A. Velicu et al. 2025, PLoS ONE,

“The persistent “leaky pipeline”, i.e., women remaining underrepresented in advanced academic roles, often links to the adverse impact of parenthood on women’s careers compared to men’s. This study delves into how the struggle to balance academic success and family life might be pushing female scientists out of academia, and how the less-studied concept of homogamy—here, the forming of heterosexual relationships between individuals with the same profession—influences academic careers.”

Reporting an interesting finding of couples with both parents working in academics: they seem to have more equal distributions of childcare and parenthood penalty.

Centre for Economic Performance

“Persistent gender gaps in the labor market are largely driven by the underrepresentation of women at the top of most professions. We study how parenthood shapes gender gaps in academic careers using population-wide administrative and survey data linked to productivity and promotion records. Parenthood marks a sharp divergence in academic careers: one in three women exit academia following motherhood. Men also experience a decline in academic employment after fatherhood, but the effects are substantially smaller. For mothers, childbirth leads to a persistent decline in both tenure attainment and research output, while men’s trajectories on these margins are unaffected by parenthood. The child penalty on tenure is driven primarily by women’s higher exit rates from academia. Gender differences in career aspirations do not explain these findings; instead, childcare and mobility constraints play a central role. Child penalties are exacerbated in highly competitive environments and environments without senior female role models.”

ETH diversity

“Inclusion is a goal of ETH Zurich and, at the same time, a very abstract concept. It is put into practice and taught in concrete terms: Brian McGowan is a historian, teaches Disability Studies at ETH Zurich and uses a wheelchair. In this interview, he suggests that ETH could become even more inclusive in its research – and Switzerland as a whole, for that matter..”