Do female scientists who have to take care of children while going out into the field have any career prospects?

To promote field research, fairness issues must be considered.

Written by Jessica C. Thompson (Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University and Director of the Yale Archaeology Laboratory)

Translation | Kestrel

The truck was filled with dust and diesel fuel, but it didn't matter, I was already dirty enough. These days, I dig holes during the day, check data at night, and sometimes repair cars in the afternoon. The water poured from the bucket can't wash away the greasy and rough feeling between my fingers. This is how I spent my summer - most summers are spent like this - leading field archaeology teams in central Africa.

Suddenly, two tiny feet appeared before my eyes. "Mom?" my second son was standing by the truck. "Someone wants to see you. Someone wants you to take them to the doctor." Once again, I felt how lucky I was to be here, but how trapped I was by the myth of the "ideal employee": not only must I have the highest academic productivity, but I must also be able to handle multiple demanding roles at the same time!

In the developed Global North, the percentage of women in my field has risen from “almost zero” in 1970 to “equal to” or even “exceeding” men today. Yet they are still a rarity in senior leadership. This is not unique to archaeology alone, but to other scientific fields as well. We don’t know what the ability to design and lead a field project has to do with whether the person is a man or a woman. But I do know that the logistics and bureaucracy associated with “going out into the field” are not friendly to women researchers. We know even less about how many people who lead field projects are “non-white” or other minorities, and for these people, the obstacles faced by women are only more severe.

If universities were willing to devote resources to the management of field projects, as some large laboratories have successfully done over the past two decades, they could reap immeasurable scientific productivity. In the field, PIs must be both researchers, managers, and promoters, and like so-called "unicorns", they must not only plan and execute their research work, but also deal with numerous and difficult logistical tasks: recruiting students to participate in projects, guiding students, planning itineraries, negotiating with funders, hiring local community personnel, compiling audio and video materials, managing accounts (often involving multiple currencies), and writing technical reports... These additional losses in time and energy are invisible and unpaid, but they greatly affect the status of already exhausted researchers.

Research shows that some researchers already undertake more service work, more emotional labor, and continue to experience higher academic burnout. These unexpected "pitfalls" are particularly prevalent on the road to field research. In STEM fields, women must fight to keep their teaching positions because the concept of leadership is tied to masculinity - which is obviously problematic - and is accompanied by rhetoric such as "personal sacrifices are required for promotion." In the classroom, students tend to feel that female professors are "nurturers"; when the situation shifts to field work, students will have more serious gendered expectations: they believe that female PIs should be more considerate and take better care of people/teams than male PIs.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking challenge for women is balancing being a mother and being in the field (heavy scientific work). Previously, I talked about the decreasing number of female PIs in all scientific fields that require field work, not just archaeology, on the BBC Science in Action program. Just after the program was broadcast, a female researcher working in the polar regions sent me an email saying that having a child was a huge factor that drove her away from field research and no longer doing scientific research.

The timing of researchers' tenure track evaluation often coincides with the period in a woman's life when she is most likely to get pregnant and give birth. On the one hand, they have to focus on field research, and on the other hand, they are either preparing for pregnancy or pregnant or breastfeeding, and the complexity of their work increases exponentially. Once a child is born, women have to bear much more arduous childcare work at home than men, and this period is their golden period of creativity - for all these reasons, it becomes particularly difficult for female researchers to lead a field study.

During these years of being in the field, my team members would call me the “mother” of the project, but I was actually very conflicted. “Mom of three” is indeed one of my core identities, but motherhood encompasses far more than just logistics. In the field, your team is your family. I have held students’ hands to see the doctor, dealt with their interpersonal problems, and cleared their plates. Occasionally, when my patience ran out, I would wonder, if I were a man, would they not always expect me to take care of them? Or, if I were the “leader of the project” rather than the “mother of the project,” would they be more receptive and supportive of my claims?

