The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is the principal Federal agency responsible for measuring labor market activity, working conditions, and price changes in the economy.
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Could motherhood be the reason for the
underrepresentation of women in science?
John C. Roach
In “Women in science. Lessons from the baby boom” (National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper
29436, October 2021), authors Scott Daewon Kim and Petra Moser collected biographical data from the American
Men of Science (MoS) on employment, education, marriage, and children for 82,094 male and female scientists in
1956, at the peak of the baby boom generation (those born from 1946 to 1964). Kim and Moser used this
information to link scientists with their patents and publications to view the impact children had on productivity on
an individual level across demographic groups and after marriage.
Motherhood could also be a possible cause for women underrepresented in science. The authors point out that
according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey, women spend about 50 percent more
time than men caring for children. In addition, the authors find that mothers who are academic scientists are
tenured 27 percent of the time, compared with 48 percent of fathers and 46 percent of women without children.
Mothers also wait much longer to receive tenure-track positions. Census data show that after 15 years of marriage,
mothers show a constant increase in productivity. Furthermore, these mothers had their first child within 3 years of
marriage, which may explain the steady increase in productivity because the child would be older and require less
attention than a younger child.
As a result of comparing data from prebaby boom faculty directories with the MoS, Kim and Moser discovered that
women had less than half the survival rate of men in the science field. This difference in survival accounted for a
substantial loss in participation for the generation of baby boom mothers. Mothers, however, who survive in
science are very positively selected for patent publishing and produce 5.5 times as many patents as single women
and 2.4 more than other married women. In addition, mothers pu