Ten years after Breaking Patterns? How Female Scientists Negotiate their Token Role in their Life Stories (Haas, Koeszegi & Zedlacher, 2016), the numbers have moved — but the patterns have proven remarkably resilient. Across the EU, women now earn 41% of doctoral degrees in science and engineering, yet account for only 34% of researchers; while they are better represented in the lower academic grades, their share declines with every step of seniority — down to just 20% of full professors in science and engineering (She Figures 2024). This keynote takes stock of these developments and asks why decades of equality initiatives have shifted proportions without dismantling structures. At the centre of my talk lies the problem of identity negotiation. Drawing on token theory and a biographical analysis of the life stories of female scientists, I show that women in male-dominated fields must continuously negotiate conflicting professional and gender identities. Two coping strategies emerge: a similarity strategy of assimilation to masculine norms ("my life is unexceptional") and a difference strategy of emphasizing otherness and struggling for equality ("I am different"). The sobering finding: neither strategy breaks patterns. Both leave the masculine norms of science unchallenged, while placing the burden of adaptation on individuals. Revisiting these findings today also means questioning the framework itself: sameness and difference are two poles of one binary in which masculinity remains the unmarked norm of the "real" scientist — a dilemma that cannot be resolved by choosing a side, and that weighs even more heavily on those whose identities fall outside the binary altogether. Breaking patterns, I argue, therefore requires more than counting and "fixing" the underrepresented: it demands deconstructing the gendered notion of scientific excellence itself, so that belonging in science no longer depends on negotiating one's identity against a norm.