Being a mother also brings with it extra practical expenses. I often spend thousands of dollars on my own travel with my children. My university only provides up to $1,000 per year for faculty and staff who need to care for their children during professional travel. This is a drop in the bucket, but it is generous compared to other places that don't even provide this subsidy. I think funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) should support family travel and allow for reimbursement of expenses incurred in field care. In fact, many field research sites are not as risky as legal teams think, but instead provide safe and reliable cross-cultural encounters and learning opportunities. If taxpayers think that supporting other people's children's travel is a complete waste of money, let's look at it from another perspective: government funding is much higher than university funding - in the countries where I do archaeology, my daily living costs are only 3% of the government daily funding of those who receive US government funding; the difference between my food expenses and the maximum meal reimbursement is enough to fly my two children back and forth.

Fieldwork is absolutely essential in career planning. In my field of archaeology, fieldwork experience is a very important requirement for applying for the few tenured positions, and you still have to continue to go out into the field after you get tenure. So universities and funding agencies should be more strategic and provide more support to make it easier for fieldworkers, especially women and minority researchers, to start and carry out projects.

As for those cumbersome regulations that are not compatible with remote field conditions, universities should re-evaluate their rationality and decisively invest money in field stations, field transportation and field management positions, invest in infrastructure, increase scientific research output, and reduce the time PIs spend on management. The standard for measuring academic productivity is generally the number of funds obtained, research results published and cited, which leads to the advantage of short-term and fast projects over long-term projects and often assigns higher priority. This does not encourage field research because it takes many years to develop a field project, not to mention that these projects are full of "non-promotable tasks", which makes it more difficult to carry out "parachute science" in former colonial countries (referring to scientists from developed countries "parachuting" to developing countries to do field projects) because PIs lack long-term financial and logistical support to establish meaningful community partnerships.

The support needed for field research is not only about equality, but also about efficiency. Universities must realize that for every extra hour PIs spend dealing with thorny logistical issues, they spend one less hour on academics. Expecting everyone to stay up late and work overtime on weekends to make up for scientific research tasks is not a long-term solution after all. In the United States, universities charge the federal government an average of an additional 55% as indirect costs for conducting research on campus (indirect costs refer to expenses related to academic projects but not directly used for specific research, such as building maintenance, library services, water, electricity, heating, administrative services, etc.), while for research conducted outside the campus, the indirect cost rate is only half of the former. But less funding does not mean that universities do not need to support off-campus research. In addition to being used to take care of researchers' children while they are out in the field, indirect costs can also be used to hire project managers to centrally manage multiple projects at the same time. NGOs have long used this management model.

Universities should re-emphasize the importance of field experience, not only when applying for jobs, but also when evaluating jobs. This will encourage researchers to lead field research. Universities can also revise the selection criteria for tenure, and when recruiting an active field researcher, consider in advance how much funding he/she will need to build a long-term field project. Making such institutional changes will not only bring material benefits, but also fill the gaps in social support, which can help women and minorities embark on the path of leadership in STEM fields.

As we all know, Women in STEM and Girls Who Code are committed to changing the significant gender imbalance in the scientific community. One of the four goals of the NSF's 2022-2026 annual plan is to develop a diverse scientific workforce, which is expected to double the number of women in STEM fields and more than double the number of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans so that the proportion of people in STEM fields can represent the proportion of the US population. Universities need to be more aware that these groups face additional obstacles in specific disciplines.

It is not a problem to choose a position where you can spend more time with your family, or a position where you don’t have to worry about management. The problem is that when you choose and choose, you find that you only have this one option. In the field of field research, those researchers who have just started their careers, female scientific researchers, and minority researchers, when they want to take on important responsibilities, are trapped by the structural oppression of the academic community and cannot balance work and life. They have to choose between career prospects and life needs, which will ultimately cause our field to miss many exciting field discoveries. By improving the funding model for field work, universities can not only diversify the leaders of field research, but also break the "airborne science" model of field research, strengthen the academic training of students, and maximize the productivity of the teaching staff.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I have to get back to doing the accounting for today’s field trip.

This article is translated with permission from
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion-universities-must-incentivize-field-based-research-as-an-equity-issue-70862

The original title is: Opinion: Universities Must Incentivize Field-Based Research as an Equity Issue

Produced by: Science Popularization China

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