Gender and caregiving influence academic performance of ecologists

PIQUER-RODRÍGUEZ, MARÍA; NOVILLO, AGUSTINA; SANDOVAL SALINAS, MARÍA LEONOR; FONTANARROSA, GABRIELA; NÚÑEZ MONTELLANO, M. GABRIELA; ÁLVAREZ, MARISA; ASCHERO, VALERIA; CHILLO, VERÓNICA; FANJUL, M. ELISA; PERO, EDGARDO; RODRÍGUEZ, DANIELA; SCHROEDER, NATALIA; ZARBÁ, LUCÍA; LOMÁSCOLO, SILVIA B.

Praga

Congreso; 6th European Congress of Conservation Biology; 2022

In science, greater dedication leads to higher performance. Consequently, scientists with caregiving responsibilities will suffer downfalls in productivity. Caregivers are mainly women, so their career is highly affected. Based on a self-perception survey among Argentinean ecologists, we studied the distribution of caregiving responsibilities, time use distribution at work, and perception of researchers’ own work in relation to gender. We found that a larger percentage of women carry caregiving duties, and dedicate less uninterrupted time to work and more to non-work-related tasks than their male counterparts. We found no effect of caregiving on age at promotion, although women tend to start earlier stages of their careers younger than men. Women tend to value their own work more poorly than men. Moreover, the work-family balance is perceived negatively by women in the early career stages. We claim that caregiving duties must be considered worldwide when evaluating a researcher’s performance, especially for women. Public policies must help relieve women from heavy caregiving tasks and facilitate leaving their home space to detach from not-work-related tasks. Greater peer recognition of women’s research should increase their participation as advisers and referents, as well as their own work recognition and that of other women.