A study in Science Advances has reported on how gendered expectations and policies regarding parenthood are impacting women in academia. The study, led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, reports that women experience a 20 percent drop in productivity after having a child compared to when men become fathers.
The work was based on detailed data analysis – including the timing of parenthood and publication data up to 2018 from 3064 faculty members at 450 computer science, history, and business departments across the United States and Canada. It also included institution-specific parental leave policies. It turns out that despite these policies being key to women’s career prospects, 43 percent of those institutions have no such policies.