The Cultural and Social Challenge of Promoting the Professional Value of Motherhood and Fatherhood

Speaking of gender balance in professional fields is a point of honor and maturation of our culture. It is now standard, and we are honored that, in all the most organized contexts, especially in science technology engineering mathematics (STEM) disciplines, there is a strong commitment to gender balance. This commitment is usually and mainly expressed by facilitating women’s presence, with roles and perspectives similar to those of male colleagues. Huang et al. (2020) thoroughly analyzed the gender gap in STEM academia. Men still outnumber women 2 to 1 in the scientific workforce and, on average, have more productive careers and accumulate more impact in every STEM discipline and most geographic regions. Interestingly, those authors found that men and women publish a comparable number of papers per year and have an equivalent career-wise impact for the same total number of publications. They highlighted the issue of gender-specific sustainability of publication effort throughout an entire academic career, suggesting significant consequences for institutions and policymakers.