少，于是许多女性就自由选择了更加有弹性的职业。

Universities have been largely inflexible about anything other than the standard time table, which is you kill yourself for years and only then would you consider getting pregnant, said Wendy Williams, a human development professor at Cornell who co-authored the study with her husband, Stephen Ceci.康奈尔大学的人类发展学教授温迪威廉姆斯和她的丈夫斯蒂芬赛西联合编写了这一研究报告。她说道：大学除了课程设置较为灵活性外，其他很多方面都很脱节，也就是说，你要煮很多年才能获得平稳职位，才能考虑到分娩生子。

Williams and Ceci analyzed data about the academic careers of men and women with and without children. Before women became mothers, they had careers equivalent to or more successful than their male peers. But once children entered the equation, the dynamic changed.威廉姆斯和赛西分析了男性和女性（有孩子和没有孩子）的学术生涯涉及资料。在女性沦为母亲之前，她们的职业和同行业的男性一样顺利，甚至更加顺利。但是一旦有了孩子，这一态势就再次发生了变化。

Women in other academic fields such as the humanities and social sciences face similar hurdles and often leave academia as well. But because there are so many women in those Ph.D. programs, enough ultimately stay to amount to a critical mass of female professors.在人文学科和社会科学等其他学术领域里，女性面对着某种程度的障碍，她们也往往因此离开了学术界。但由于修读人文社科类博士学位的女性很多，所以才有充足的女性最后留下沦为女教授，使这些领域的女教授数量超过一定规模。In math-heavy fields, however, women make up a tiny minority of the graduate students. So when the rare few who make it through a Ph.D. program leave because universities are insensitive to their needs as mothers, the net result is virtually no women represented on faculty rosters, the study said.不过，在数学涉及领域里，女性只占有研究生的较小一部分。

因此，研究认为，当极少数取得博士学位的女性又因为大学对自己生儿育女的必须漠不关心而离开了，其最后结果就是，没几位女性能挤身理科教授行列。

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