Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Carol Greider receives her Nobel Prize in medicine today for her research into how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide. While lauding her for her prize, I'm interested in what she and one of her fellow laureates, Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, had to say about prospects for women in scientific research.
Despite their own wonderful achievement, the two paint a bleak picture of opportunities for women in science, according to the Associated Press. They say that the career structure is still very much geared toward men -- and that promising female researchers fall away from the work not because they can't do it, but because it isn't compatible with having a family.
Blackburn said there need to be more opportunities for part-time work.
I think frustrated mothers in many professions would say the same, but it's startling to hear these extraordinary women articulate it on the eve of accepting their prize.
How do we make things more flexible, though, when the state of the economy makes many of us feel lucky just to have any job at all?
