Briefs · Frontier Science
The impossible equation of being a researcher mother, striving to make ends meet
Academia has a motherhood problem. It calls it a pipeline problem.
Since the 1980s, landing a permanent research post in France has demanded a good PhD, regular publications, conferences and lab life — much of it unpaid ‘hope labour’. For non-tenured mothers, that means cramming several days’ work into one, writing a thesis while a child is in hospital, or linking a career to a spouse’s income. A survey in Denmark found one in three women abandon a scientific career after the birth of their first child; meanwhile some non-tenured fathers enjoy an academic paternity bonus — one completed ‘nearly two articles in one month of paternity leave’.
The system calls this an initiatory rite of passage. One researcher (Élodie) calls it Sisyphus: work that will never be recognised, because she had a child at the end of her PhD.
Conclusion: the equation is not impossible. It is rigged.
Read the original at The Conversation (Science and Technology)
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