In recent years the question ‘Why are there so few women in science?’ posed more than a quarter of a century ago by sociologist Alice Rossi, has been raised by her counterparts throughout the world, including the late Virginia Stolte-Heiskanen (Finland), Esther Hicks (the Netherlands), Fanny Tabak (Brazil), Mary Osborne (Germany) and Pnina Abir-Am (U.S.), among many others. Several intriguing anomalies in women's experience in science emerge from analysis of a range of contrasting national and social circumstances in the work we draw upon here. For example, female scientists and engineers in India have been found to be more productive than their male counterparts, as measured by numbers of research papers and patents produced, while Venezuelan women researchers are slightly less productive than men (Lemoine, 1994).

Women have attained greater access to higher-level positions in some southern European countries than in northern Europe (Talapessy, 1994). The nuclear family, characteristic of advanced industrialized societies, in the absence of substitute support structures, typically places a strain on women scientists. The traditional extended family, still commonplace in developing countries, provides significant support for female scientists in countries such as Brazil and Mexico.

Seeming contradictions are intertwined with unexpected findings about gender and science. Women have made the greatest gains in participation in technical fields under conditions where science is relatively low in status in comparison to other professions, for example in Turkey.