{credit}Cody Anthony Hernandez{/credit}
By Kendall Powell
By Chris Woolston
Statue of Charles Darwin in Natural History Museum{credit} Philippe Lissac /GODONG/Getty{/credit}
The current postdoctoral career structure benefits the biomedical research system, but not necessarily early career researchers, says Vicky Sherwood. Continue reading 
The University of Oxford has a female vice chancellor, Louise Richardson, who took up the post in January 2016. {credit}Getty{/credit}
Just 34 of leading universities named in this year’s annual Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings have female presidents, down 1% from the 36 that were led by women in 2017. Continue reading
Rebecca and her daughter at the annual conference for the Animal Behavior Society at the University of Colorado in 2013
Calisi, a behavioural neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, and a group of 45 other scientist-parents, have turned their frustrations into a call for action. In a paper published online Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers detail the shortcomings of past conferences and offer a blueprint for making conferences more welcoming and accessible to parents of young children.
By not providing accommodations for children, Calisi says, conferences can unintentionally create barriers that exclude large swaths of scientists—especially early-career scientist-mothers who may not be able to afford childcare. “One part of promoting diversity is supporting women with children,” Calisi says. “If institutions say they want to support diversity, they should put their money where there mouth is.”
In the paper, Calisi and co-authors suggest that conferences could fund on-site childcare services, lactation rooms and other amenities by asking for voluntary donations during registration. Exhibitors who make a donation could receive a sign or emblem that show their support. “I guarantee you they would get more foot traffic,” Calisi tells Nature. The paper also calls for all conferences to clearly state that parents are allowed to bring babies to talks and poster sessions. For now, she says, rules about children seem to change from conference to conference and even from hour to hour. She notes that researchers with babies were recently turned away from a poster session at a large conference even though the official policy permitted children in the exhibit area.
A practical, comfortable space for breastfeeding or pumping breast milk is an especially important accommodation, Calisi says. “A lactation room tells you a lot about how much a [scientific] society values women,” she says. In November, she turned to Twitter to complain about the facilities at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting, held last year in Washington DC. Within hours of that tweet, the society provided more comfortable lounge chairs for mothers. “It’s not that the society was anti-women,” she says. “They just didn’t know.”
SfN, for its part, aims to become more inclusive. “The society is actively exploring ways to continue to enhance the spaces for nursing mothers in San Diego [California] this year and at SfN’s future meetings,” says society spokesperson Kara Flynn in a statement to Nature. She adds that the society is committed to “fostering a welcome and diverse community in which all scientists are able to contribute fully.”
Some conferences are already parent-friendly, Calisi says. She recently attended the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement in Science in Austin, Texas, where the lactation room was comfortable and easily accessible. “I gave them two thumbs up,” she says.
Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
Suggested posts:
Caroline Weinberg, an organizer for the upcoming march in Washington DC, expects smaller crowds than last year, although she admits her prediction may again be off the mark. “Last we expected 40,000 people, and we got around 100,000,” she says. She adds that most of the marchers in the nation’s capital city were concerned citizens, not practicing researchers.
In Washington DC and elsewhere, organisers envision events with fewer marchers, placards and chants but more advocacy-related activities. Weinberg and others aim to offer hands-on projects for those taking to the streets in Washington DC. In Berlin, Germany, organisers are planning a “local hero” programme where scientists will give public talks at bars, cafes and other venues. March-related activities in Portland, Oregon, will include speeches by local politicians and a science expo with at least 30 presenters, including a juggler who demonstrates the principles of physics.
The election and inauguration of Donald Trump for US president helped to spur marchers last year, and Weinberg says that she suspects that some scientists this year may be motivated to speak out against Trump’s recent budget proposal, which called for drastic cuts to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending plan . But she adds that the march and other forms of science activism shouldn’t depend on crises to draw interest and participation. “Our challenge is to build up a huge crowd and send a message that galvanizes everyone but to also make it sustainable,” she says. “We can’t allow our advocacy to be tethered to those moments.”
Roughly 15,000 people attended last year’s march in Portland, but that kind of enthusiasm will be hard to replicate, says Denesa Oberbeck, a behavioral neuroscientist at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland and a member of the steering committee for this year’s march. “There’s some fatigue and some burnout, but we need to keep fighting,” she says. “We have to maintain an activist stance.”
Kristine Wadosky, a cancer researcher at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, marched in Washington DC last year carrying a sign that read “Curing cancer is non-partisan.” This year, she plans to join the march in Chicago, Illinois, where she will give a talk on advanced prostate cancer for the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. She says that she’s just as energized about science advocacy as ever before, and she thinks that many other young scientists feel the same way.
This time, Wadosky says, she won’t need a sign to send her message, which isn’t especially complicated. “I just want to go to show that I’m a scientists, and I exist,” she says.
Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
Suggested reading:
Growing pains
In support of the March
Reflections on a movement
Transitioning from academia to industry is a common direction for a career move. But it is possible to move the other way, even as a mother of five children?In this podcast we share Paula Littlejohn’s story. Paula started her microbiology PhD at the University of British Columbia, Canada, a year ago, after a decade in industry and having five children. We find out how she juggled the demands of an academic career alongside motherhood.
One study suggests that the concept of “brilliance” in science might discourage some women from following certain career paths or education opportunities. Another found that women are more likely than men to offer “honorary authorships” to scientists who may not or do not deserve it—a courtesy that might obscure the magnitude of their own contributions. Continue reading
