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The ADVANCE team is creating a variety of resources and tools to help our faculty and campus leadership promote institutional transformation by cultivating faculty equity, inclusion and success. We developed each two-page tool by culling best-practices from our research findings and workshops, and with input from our faculty and campus leaders.

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UMass ADVANCE is funded by a five-year (2018-2023) $3.1 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant to advance gender equity for UMass Amherst faculty. The grant is titled Collaboration and Equity: The Resources, Relationships, and Recognition (R3) Model for Advancing Women and Underrepresented Faculty in Science and Engineering. National Science Foundation #1824090 & #2136150. Read more about the UMass NSF ADVANCE grant.

UMass ADVANCE is funded by a five-year (2018-2023) $3.1 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant to advance gender equity for UMass Amherst faculty. The grant is titled Collaboration and Equity: The Resources, Relationships, and Recognition (R3) Model for Advancing Women and Underrepresented Faculty in Science and Engineering. National Science Foundation #1824090 & #2136150. Read more about the UMass NSF ADVANCE grant.

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UMass ADVANCE is funded by a five-year (2018-2023) $3.1 million National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant to advance gender equity for UMass Amherst faculty. The grant is titled Collaboration and Equity: The Resources, Relationships, and Recognition (R3) Model for Advancing Women and Underrepresented Faculty in Science and Engineering.

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Leading Change in Gender and Diversity in Higher Education

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Leading Change in Gender and Diversity in Higher Education

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Leading Change in Gender and Diversity in Higher Education - Open Access -https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy.library.kent.edu/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003286943/leading-change-gender-diversity-higher-education-margins-mainstream-anna-cohenmiller-tamsin-hinton-smith-nupur-samuel-fawzia-haeri-mazanderani?_gl=1*1yb7nd5*_gcl_au*MTE4MDQ1NTcyNS4xNzE5MDg3MzE3*_ga*OTQ4Njc1NjQ0LjE3MTkwODczMTc.*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTcyNTAxODEwOC45LjAuMTcyNTAxODEwOC42MC4wLjA.

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Resources for practitioners and researchers seeking ethnic minority-related information on accreditation, best practices for psychological treatment of ethnic minority populations and more:

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Resources for practitioners and researchers seeking ethnic minority-related information on accreditation, best practices for psychological treatment of ethnic minority populations and more:

Diversity and Accreditation (print version: $2.00)
Questions and actions program chairs and directors of clinical, counseling and school psychology programs should consider when addressing the degree to which their program complies with accreditation Domain D: Cultural and individual differences and diversity. 1997. The first five copies are free.

How to Recruit and Hire Ethnic Minority Faculty (print version: $2.00)
In this booklet, the APA Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training in Psychology (CEMRRAT) outlines key considerations and strategies for aggressive recruitment and hiring of ethnic minority persons into faculty positions. The first five copies are free.

Handbook for Increasing Ethnic Minority Participation in State Psychological Associations and APA Divisions (free)
The purpose of this handbook is to encourage the creativity and goodwill that must accompany any effort to increase ethnic minority representation and participation.

Surviving and Thriving in Academia (sold out)
Discusses critical incidents and decisions that may confront women and ethnic minorities as they enter and progress through the academic pipeline. A wonderful resource for early career academics. Developed jointly by the APA Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training in Psychology, and the APA Committee on Women in Psychology. 1998. The document is available online only.

Valuing Diversity in Faculty: A Guide (print version: $2.00)
This booklet, prepared by the APA Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention and Training in Psychology (CEMRRAT), discusses various issues related to the promotion of cultural diversity among faculty and departments of psychology. The first five copies are free.

Psychological Treatment of Ethnic Minority Populations (PDF, 612KB)(print version: $5.00)
This brochure was developed to empower ethnic minority consumers of psychological services and to inform psychological researchers and trainers as well as funders and providers of psychological services. The first copy is free to APA members.

