Mapping the Future: Physics and Chemistry Postdoctoral Researchers' Experiences and Career Intentions

12 April 2011
The IOP and RSC jointly initiated this project part-funded by the UKRC's Innovative and Collaborative Grants Scheme (IGCS), to look at how the experiences of male and female postdoctoral researchers (PDRs) in the two disciplines affected their long-term career intentions and whether the experiences of men and women in the two disciplines were different.

Overall the project found more differences between physicists and chemists than between men and women, confirming important cultural differences between the disciplines.

Where gender differences did exist they were generally greater between male and female chemists than between male and female physicists. 

However, the gender differences were less dramatic than those found in previous RSC studies of PhD chemists.