One of Nusslein-Volhard's reflections on the life of women scientists was that because women usually put in more "house/home" hours than men (whether it be on cooking, cleaning, or childcare), they are stressed more by science's monomaniacal focus. She provides an interesting solution, which is to give mini-grants specifically for house or child care to women scientists in a time crunch. She actually administers a fund for this.
Speaking as someone whose clothes are perpetually wrinkled because I don't fold my clean laundry, I applaud. However, her funds are limited to women scientists who have children, since they have the worst of the overscheduling burden.
Is this the best solution? Would those of you with young 'uns prefer to have some cash to take care of them and/or the laundry, so you can scamper back to lab? Or would you prefer to have some time off of work? I think it's laudable to support women in this style, but it'd be nice to have some mechanism in place for women who really just want to take 6 months off after acquiring a kid.
15 years ago
5 comments:
I don't like this solution because it helps females w/kids function within a poorly constructed system rather than facilitating change within the system itself. I mean, I'm not against something that helps people with kids, but this shouldn't be limited to women w/kids, but men or women with kids who need help. Giving money to help with the housekeeping just propagates the notion that women keep house and men don't, rather than encouraging more equal division of tasks.
The money should be available for hiring an administrator, lecturer or research associate to work with young academics with kids, and to take some of the burden of admin, teaching or day to day lab management off their hands. I don't believe that taking 6 months off to have a kid would suite all women but the option should be available and the money would be better used towards that than cleaning house.
I totally agree with PD that this solution will propagate bad systems. One bad system is the requirement of monomaniacal focus for success in science. The second bad system is that of men who don't pull their fair share of the weight around the house. Women have started demanding fairer treatment from the men they work with. How about demanding fairer treatment from the men who should be their equal partners in life?
Oh I was just about to leave another comment acknowledging that my partner (Dr R) and I share everything very equally so my opinions may not represent those women who do have to do the lion's share of household duties. If I'm honest he does more of the nasty household tasks mainly because I can't iron worth a damn. I will admit that I am contemplating a cleaner if we can afford it because our workloads may well be quite high. But it is a luxury.
I'm with PD--at the point when we need to start giving people bonus grants so they can have someone else mop their kitchen, we are either (a) working people too hard, or (b) not paying people enough to begin with. Either way, time to let people flex a bit.
I think that the Nuesslein-Volhard Foundation has to be looked at in the right context. It's not something designed for the average US science woman. It's only for women living/working in Germany, where the culture of mom stays at home with the kids and dad goes out to work is still extremely strong. Fact is, that science moms (and non moms) in Germany probably are doing the vast majority of the household tasks, and can really benefit from something like this. Maternity leave exists legally and is extremely long and supportive financially, but the fact is that taking extended leaves from the lab doesn't help women scientists get ahead or even stay with their heads above the water. And going back is hardly an option with so much outside responsibilities.
I agree that it doesn't change the system, but it's one of the only practical solutions that tries to help out women RIGHT NOW, not with gradual we need to change the systems promises of better things to come in the future, when todays grad students and postdocs with kids won't benefit. I applaud Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard's efforts on this one.
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