Tips for Women on Surviving STEM Graduate Studies

The advice in this blog rings true for me (i.e., my experience suggests that these recommendations would help), but it’s also depressing.  Do we still have men saying to women graduate students: “Of course you want babies and a family,” even though you say you don’t, or “Since you have children, you are certainly not working as hard as you should,” or “You will certainly follow your husband for his job”?  It’s still not getting any better?

From teaching this course over the years, I have learned of the difficulties faced by many women grad students in STEM disciplines, especially in the lab sciences. Practices of favoritism, exclusion of women from team experiences (field research trips, for example), poor/difficult communication, lack of acknowledgment of women’s contributions, and on and on create a hostile environment for many female grad students. I try to give them strategies for dealing, and I talk in the university about the problem every chance I get, but of course I don’t get much credence because I am not a scientist.

If you could blog about survival strategies for women graduate students in the STEM fields, especially in lab cultures, it would be very helpful.

via Career Advice: Survival Tips – Inside Higher Ed.