Motherhood hinders science careers.

• Position: Your Life - Brief Article

It is not a lack of math proficiency keeping women from careers in science and engineering, nor is it the lack of other college-prep classes. Motherhood is the problem, maintain Kimberlee Shauman, University of California, Davis, and Yu Xie, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes. The authors document the tremendous progress women have achieved in the scientific labor force over the past four decades, but there is a critical barrier that keeps them from advancing further.

"We find that it is not marriage per se that hampers women's career development," Shauman and Xie report. "Rather, married women appear to be disadvantaged only if they have children." Moreover, relative to their male counterparts, fewer women seek science and engineering degrees. Then, once they have children, females tend to participate less in the labor force, are less geographically...