Susan Greenfield writes about the difficulties faced by women in the sciences

Link in title to Guardian article. Again, it's the same old problem - maternity - exacerbated by the fact that

Scientists on the whole don't achieve a secure position until their mid-30s, which for women is beyond their ideal time for starting a family.

As well as this there are the problems of stereotyped ideas of male and female subjects - interestingly, she points out that in the biological sciences there are roughly equal numbers of men and women at undergraduate level (men greatly outnumber women in the physical sciences) but it's after women reach the age where they want children that the number of women falls away drastically.