Contact the Ethnicity, Race, and Cultural Affairs Portfolio

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Ethnicity, Race, and Cultural Affairs Portfolio Brochures and Handbooks

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Resources for practitioners and researchers seeking ethnic minority-related information on accreditation, best practices for psychological treatment of ethnic minority populations and more: Diversity and Accreditation (print version: $2.00) Questions and actions program chairs and directors of clinical, counseling and school psychology programs should consider when addressing the degree to which their program complies with accreditation Domain D: Cultural and individual differences and diversity.

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The survival guide to academia for women and members of marginalized groups is an updated and revised edition of a guide first published in 1992 by the American Psychological Association (APA) Committee on Women in Psychology (CWP). In 1998, the guide was updated as the result of a collaborative effort between CWP and the APA Commission on Ethnic Minority Recruitment, Retention, and Training in Psychology (CEMRRAT). This third edition is designed to address changes that have taken place since the production of the second edition in 1998, which may dramatically affect the level of success, even the survival, of women and psychologists of color pursuing careers in academic environments and/or in private practice. This third edition is once again a collaborative effort between the CEMRRAT2 Task Force and CWP. This third edition of the guide continues to focus on women and psychologists of color pursuing careers in academia, including African Americans/Blacks, American Indians/Native Americans, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, Latinas/os/Hispanics, White women (in some contexts), and the potential issues regarding intersectionality for these populations with other identities (i.e., sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, etc

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How can faculty members document pandemic impacts?

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How can faculty members document pandemic impacts?

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Joya Misra. 2020. Documenting COVID-19 Impacts: Best Practices. University of Massachusetts Amherst ADVANCE Program.

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Download the Tool
Why document the impact?

The COVID-19 pandemic immediately impacted faculty members' workloads. Most faculty members have had to do significantly more work, moving courses online, mentoring students in need, reworking university programs and addressing COVID-19 risks, and helping communities manage current realities. At the same time, many faculty members are experiencing damage to their productivity and research record, due to lack of access to labs and facilities, research sites, and research subjects, as well as canceled conferences and inability to travel to conduct research and meet with collaborators.

These effects are exacerbated by differences among faculty. Those with children at home that need care or homeschooling or other family members that need care, face limited work time ( research shows that women are submitting fewer journal articles during the pandemic). Women and faculty of color were already burdened by higher levels of mentoring students, which takes on new weight during the pandemic. Faculty of color are more likely to be suffering losses, and providing care for extended family members. Those facing intersectional inequalities, such as women of color, face the highest burdens. Vulnerable faculty members may also be less comfortable drawing attention to COVID-19 impacts.

The impacts of the pandemic will resonate throughout faculty careers for many years. Documenting these lingering impacts helps the university to recognize the differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic - mitigating against unequal outcomes. Documenting the effects of COVID-19 allows the universities to assess faculty members fairly, accounting for their different working conditions under and even after the pandemic. Through careful documentation and thoughtful recognition of pandemic impacts in fair evaluation processes, the variable impacts of COVID will be less likely to worsen existing inequalities.

How can faculty members document pandemic impacts?

Many faculty members may feel it is unnecessary to document pandemic impacts, since so many people have been affected. Yet, COVID-19 has differential impacts; internal and external evaluators may not understand or know the specific context in which faculty members' work has been disrupted, depending on where they are located or their own pandemic experiences. In addition, over time, people may no longer recognize how disruptive COVID-19 has been to faculty careers.

Below are ideas about how to document pandemic impacts through annual faculty reviews, and separate "pandemic impact statements" for personnel reviews (faculty might also list canceled fellowships, conferences or speaking engagements on CVs). These ideas are not meant to pressure all faculty into documenting every possible impact. Documenting should identify impacts that help others understand a person's career trajectory given COVID-19, both in terms of new responsibilities as well as unexpected challenges. Documenting should make relevant but potentially invisible impacts visible.

Drawing on a PNAS article, we recommend tracking the following, and documenting those relevant through annual faculty reviews or pandemic impact statements:

Identify scope of work during the pandemic. If granted "essential worker" status, what work did it apply to, and what new work was added.

