Meet Grace, a scientist who works in the office of international health at the U.S. embassy in South Africa. (Listen to a brief interview here, a transcript is here.)

Grace is concerned that female scientists in South Africa lack the same opportunities as their male counterparts.

Unfortunately, here in the United States we struggle with the same problem. It appears that women have the same opportunities - at least initially - as men in many science disciplines. When I was in graduate school, half of the students were female. Yet there are far fewer female professors than male professors.

Women’s share of tenured or tenure-track science and engineering faculty - what we commonly think of as professors - increased from 10 percent in 1979 to 28 percent in 2006, according to a study by the National Science Foundation. An improvement, but the percent of female full professors is still much lower than the percent of women awarded Ph.D. degrees. In psychology, 33 percent of all full professors were women in 2006, despite the fact that women earned 71 percent of psychology doctoral degrees that same year.

The Association for Women in Science is a nonprofit organization in the U.S. that advocates for the interests of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They support creating family-friendly policies in the scientific workplace.

There are many other organizations that support women in science. Check out the L’Oreal-UNESCO booklet on young women in science.

Are there similar organizations in South Africa, or in other countries in Africa?