Helping the Minoritized Achieve in Academic Science

Archive for the ‘Kids’ Category

Kids Stuff

We have had a lot of good discussions so far about a variety of women’s issues, but there is one subject that we haven’t covered yet: children.

Many WomenOfScience, exactly like many MenOfScience, have a biological desire to reproduce. I am one of such “breeders” myself. Yet, there seems to be a higher potential barrier to WomenOfScience having children when they want to. We are going to spend several posts discussing practical solutions to the age old questions of: (1) Can I have children and be an academic scientist as a woman? (2) If so, when is the best time to have children? (3) How will people see me if I have children? (4) What are the social morés and codes in academia about children?

Do you have something to add? Please consider guest posting or commenting!

Category:

Career, Kids, New Job, TimeManagement, WomenRock

Women’s Issues: What Not To Wear

The following guest post addresses a particular woman’s issue that most men probably spend little time thinking about: what to wear. I know I have a couple of close WomenOfScience friends who I discuss my wardrobe choices with for teaching, going to conferences, or going on an interview. More on this in future posts.

As a woman and a scientist, finding the right balance between my masculine side and feminine side is no different from anyone else. However, the balance I choose to display can significantly influence others’ perceptions of both me and my work. As a student, postdoc, and assistant professor, I felt that I had to work hard to fit in with the boys. My uniform was jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. Make-up was anathema. More importantly, when I had children I took the minimum time off and did not take advantage of extensions of my tenure clock. I was certain that any childbearing-related exemptions I asked for would be viewed as a weakness.

As a professor with tenure, I now feel that I am freer to be myself. Some days that means high heels and makeup. Some days it means announcing that I am leaving early for child-care duties. My perception of freedom does not come from a change I see in society, but rather because I now have power. I do wonder, though, whether societal expectations of what a scientist should look like and act like have broadened. A recent conflict that played out on LinkedIn suggests that women who display stereotypically female outsides get judged as delegitimize scientists.

This article from The Daily Dot summarizes the events well, and I won’t try and repeat them. It is disheartening to see people conclude that an attractive, well-groomed woman is not a “real” engineer. I believe we should take this opportunity to discuss diversity with our trainees and explore our own openness to talent that doesn’t come in the expected package. I think each person needs to make up their own mind about how to respond to prejudice; I’m not sure I would know how to advise a female trainee about how to present herself. It is essential that trainees have the information they need to make self-presentation decisions, however, and if we don’t tell them, who will?

Do you feel that you could not wear or look how you wanted because you are a WomanOfScience? Does it matter what field of science you are in? What subfield? Theory vs. experiment? Comment or guest post.

Category:

Career, Kids, Tenure, WomenRock

Practice Makes Perfect

Practicing negotiating and having bargaining chips ready are important so that you are prepared when an opportunity to negotiate comes up.

Practice is easy, especially if you have children. They seem to be born negotiators. Don’t view the task of trying to convince them to eat their veggies as a chore. See it as practice negotiating. Think of a compromise solution that is moderate. Neither of you will get exactly what you want, but you will both get something and both give something.

Anticipate what the other party will want, but don’t start there. Start high, so that you have some room to work down. If your child wants to eat zero veggies, but you want her to eat 5 carrots, start with 10.

Have your bargaining chips ready. If you are asked to do something heinous, make sure you have something already pre-loaded that you can ask for in return for the favor of doing the crap work. For the child example, the child could request a dessert, if she eats all 10 carrots, as requested. That would be good forethought on the child’s part, and she would be eating all her carrots. You wouldn’t mind giving her the dessert after 10 carrots.

Obviously, there are other examples that don’t include kids, so please share. The point is to see the negotiating potential in all situations, and to practice your skills. It will eventually become second nature.

Category:

Kids, Negotiating, Uncategorized

Two-Body Solutions Bring More Problems?

This was a comment left by another WomanOfScience. I decided to repost to share with all. Enjoy!

Hello, WomanOfScience, this is your friend SeniorTrailingSpouse. I am not sure I like this name! I made up another one, below. For those of you who could not glean from my given name, my husband and I are both academics in science/engineering. We were apart for several years, during which time I had two babies and raised them up to school-age and almost-school-age largely on my own. After lots of looking, drama, negotiation with both institutions, we are now together at his institution.

I have so much to say on the Two Body Problem that I am not sure where to start. I will get around to writing the guest posts I have promised you, WOS. However, today in particular I am struggling with something, and I thought I should pose the comment/question to you and hopefully your blogosphere.

If you are lucky enough to have the Two Body Problem solved, how to then balance both of your ambitions? Suppose we both have the opportunity to submit (different) big grants, both with deadlines around the same time. Our own individual research programs are fine in terms of funding, so working on these grants would be a choice. These are both large-scale proposals that actually won’t give us much money directly, but are great for the institution and would be high-profile wins in terms of reputation if we get them.

But we are tired, and we want to spend some time with the kids this summer, now that we are finally together as a family. One of us could definitely work on a proposal like this while still leaving us collectively with enough “family time,” I think. But if we both choose to work on proposals like this, it will mean a lot of craziness this summer. So which one of us “leans back?”

Strangely, I never thought about this much when I was living apart from my husband, even though I was solely responsible for the kids during this time. My ambition was really only limited by what I could physically handle. Kids were in daycare a lot. If I had a big deadline, I hired extra babysitting help. If a particular project required consistently working after-hours, well — I couldn’t do it, or rather I was not willing to be away from the kids more often than I already was. Similarly, for travel, if I was invited to give a talk domestically, well fine. I made these trips as short as possible and cobbled together some solution — leave the kids with grandparents, bring Grandma along on a business trip with me, find a daycare in the area willing to do drop-in care. But if I was invited for an international trip — no, sorry, I could not manage this. (Saying no to these kind of trips was a choice, but again it was more than I felt I could handle at the time — I do know a single academic mom who did manage to take her daughter on international trips).

Now, living with my husband means I have more choices. He can of course watch them if I have to work late or if I am out of town. But when we both need to work, how do we balance this? I don’t want to just hire babysitters a lot so that we can both work like crazy — then our life wouldn’t be all that different than what we had before, honestly. It defeats the purpose of living together!

On a mostly separate note, I think work-life issues are one area where more senior women in science can benefit from mentoring from younger women. Mentoring does not have to go one-way, only from senior women to junior women. The culture has changed dramatically in the time that I’ve been in academia — negotiating for a position for your spouse was unheard of when I started. I think younger women have a better idea of how to navigate and negotiate issues around this than senior women do.

Category:

Career, Kids, TimeManagement, Two-BodyProblem, WomenRock

The Importance of Mentors

I feel very fortunate for having had a mother who worked. She was not a Ph.D. or a scientist, but she has had a career for my entire life. She was also very technical, as a computer programmer for many years. (Interesting side story: She was the only woman chosen to learn programming at BigTechnicalCompany where she and her entire family worked on the assembly line.) Although my mom always said she wished she could have been home with us when we were little and in school, I am very happy about the way things turned out. Her example of a woman with a successful career who was a fun and caring mother, set the example for me with my career and kids.

I had some minor anxiety and guilt about going back to work, when my kids were babies. But then I decided that I was giving my daughter a role model for how to be a mom with a career. Much like men, women do not have to CHOOSE between having a family and having a career. We can HAVE BOTH! We should not feel guilty for having both, but be happy that we are setting an example to the next generation.

Category:

Career, Kids, Mentoring, WomenRock

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