Is it difficult being a woman scientist?" the biochemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was asked at high table dinner in an Oxford college by the man sitting next to her. "Not since I won the Nobel Prize," she replied. 1 In 1964, the British press had reacted to her award with the headlines: "Oxford housewife wins Nobel" and "British woman wins Nobel Prize-£18 750 prize to mother of three." 2 While such overtly sexist treatment of female scientists by the media is now rare, progress towards gender equality in universities has been astonishingly slow. A UK parliamentary inquiry into women in scientific careers found that with only 17% of professors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in 2011-12 women were still under-represented at senior levels across all STEM disciplines. 3 Concerned with the sustainability of increasing the scientific workforce, the inquiry concluded that efforts to inspire more women into science were wasted if they were subsequently disadvantaged compared with men and recommended that universities should do more to support and retain women in scientific careers. 3