I totally agree with juno. We all know that the sciences are traditionally male dominated, and some men still think they can get away with treating women as objects. I suggest that you get in touch with your equality unit in order to let these men know that you can't be harassed. For a start, if you are in the UK you can ask your equality officer about getting promoted and moved to a different lab or unit. There are several schemes that may apply to you, the most commonly available being Athena SWAN. There's no need to take harassment from men these days.

Hope this helps :)

The answer depends on whether you are a man or a woman (sorry but I can't tell from your profile!). If you are a woman, then definitely go for Nottingham University because they have got an excellent Equality programme in place called Athena SWAN which helps promote women in engineering careers in all sorts of ways (also careers in science, technology, mathematics, and medicine). On the other hand Nottingham Trent University seems a bit stuck in the past and doesn't appear to have any such programme, which seems incredible these day because how funding now depends on having an Athena SWAN silver award for promoting gender equality. So regardless of if you are a man or a woman, if you support gender equality and want to be somewhere that is still being properly funded in 18 months time, then definitely go for Nottingham University.

It's disgraceful how universities are set up in such a way as to ignore family life. Have you thought of raising this issue with your Equality Officer, or student union rep? These things need to change.

In the past four or five years I have seen five of my peers break away from academia and very quickly develop solid careers in equality consultancy. It isn't a secret that, in the UK at least, the new gender equality guidelines (e.g. Athena SWAN, project JUNO etc) are being taken very seriously by universities. In many cases funding from the major bodies (e.g. NIHR) depends on departments adopting the new regulations, and there is still a long way to go before all regulations are in place. I'm not in a position where I can go into consultancy, but equality consultants are doing a great job not only for women's rights, but have the potential to keep institutions afloat because the departments who don't adopt the guidelines are going to notice the drop in funding very soon!

Yes, there may be some issues around health-seeking behaviours in prostate cancer, but there are probably just as many problems facing women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds seeking help for breast cancer screening.

Hi again Kim. Although you got some interesting replies I think most people totally missed your point. But on a brighter note, women in the future won't be so left out of science, because of the fantastic efforts that have created schemes like Athena Swan and Project Juno which will correct the problem of women being left out of science and technology careers. I think we will see many more women rightfully getting Nobel prizes in the future, but we still have a long way to go.

Well done!!! :)

Email him again, but definitely consider emailing other potential supervisors.

Don't worry too much about not having a publication. Seeing as you are a woman in engineering I would urge you to contact universities in the UK because we have an excellent support network for women wanting to develop careers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics). Just ask for the Athena Swan coordinator (or ask for the Equality and Diversity Team) at the university that you want to go to and find out the various ways in which they can help you.

Good luck!

Revise and submit? Success - well done!

It's probably a good cause, but isn’t breast cancer a bigger issue? It causes over 10,000 deaths in the UK each year. Also I don’t see a link between prostate cancer and psychology. But good luck anyway.

To be fair I think Kim is just saying how much harder it is being a non-European woman in science rather than how much easier it is for everyone else .

This is an interesting question. I don't know about the US, but in the UK universities provide lots of support for women in STEM (e.g. mentoring, workshops, networking groups etc) via a programme called Athena Swan. As far as I know, all universities do this now because funding depends on it. If you find that universities don't do this in the US, you should politely but firmly ask them why!

Sorry to hear you are having a tough time, but you are in good company here. If you do a keyword search for 'burnout' you will see lots of good advice that has been given on this forum previously.

What TreeofLife says makes sense.