An Investigation into the Factors that Contribute to Women Leaving Scientific Roles for Support Roles

Abstract

Diverse perspectives and ideas are crucial for driving innovation. However, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) occupations do not represent the diversity seen in the US population and are therefore missing out on innovation and potentially novel scientific ideas and discoveries. Specifically, women are underrepresented in STEM occupations, making up only 24% of the roles in science and engineering but are 52% of the overall US population. Despite many initiatives attempting to increase the presence of women in STEM over the past decades, there have only been modest increases in the percentage of women in STEM, especially in leadership roles. The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is a genomics research institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts that is unique in its collaborative structure and support in alternative careers for scientists. In contrast to the overall STEM workforce, women comprise 48% of scientific research roles. Among project managers, they are overrepresented (80% of all project managers are women). Interestingly, most project managers at the Broad Institute start as research staff (scientists and related roles) but some of these women then move to project management roles. Therefore, we decided to interview them to determine why they left roles in experimental science and chose to go into project management. We interviewed 10 project managers that previously trained as scientists and coded the results using values categorized by the Theory of Work Adjustment (TWA). We found that, unlike previous studies that found women were leaving STEM roles due to workplace climate and lack of achievement, women who left science for project management at the Broad Institute did so primarily to gain autonomy and status along with better work life balance. We discovered that work/life balance and job flexibility are important to women whether or not they have children. Whether or not our participants had an advanced degree, women at the Broad Institute left scientific research roles due to lack of creativity and responsibility in their jobs. All of our participants used mentors to guide them in their career in project management. Surprisingly, women believe they are better able to utilize all of their skills scientific support roles such as project management. They believe they can more meaningfully impact scientific work through these roles than in more traditional scientific roles. This finding has important consequences for organizations trying to retain talented women, as helping them discover alternative career paths could prevent them from leaving all together. These data provide a foundation for potential future work looking into why other underrepresented groups in STEM might choose alternate careers. It also opens up the possibility to understanding why some men leave scientific roles .