Podcast: Play in new window | Download
#ScienceMama Karen McGregor from the Daphne Jackson Trust talks about why it’s important to support parents who wish to return to a career in academic science.
#ScienceMama KAren McGregor
Printed with permission
Karen McGregor is a #ScienceMama turned #ScienceMama, #SciencePapa & #Scientist advocate, supporting people who wish to return to work in an academic research position after taking a career break.
In this podcast we talk about who, out of this group, most of takes a career break; why they do so; why it’s important to support them to return; and what that support can look like.
“The reality is that the majority of the fellowships that we offer are for people who have taken their break to raise a family. And the majority of those are for women, because women do still primarily take on the lead in childcare. So, it’s usually running at about 90% – 95% of the fellowships we give out go to women.” – Karen McGregor, Daphne Jackson Trust, UK.
You can also listen to this podcast on SoundCloud.
Thanks for starting this podcast. I’m in the middle of writing two grants and am trying to navigate my ‘relative to opportunities’ section. It’s tough being a working mum!
I left the US to return to my home country to start a family (husband’s request) where science is who you know not what you know and my ‘Americanised’ cv is completely backwards to the ideal cv in my home country. Receiving cv critiques from senior male scientists is really heart breaking . Two of my favourites:
‘You haven’t really done anything since your last big paper’
I was having a baby. Yeah, that kind of counts as something big. Oh and minus my maternity- I’ve only actually been at work 2 years since that big paper and that included an international move, a new project oh and growing said baby with pregnancy complications due to advanced maternal age. Rather unfortunate that the best time to have a baby coincides with large career leaps (hello 35!!)
And the second most common comment
‘Try not to publish so high, you need to introduce more volume of lower impact papers’
Yuh. Ok.
*insert thumbs up GIF from Jennifer lawrence*