Barriers and Leaky Pipelines: Dependent Care Roles for Researchers, the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and SETAC’s Role in the Post-Pandemic World

Tristan Smythe, Carleton University; Edited by Mason King, Simon Fraser University, and Sophia Schreckenbach, Université Laval

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, dependent care responsibilities were increasingly being recognized as significant barriers to career advancement within STEM. Dependent care, particularly in the form of childcare, also disproportionately affects women earlier in their careers due to biological, prejudicial and socially constructed demands, and contributes to the metaphorical leak in the academic pipeline to advanced career positions in research. Over the past few years, SETAC has continued its support for improving the accessibility of its annual meetings, from the evolution of more family friendly policies (e.g., on-site nursing rooms and allowing accompanied minors in all meeting areas) to the introduction of the SETAC North America Dependent Care Grant in 2019 and the Diversity Attendance Grant in 2020. More recently however, the COVID-19 pandemic has left a lasting mark on the world in the number of individuals, families and friends who have been both directly and indirectly affected by the virus. Moreover, the pandemic has led to a significant shift in the way many organizations conduct their activities with an increase in working from home (WFH) or attending virtual meetings and conferences through online platforms. However, the move to a WFH model and the switch to virtual meetings, in conjunction with school and day care closures, has had significant impacts on parental work–life balance and childcare. With the first hybrid meeting of SETAC North America fast approaching in November this year in Portland, there remain a number of questions about what dependent care support will look like in the post-pandemic era.

As outlined in a recent career feature in Nature, scientist-mothers face discrimination, drops in productivity, and inequity in both wages and promotion when compared with their male counterparts. Moreover, for many researchers, the timing of needing childcare coincides with critical and demanding early career milestones. Childcare is a major barrier for many primary caregivers to attend conferences, and the specific duties of childcare change over time. “I’ve been lucky to have access to reliable childcare at home so that I can travel to conferences,” says Amila de Silva, a Research Scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and active SETAC member. While monetary, logistical, teaching and research commitments all play a role in limiting the number and choice of conferences that one may attend in a given year, for de Silva and others like her, dependent care is yet another factor involved in this process. “I consider myself the primary caregiver and as such, even with access to childcare, there is an additional layer of responsibility I carry. This means that I cannot attend every conference, speaking engagement or workshop that could benefit my career.” This issue is well described by Rebecca M. Calisi in her article published in PNAS in 2018 on the topic, dubbed therein as the “childcare-conference-conundrum.” This message was further echoed by Calisi herself, who was invited as the guest speaker for the Women in SETAC Luncheon during the SETAC North America 39th Annual Meeting in 2018.

Conferences, such as those organized by SETAC, are critical for the advancement not just of science but for the careers of the scientists they engage, and particularly of early career researchers looking to forge career pathways and make a name for themselves. Whether it is through making professional connections, new collaborations, receiving important feedback on new projects or tricky data interpretations, or from the “Eureka!” moments on seeing the work of colleagues, SETAC, and other conferences like it, are a key piece of the experience of being a scientist. “Let’s face it,” de Silva says, “In an era of crushing publication overload (how big is your ‘to read’ folder?), conferences are where you can absorb a fulsome and current snapshot of the latest and greatest. A major pressure for early career researchers,“ she continues, “comes from the ‘fear of missing out,’ or FOMO, many worry that disappearing from a conference program for a year might lead to a cascade effect of being forgotten, left out and discarded.” And particularly for women, those fears may be founded given the aforementioned research on the subject.

For many parents, the COVID-19 pandemic has required significant adjustment, with many becoming teachers or teacher-assistants practically overnight in the wake of school and day care closures. For some, a return to work may mean not being able to share caregiving responsibilities, or an uncertainty with how or what safety precautions are being taken to keep them or other dependents (e.g., grandparents living at home) safe. For instance, parental burnout and anxiety surrounding balancing work and family life significantly increased during 2020. With the inability to hold in-person events, the pandemic sparked a dramatic shift in conference accessibility with the move to virtual platforms and prerecorded sessions.

The greater access to the scientific program and the flexibility is amazing for those who have a complex juggling routine at home. The virtual conference format has also been an equalizer for those who find full engagement challenging at an in-person conference, i.e., introverts, people with disabilities, people who cannot travel, and those with dependents. The not-so-great aspects? How do you make yourself stand out in an entirely online program? It is a bit harder to market yourself in a virtual format, but there are things you can do. Get ultra-creative with your presentation title and format, choose the right session to showcase your work, and maximize your interactions online. —Amila de Silva

However, balancing dependent care responsibilities while also attending a virtual conference – or indeed even other work responsibilities that would normally be on hold when attending in-person – can be challenging. “I maintain an intricate timetable that balances childcare and conference engagement,” says Amy Rand, an Assistant Professor at Carleton University and who had her first child during the pandemic, “As a result I had to place less priority on attending virtual networking events.” With two young children enrolled in online schooling who needed a lot of parental involvement, de Silva notes that the pandemic has had a significant impact on her research productivity, noting in particular that “This is something I feel when I attend meetings nowadays as some researchers have maintained or even increased their research productivity. That’s alright though. Every career ebbs and flows.” More generally, the pandemic has increased the amount of time parents spend with their children. For Jonathan Challis, a postdoc at the University of Saskatchewan and a recent parent, “I’ve been able to spend much more time at home with my daughter then I ever would have if I wasn’t working from home.”

Of course, with vaccinations being more widely available in North America and overall COVID cases generally on the decline despite waves of infections, things are slowly returning to a “new normal.” Many workplaces have seen the feasibility and benefit of WFH, and conferences are looking towards traditional in-person or hybrid annual meetings after having been forced to adopt flexible attendance options. For SETAC, SciCon, SciCon2 and the Europe 2021 meetings were fully virtual and overall met with success. While the transition was no mean feat, these meetings demonstrated the feasibility of virtual platforms, with a mix of prerecorded sessions and live discussions, plenaries, and a multitude of networking events. The ability to watch research talks at any time and even for a limited period after the conferences is also a boon as we all know the anxiety of having to choose between two compelling but concurrent platforms (or having to run across the convention center to make the second on time). However, virtual connection is not a panacea. Zoom burnout is real, and the COVID-19 pandemic has also shown many of us the value of in-person interactions. With the overall benefits towards accessibility for both presenters and attendees, I hope to see SETAC and other scientific societies continue to offer virtual options (whether in full or in part) for annual meetings in the future, like what is being done for the hybrid SETAC North America 42nd Annual Meeting this November. As described previously by de Silva, the virtual option has been an equalizer for many, including those with dependent care responsibilities that may not otherwise be able to attend the conference in person.

It is also important that the barriers of dependent care continue to be addressed, from the availability of childcare services at the venue for the duration of the conference, to the support of travel grants to offset dependent care costs associated with attending annual meetings, such as the grant offered by SETAC. Moreover, it is important to recognize that dependent care does not cease in the virtual format and that such grants could help offset the costs of providing care while the primary caregiver attends virtual meetings and events. Thus, we feel that such grants should be available to everyone to apply for regardless of their in-person or virtual attendance.

Author’s contact information: [email protected]