Women are likelier than men to leave the professoriate at all stages of their careers—and workplace climate, not work-life balance, is the biggest reason they leave, a new study finds.

“The dominant incongruences for women arise from workplace climate, including dysfunctional leadership, feelings of not belonging to the department or university, harassment and discrimination,” concluded the study published this month in Science Advances. “Such incongruences highlight the way departmental and institutional policies and norms tend to reflect, accommodate and reinforce the traditional overrepresentation of white men from more privileged backgrounds, thereby driving gendered attrition over a career and inducing a substantial, asymmetric loss of overall talent and scholarship.”