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AKARTA: Women who choose to be scientists will find it hard to develop their career, a scientist says.

Many female scientists will at one point in their future face the dilemma of choosing between serving their family and furthering their career, executive director Herawati Sudoyo of the state-owned Biological Molecular Research Center Eijkman said Monday as quoted by kompas.com.

She said that the dilemma had reduced the participation of women scientists in Indonesia’s research development.

“Statistically, 30 percent of our scientists are women. However, their participation in research is not that high,” she said.

“They do have great passion to be scientists, but when they have to choose between career and family, they tend to choose family,” she added.

Working as a scientist requires hard work, she said. “We sometimes spend most of our days at the laboratory,” she said.

Herawati said the situation was not exclusive to women in Indonesia, but also affected women the world over. —JP