I came across this (slightly dated) article in the Guardian recently, which draws on data from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2008 report The chemistry PhD: the impact on women's retention.

Whilst I completely agree that a glass (or even concrete) ceiling does exist for women in academia, and that the statistics on the percentage of men and women who want an academic career (21 and 12% respectively) are shocking, I would argue with the conclusions Curt Rice, the authors, has reached.

Curt argues that we should make academic careers more attractive to both men and women, thus ensuring that academia will attract and retain the best and brightest. He cautions that, so long as industry remains more appealing as a career, academia and universities as a whole will suffer.

This seems at first glance to be a sensible argument and call for change.  However I would argue that, certainly in the pharmaceutical industry, academia pays better, is more flexible and offers better terms and conditions of employment and pension plans. Consequently, from a sheer financial perspective a postdoc is the better proposition. This may be a case of short term benefit in exchange for long term gains, but I really think that depends on the industry in question. I would also argue that academia offers opportunities to develop your career in novel, unexpected ways that a traditional company may not.

Secondly, I feel it misses the key point, a point which Curt points out himself: That 88% of women and 79% of men DO NOT WANT an academic career.

These percentages contrast sharply with the percentages of men and women, post-PhD, who ARE in academia (usually as postdocs). According to the Royal Society's 2010 report The Scientific Century: Securing our Future Prosperity, 30% of science PhD graduates go on to do a postdoc. From the above math, half of those don’t really want to be there.

I argue that, instead of focussing on increasing the pool of people universities can promote from, they should focus instead on identifying those PhD students who want an academic career and nurturing them, whilst providing similar support for those PhD students who don’t want such a career. This might affect universities ability to recruit postdocs, but the ones they get will want to be there! Surely this is the type of men and women the universities want and need. Academia is not an easy career and it is made more difficult if you don’t really want it in the first place.

Adjusting this support for PhD students may make universities and the wider government realise just how bad the industrial chemical sector in this country is at the moment and may actually prompt them to make changes in policy and numbers of PhD students being taken on.

Do you agree? Or am I being over-simplistic?