Despite being an n-Body simulator for a living, I still struggle with the 2-body problem. What I mean in this case is nothing to do with science, but rather (for the first and probably last time on this blog) relationships.
Life as an academic forces one to move institutions -- if not countries -- on a regular basis, at least in your early career. This provides a whole slew of problems for any sort of personal life one may wish to follow. I, personally, am coming to the end of my time in Durham and am now beginning to make preparations to move away.
One of the things I am finding particularly hard is negotiating with Gem about where we end up. The number of times I have come home and attempted to ask something like "How do you feel about moving to Munich?", "How does Trieste sound to you?", "Melbourne supposedly has good weather", "Chicago is supposed to be nice at this time of year" or "The Canadians are supposed to be nice people, right?" is quite staggering. It stands as testament to how awesome and wonderful Gemma is that despite having her own life and career she is willing to work at this and hasn't just left me!
Anyway, my own petty whines aside, the main point of this post was to link to this (via a link from a link from thinking girl's blog):
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2006/11/2-body-data.html
An academic from the US has performed a little census on the physical science departments in her university and found that female academics suffer from the two-body effect, much, much more than men (the whole blog makes for a nice read so do spend a bit of time checking it out). This statistic pretty much typifies what we see on a daily basis:
% of female faculty who are married to another professor at the same university: 48
% of male faculty who are married to another professor at the same university: 2
I'm beginning to give real credence to our thought that male academics marry teachers and nurses, because they can get a job anywhere!
This certainly reads like the academic women "make it" in their career and then start looking for a permanant partner.
Life as an academic forces one to move institutions -- if not countries -- on a regular basis, at least in your early career. This provides a whole slew of problems for any sort of personal life one may wish to follow. I, personally, am coming to the end of my time in Durham and am now beginning to make preparations to move away.
One of the things I am finding particularly hard is negotiating with Gem about where we end up. The number of times I have come home and attempted to ask something like "How do you feel about moving to Munich?", "How does Trieste sound to you?", "Melbourne supposedly has good weather", "Chicago is supposed to be nice at this time of year" or "The Canadians are supposed to be nice people, right?" is quite staggering. It stands as testament to how awesome and wonderful Gemma is that despite having her own life and career she is willing to work at this and hasn't just left me!
Anyway, my own petty whines aside, the main point of this post was to link to this (via a link from a link from thinking girl's blog):
http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2006/11/2-body-data.html
An academic from the US has performed a little census on the physical science departments in her university and found that female academics suffer from the two-body effect, much, much more than men (the whole blog makes for a nice read so do spend a bit of time checking it out). This statistic pretty much typifies what we see on a daily basis:
% of female faculty who are married to another professor at the same university: 48
% of male faculty who are married to another professor at the same university: 2
I'm beginning to give real credence to our thought that male academics marry teachers and nurses, because they can get a job anywhere!
This certainly reads like the academic women "make it" in their career and then start looking for a permanant partner.
