Like their male counterparts, women scientists are above average in

Hi there,

Like their male counterparts, women scientists are above average in terms of intelligence and creativity, but unlike men of science their female counterparts have had to work
against the grain of occupational stereotyping to enter a “man’s world.”

This sentence uses two “their”. The first one appears at the beginning before “male counterparts”. The antecedent for this pronoun is “women scientists”.

The second “their” appears before “female counterparts”. The antecedent for this pronoun is “men of science”. Now use of same pronoun for two different antecedents leads to pronoun ambiguity error in the sentence. The sentence now suggests that the women scientists not only have male counterparts but also have female counterparts.

The construction “their male counterparts” and “their female counterparts” appears to be parallel. However, this faulty parallelism leads to pronoun ambiguity that has been explained above. It is not preferable to use same pronoun for two different entities in one sentence.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha