International Workshop on "Women and Science / Technology" Network in Asia

This research aims to investigate the family and career conditions of women scientists in the academia in Taiwan. A questionnaire survey was conducted during May 27 to August 31 in 2008 over internet. It contains 47 questions in four categories, including professional progress, marriage and family, career satisfaction, career self-assessment, and was distributed to 1655 female researchers applying for the National Science Grants in science, bio-medical, and engineering fields. Only 396 responses were received and 389 of them were effective.
For professional progress, more than 90% of the 389 respondents hold PhD degrees and acquire their first full-time jobs at the average of 33.7, which may cause them the conflicts between biology clock and tenure clock. For marriage and family conditions, 80% are married, among whom 50% have more than two children, while 25% have one child and 25% none. The respondents averagely spend 25 hours in caring and 12 hours in household work per week, which adds up totally to 1.31 hours more than the average of all working women. While more than 80% of them receive sufficient family support, almost 40% still feel distracted by caring and household needs during their work shift.
For career satisfaction, the satisfaction rates of all questions reach to about 40%-50%. However, when the satisfaction is based on comparison against their male colleagues, the satisfaction rates change. The respondents seem to stress more on the satisfaction when compared with male colleagues. As for whether their institutes should recruit more females, surprisingly only less than 30% agree and more than 50% feel their situations are OK. This outcome challenges the common thoughts that women scientists need more female colleagues and the institutes have to increase their percentages of female researchers.
Also, after Chi-square test, the career satisfaction rates differentiate significantly among different ranks of full, associate, and assistant professors. The full professors report the most satisfaction on their rank (90.2%), their allocated space (70.7%), laboratory support (59.5%), grants received (58.8%), professional invitations (61.4%), and honor granted (59.6%), which are far more than those of associate and assistant professors with only 30-40%. And the associate rank reports the least time of leisure 10.6 hours per week.
For career self-assessment, shortage of work time is the difficulty most (70%) respondents feel, as professional loneliness the second (40%), and in need of child care the third (30%). Teaching and supervising students compose their most workloads.
In sum, this survey shows the family and career conditions of women scientists in Taiwan. As it is an initial effort and has already disclose many interesting findings, further research is needed to explain further inquires, including international comparisons.