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A brief historical account of women in science is given as introduction to discussion of their present situation in the USA. Factors affecting female achievement and interest in science and in scientific careers include education, socio‐cultural and personal factors. Obstacles and constraints for women during preparation for scientific professions are also described together with myths about women and recent trends. Strategies for increasing their participation are proposed.

Contemporary scholarship has enabled a deeper analysis of the dynamics that gave rise to professional home science and a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they employed to gain legitimacy as the field developed in the twentieth century. This paper examines how home science moved from its origins as ‘glorified housekeeping’ to encompass the ‘professional and ‘scientific’ dimensions of women’s lives. It goes beyond judgments about whether home science ‘helped’ or ‘hurt’ women, and asks instead, what we can learn from a study of the professional lives of women working in the highly gendered domains of academia, the professions and education? The article documents the scientific and professional lives of two women, E. Neige Todhunter and Emere Makere Waiwaha Kaa Mountain who completed qualifications at the Faculty of Home Science, Otago University in the 1920s and 1930s as a way of offering new insights into the professionalisation of women and a rethinking of the relationship between women and household science in the twentieth century.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into international career motives, repatriation and career success of Indian women in Science and Technology.

In total, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with (upper) middle-class Indian women in Science and Technology in Bangalore and New Delhi, India.

Thematic analysis resulted in four themes – International career motives, Theme 1: cross-cultural and scientific exposure; Repatriation reasons and experiences, Theme 2: family reunion, career prospects and readjustment; Career success, Theme 3: international experience; and career growth, Theme 4: social responsibility. Motives for international career mobility of Indian women were: exposure to foreign cultures, international collaboration in science and personal and professional development. Family formation and reunion and career prospects were reasons for repatriation and positively influenced repatriation experiences of Indian women. Readjustment to people and conditions in India impacted their repatriation experiences negatively. The meaning women attribute to career success is grounded in recognition from peers in science, career growth, satisfaction and contribution to science and Indian society.

The sample of Indian female scientists may limit generalization of the findings to global career professionals in other professions from other countries with different socio-cultural and economic contexts.

HR policies that foster international careers of women scientists as well as women's networks in science to share and apply knowledge, and their contribution to the Indian economy and society will enhance global career success of women and strengthen the sustainable competitive position of organizations.

The study provides new insights into motivation for international career mobility and repatriation of women professionals from a developing country and their career success in the home country, and contributes to the development of theoretical frameworks on international career mobility and career success.

In the context of research on the career advancement of women and men in academia, this paper aims to reflect on how deans at six schools of a Dutch arts and a Dutch sciences‐based university construct the image of the ideal academic, and on how these images are gendered.

Using an inductive approach, the study analyzed the transcripts of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with six deans (all men) from two different Dutch universities on the career advancement of men and women at their school.

It was expected that the images of the ideal academic would be more gendered in the sciences than in the arts university, considering the stronger male domination in the sciences university. The images of the ideal academic, while fundamentally different, regarding the expertise, the applicability of knowledge, and the visibility needed to be considered successful, were equally gendered in assuming that practicing science leaves little room for caring obligations outside work; in both places science was considered an omnipresent and greedy calling. Moreover, deans at both universities to a similar extent expected women academics not to fit to this standard. Paradoxically, in the arts university deans construct an image of women academics that in some aspects reflects a mirror image of women academics in the sciences university and vice versa.

The paper suggests that in this construction the process of “othering” women academics is more constant than the content of the ideal academic. They contribute to theories on the ideal worker in the field of science by arguing the construction of the ideal academic is fluid rather than fixed. Further research could investigate how the image of the ideal academic changes within the same discipline across different countries with a higher representation of women among full professors, as the findings are limited to The Netherlands.

The paper argues that the fluidity of the ideal academic norm offers space for renegotiating such norms by making it more inclusive for women, which will have positive consequences for women's career advancement in academia.

The contribution of this paper is that constructions of the ideal academic are fluid rather than fixed, while dominant actors in organizations seem to attribute universal value to these images. The “otherness” of women relative to the image of the ideal academic is more constant than the characteristics of these images themselves.

For many years, science fiction has been perceived as “rayguns and rocket ships” boys' literature. Any number of impressionistic and statistical studies have identified the typical SF reader as male, between the ages of twelve and twenty and, in the case of adults, employed in some technical field. Yet I continually find myself having conversations with women, only to find that they, like myself, began reading science fiction between the ages of six and ten, have been reading it voraciously ever since, and were often frustrated at the absence of satisfying female characters and the presence of misogynistic elements in what they read. The stereotype of the male reader and the generally male SF environment mask both the increasing presence of women writers in the field of science fiction and the existence of a feminist dialog within some SF novels. This dialog had its beginnings in the mid‐sixties and is still going strong. It is the hope of the feminist SF community that this effacement can be counteracted.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the narratives of 93 Black women in computing in the USA to identify salient themes that are at the intersection of race and gender in the field of computer science.

