For #AdaLovelaceDay Bristol asked us to tweet what we were doing at work, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to test out a hypothesis I've had for a while: that a lot of female scientists have parents who are also scientists.
The thinking behind this hypothesis was that a scientist parent could make up for a failings elsewhere, like at school. A quick survey of my co-workers revealed that there were also quite a few female scientists with no scientist parents but they had been to an all girls school. So an alternative hypothesis was that female scientists are more likely to have been to a single sex school.
Not knowing any better, I used survey monkey to set up a quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XJX2LR5.
I sent it to a few friends, who sent it to a few people, and then as people were responding, I sent it to my department at Bristol.
At 10pm this evening we have 310 responses!
As usual, the results are not straightforward! Part of the problem was that the vast majority (86%) of respondents were female, so there was not much power in the results.
However, I'm afraid to say that my principle hypothesis does not appear supported at all!
