For a while, I tried to work with my first child, but with my commute, I only was able to spend about an hour a day with her. And after paying for childcare, I was barely making any money. I watched the hours that my advisor spent at work and knew I couldn’t put in those kinds of hours because childrearing was largely up to me. I decided that I had to quit my job. Now I’ve been home for 5 years and have three children. I’m frustrated because I put in all those years and money into getting a Ph. D. and doing a post-doc—for nothing. 1

Melanie’s story is not uncommon. Though women have fully embraced the challenge of higher education and now receive about half of the Ph. Ds awarded to US citizens, many of these women have brief careers in the academy. In 1920, women comprised only 26 percent of full-time faculty. Today, a full 75 years later, this percentage had grown to only 31 percent. 2 At this rate, it will take only 173 years to reach parity. Mary Ann Mason, in her 2007 book, Mothers on the Fast Track, reports that at UC Berkeley women received 46 percent of last spring’s doctorates but constituted only 26 percent of the new faculty hires. 3 The low percentage of tenured women is not due to a deficit of women in the pipeline. Rather, the problem is that women are leaking out of the pipeline. 4