The study uses a multi-method approach with a survey to describe the sample and a series of focus groups for in-depth analysis of themes. The qualitative methodology uses a grounded theory and consensual qualitative research approach with a research team that includes computer scientists and social scientists to collect and analyze data. Given the highly technical field of computer science and the intersectional experiences of the participants, this approach was optimal to capture and code data through the lens of Black women in computing.

The authors found four main themes that represented specific needs for Black women in the computing community. The first is the importance of linking Black women in computing (i.e. their recruitment, retention and career growth) to the bottom line of organizational and personal accountability. The second is effective cultural and educational supports for Black women in computing across pathways, starting in middle school. The third is to provide leadership development as a part of their educational and workplace experience. The fourth is a collection of empirical research and scholarship about and for Black women as a part of the computing literature.

Black women comprise one of the most underrepresented subgroups in the area of computer science in the USA. There is very little research about Black women in computing. To promote broadened participation in computing, there is a critical need to understand the narratives of successful Black women in the space.

States that the participation of men and women in the German academic and scientific system is unequally distributed. Shows that the higher the status at the university, the lower the female proportion and that women also choose different subjects to men. Asks why more men choose science and engineering and what social cognitive characteristics do women show who opt for a “male” subject. Presents the theoretical background to the above before providing some insights using surveys carried out in Germany.

The paper aims to critically review four recently published books, each of which aims to explain the disproportionate representation of men and women in science careers, and to understand gender differences in achievements and productivity.

This is a thematic book review and conceptual analysis and development.

The review shows that in order to reduce and eliminate gender inequality in science careers, it is naïve to assume that changing women's attitudes alone will solve the problem. This position in‐itself indicates the unspoken presumption that the male model of work is the norm to which women must adapt.

The review shows there is a need for policy actions and initiatives that eliminate the structural barriers in SET career trajectories which currently favour the working preferences of male scientists.

The purpose of this paper is to identify whether or not females believe they associate with the culture of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by investigating the perceptions of female students currently enroled in STEM courses.

The paper presents data from a survey on female STEM students’ “Perspectives of women in STEM”, “Parents’ Science qualification”, “Supports in their STEM Course” and their “Science identify” through a social capital lens. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to analyse the data.

The main findings were that female STEM undergraduates believe social bias, balancing work and family life and lack of role models are the main cause of less women in STEM professions and leadership positions. There were statistically significant differences between how male and female students identified with certain traits, with less females claiming to be intelligent and know about latest discoveries than males.

To eradicate stereotypical views of scientists, it is recommended that Irish higher-education institutions introduce initiatives to increase the socialisation of STEM females within female networks and develop female students’ self-awareness of their own capabilities. The expansion of STEM networks could act as a means to facilitate female students adopting positive science identities, increasing their science capital.

In Ireland, there is a paucity of literature relating to females’ experience of STEM in higher education. This paper provides evidence that despite their engagement with STEM, female undergraduate students subscribe to the stereotypical image of the scientist. This study highlights the need to change the culture experienced by female STEM undergraduates in Ireland so as to improve the experiences and trajectories of women in higher education.

The underrepresentation of women in engineering has important consequences for meeting the need for a larger, talented scientific and technological labor force. Increasing the proportion of women faculty in engineering will help increase the persistence probabilities of women undergraduate and graduate students in engineering, as well as contribute to the range and diversity of ideas toward innovations and solutions to the greatest engineering challenges. This study aims to examine the association among gender, family formation and post-PhD employment patterns of a cohort of engineering doctorates.

Using the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients data, 2001–2010, descriptive and multinomial logit regression analyses are conducted to illustrate the career trajectories of engineering PhDs over a ten-year period.

The career trajectories of engineering PhDs are nonlinear, and transitions between employment sectors commonly occur over the ten-year time period studied. Although women engineering PhDs with young dependents are less likely to be employed initially after PhD completion, they tend to enter the workforce in the academic sector as time progresses. Early post-PhD employment as a postdoctoral researcher or in the academic sector contributes to the pursuit of the professoriate downstream.

While previous studies tend to focus on the early career outcomes of science and engineering students, this study contributes to the literature by focusing on the long-term career outcomes of engineering doctorates. Research findings provide engineering PhD students and PhDs with more information regarding potential post-PhD career trajectories, highlighting the multitude of career options and transitions that occur over time. Research findings also provide higher education administrators and doctoral program stakeholders with foundational information toward designing and revitalizing professional development programs to help PhD students prepare for the workforce. The findings have the potential to be applied toward helping increase diversity by shaping policies and programs to encourage multiple alternative career pathways to the professoriate.