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The statistics that surprised me the most were in Sonnert and Holton's article within the section about Discrimination, Exclusion and Tokenism. The statistic illustrated that women who worked with female advisors (during their postdoctoral fellowships) had a higher chance of leaving the field of science than women who worked with male advisors (16.7% to 9%). For men, the opposite was true (0% to 8.7%). According to an interviewee of Sonnert and Holton's, this result came from the fact that for women, having a female advisor, gives an (unattractive) insight into life as a female scientist. This surprised and terrified me because i was always under the assumption that working with women who had accomplished their goals of becoming a scientist would somehow empower female students. I suppose, yet, this cannot be generalized to everyone but clearly this needs to be looked into more deeply.
Many statistics throughout the three articles worried me. In fact, most did. However, the first statistic that I came across that caught my eye was in the article by Mary Thom. This statistic looked into how easy men and women regarded consulting professors about personal ideas and interests. Results showed that men found it easier than women (52% to 38%). Again, this is just one of many disquieting statistics but this one really unsettled me because it became very clear how dabilitating this dilemma can be for the career path of female scientists. I can say with certainty that the relationship between student and professor is very important to the future of the student. If female students cannot overcome this (or rather, if the scientific community cannot be changed such that women may feel comfortable talking to their professors), then the discrepancies between female and men will always exist.