In my GHC poster “The Mid-Career Donut Hole”, I define it as follows:

Women are at least twice as likely to drop out of technical careers after 10 years.  The Mid-Career Donut Hole is the time when women are faced with multiple challenges that make them question whether they should continue a technical career.

In the poster, I selected 5 challenges that women face in technical careers that contribute to our high rate of attrition.  In putting together this poster, I wanted to share an overview of the research that shows how common these issues are and how they impact our careers.  Part of the difficulty for us in dealing with these issues is that they can be quite subtle, so you question whether you’re really seeing it, and whether what you’re seeing is unique.

References:

• “The abrasiveness trap: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews” by Kieran Snyder
• “Social incentives for gender differences in the propensity to initiate negotiations: Sometimes it does hurt to ask” (PDF) by Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, and Lei Lai
• The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation and Institutions by Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg
• “The Fatherhood Bonus and The Motherhood Penalty: Parenthood and the Gender Gap in Pay” by Michelle J. Budig
• The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology (PDF) by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Carolyn Buck Luce, Lisa J. Servon, Laura Sherbin, Peggy Shiller, Eytan Sosnovich, and Karen Sumberg