My future, ladies and gents

[exsequar]

From a purely Darwinian point of view, expecting a young woman to sacrifice her reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement is simply too much, and yet the structure of academic research, in which one must spend one’s 20s and early 30s as a poorly compensated and minimally empowered graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, and the remainder of one’s 30s and into the low 40s working madly to earn tenure, can demand exactly that.

From The New York Times.

....... ;___;

Comments

[missmollyetc.livejournal.com]

Hi! Uh, you...don't know me, but I've been friends list surfing and I just wanted to take a moment to respond to this article. I hope you don't mind, but this is a subject rather close to my heart.

It does take years and years in academia to get an advanced degree and it can take longer to get tenure, however as an MA holder myself, I can say that I've known women in my program working towards tenure and women working towards degrees who have children, and who planned and became pregnant while working towards either goal. My own mother gained her MAT while single-parenting two children. You can, actually, accomplish your professional goals and have a family as well. It's not easy, but it isn't impossible.