We investigate whether having an advisor of the same gender is correlated with the productivity of PhD science students and their propensity to stay in academic science. Our analysis is based an original dataset – combined from dissertation abstracts, faculty directories and bibliometric data – covering nearly 20,000 PhD graduates and their advisors from U.S. chemistry departments. We find that students working with advisors of the same gender tend to be more productive during the PhD;​ and that female students working with female advisors are considerably more likely to become faculty themselves. We suggest that the under-representation of women in science and engineering faculty positions may perpetuate itself through the lower availability of same-gender advisors for female students.