????所有行業的女性都在努力尋找兼顧職業與家庭生活。對于從事研究的女科學家來說，要實現這種平衡更加困難。二十八九歲或30歲出頭時，她們需要發表論文，落實研究經費來保持競爭力，根本顧不上生兒育女。

????作為一個嬰兒的媽媽，勞倫?奧康奈爾曾親身經歷過這種緊張感。她說道：“一種觀點認為，生兒育女和做女科學家是相互排斥的?！眾W康奈爾目前是哈佛大學（Harvard University）博士后研究員，她的研究課題是，如何用有毒箭蛙皮膚上的化學物質生產止痛藥、抗生素和心臟病藥物?！白鳛榭茖W家，讀研究生和博士后的那幾年應該是我們最富有成效的時期，但作為女性，這段時間又會與我們生孩子的時間重合，因此，我們很難同時處理好這兩個方面?！?/p>

????有些大學已經開始提供帶薪產假和哺乳室等福利。但盡管如此，有孩子的女性還是發現她們落后于男性同事。許多女科學家在自身能力即將達到鼎盛時期放棄了研究工作：在美國，女性取得了46%的理工科博士學位，但在獲得終身職位的科學家中，僅有三分之一為女性。與之類似，只有不到四分之一的正教授是女性。

????奧康奈爾表示，職業支持的時機落后于這種趨勢。她解釋稱，美國國家科學基金會（National Science Foundation）和美國國家衛生研究院（National Institutes of Health）正在努力培養更多女性，但它們資助的往往是那些已經從事多年科研工作的女科學家?？蓡栴}在于，許多女性在到達這個時點前，已經離開了科研領域。

????現在，私營公司已經開始為女性科學家提供盡可能早的幫助，比如在她們撫養孩子的艱難時刻。2003年，歐萊雅（L’Oreal）開始為年度女科學家(Woman in Science)頒發60,000美元獎金，以幫助卓越的女科學家度過這個關鍵階段，奧康奈爾便是今年的獲獎者之一。

????今年五分之四的獲獎者都是初為人母的女性科學家，這并非巧合。以斯坦福大學（Stanford University）博士后科學家莉薇婭?艾波琳為例。她正在研究一種快速診斷癌癥的新方法；她有一個六個月大的女兒。她注意到，許多男性同事在妻子剛剛生下小孩的時候，并未休假陪產。艾波琳說道：“女性則沒得選。我并不是說自己不希望休假來陪伴我的寶貝，但這證明，女性很容易就會落后于男同事。”

????Women across industries struggle to navigate the competing demands of career and family. This balancing act is even trickier for research scientists. They have a small window in their late twenties and early thirties to stay competitive by publishing papers and landing research grants.

????As the mother of a toddler, Lauren O’Connell has experienced the tension first-hand. “There is a perception that raising a family and being a female scientist are mutually exclusive,” she says. O’Connell is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard, where she’s studying how chemicals found on the skin of poisonous dart frogs can be used to create painkillers, antibiotics and heart medications. “As scientists, our graduate school and postdoctoral years are expected to be our most productive, but for women, they also coincide with our child-bearing years, so managing the two can be very difficult.”

????Universities have started offering benefits like paid maternity leave and lactation rooms. But despite these accommodations, women with children still find themselves falling behind their male colleagues. Many female scientists will abandon their research right when they are about to hit their stride: women receive 46% of science doctorates in the U.S., yet only a third of scientists employed in tenure-track positions are women and less than a quarter of full professors are women.

????O’Connell says that the timing of professional support is behind this trend. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health are trying to promote more women, she explains, but they tend to fund scientists who are further along in their careers—an issue, since many women have already left the field by that point.

????Private companies are now stepping up to give women scientists help earlier on, when they are in the thick of raising young children. Since 2003, L’Oreal has awarded an annual Women in Science grant of $60,000 to help exceptional female scientists through this critical stage of their careers—and O’Connell is among this year’s pool of recipients.

????It’s no coincidence that four out of five of this year’s winners are new mothers. Livia Eberlin, for instance, is a postdoctoral scientist at Stanford who is developing a new method of rapidly diagnosing cancer; she’s also the mother of a six-month old baby girl. She’s noticed that many of her male colleagues did not take advantage of paternity leave when their wives had babies. “For a woman, you just don’t have that option,” says Eberlin. “Not that I wouldn’t want to take that time off to bond with my newborn, but it just shows how easy it is for women to fall behind their male colleagues.”