Document changes to courses, including moving courses online and new technologies. Faculty may identify how many additional hours each week focused on teaching to concretize these effects (e.g., 15-hour/week workload for X course shifted to 30-hour/week workload for 7 weeks).

Point out specific challenges, such as lack of resources (high-speed broadband, software) for faculty and students, and trainings attended or led.

Identify additional teaching responsibilities, including course overloads due to personnel changes, retirements, issues with teaching assistants, assisting others with technology, other workload changes.

Address how advising changed, particularly as students navigated changing requirements. Identify any increases in advising load. Mention any additional support for students experiencing physical and or mental health, economic, and social consequences of the pandemic.

Document mentoring impacts, including student progress, and additional mentoring time required with students/peers facing pandemic impacts.

List attending/leading meetings, additional efforts made - any work that would not have occurred during a regular semester. List efforts to move meetings/events online e.g. commencement.

List additional work needed to develop plans for closing and re-opening of laboratories, including: coordination among research teams, development of cleaning and distancing protocols in the laboratory space, etc.

Identify contributions to any department, university, professional society, interdisciplinary, or community- engaged pandemic initiative.

Identify how research or creative work was disrupted. For example, faculty might note loss of:

Research time due to increased or changed teaching and service responsibilities

Sabbatical time, other paid or unpaid leave (Fulbright, Guggenheim, etc.)

If willing, research time due to health issues or caregiving responsibilities

Access to necessary research facilities/labs/ computing resources (including impacts on longitudinal research), studios, or venues for creative works/performances

Access to research subjects, animals, cell cultures (including for longitudinal research)

Additional time and resources spent to restart research, which varies by field

Travel and field research opportunities

Funding to support personnel due to travel and visa restrictions or due to research restrictions

Access to internal or external research funds

Faculty should further note other kinds of impacts:

Additional teaching/preparations

Cancellations of seminars, presentations, visits with collaborators or research teams

Challenges due to increased time for review of submissions for funding or publication

Redirected funding for COVID-19 related topics

Pivoting/changing research agenda due to pandemic restrictions

Diversion of funds for PPE

Donation of supplies or personnel time to COVID-19 initiatives

Challenges due to travel/visa restrictions

How should evaluators consider personnel cases?

The Provost has made many changes recognizing pandemic impacts in his tenure/promotion memo. Evaluators, including Personnel Committee members, Chairs/Heads, administrators, and external evaluators, should recognize the contributions faculty have made in various spheres, while considering each person's specific working conditions, rather than comparing across faculty with different working conditions. Increased caregiving responsibilities or lack of access to research facilities as a result of the pandemic should not negatively affect assessments of faculty. This should be communicated to external reviewers. Following the contract, faculty members with tenure-delays must not be held to higher standards.

While not all faculty may wish to document health or caregiving impacts, reviewers should note that care-giving responsibilities or efforts toward homeschooling children (including single parenthood) reflects the disparate impact COVID-19 had on work-time for faculty members. Similarly, documentation of illness, risk of illness (pre-existing conditions, partnership with an essential worker), or loss of loved ones, provides greater context for assessments. De-stigmatizing care and illness is important to creating fair assessments.

Personnel Committees may write a standardized acknowledgement of pandemic impacts with particular attention to their field and expected disruptions to work for all faculty members. This statement could be inserted at the beginning of each PC memo responding to faculty submission as context for the annual review.

What resources exist for addressing COVID impacts?

PNAS published an op-ed on evaluating faculty, as well as an online supplement, which we drew on heavily for this brief.

ADVANCE provides trainings for Personnel Committee members and Chairs/Heads on equitable evaluation in the COVID and post-COVID era.

The Office of Faculty Development and Associate Provost for Equity and Inclusion provide a wide array of resources that support faculty during COVID-19, including a Resilience series.

The Office of Equity and Inclusion provides programming, aimed at the needs of members of underrepresented groups on campus.

The faculty union, Massachusetts Society of Professors, has won a number of excellent provisions and supports, including care funds, technology funds, tenure delays, work credits for UMass faculty.

Suggested Citation: Joya Misra. 2020. Documenting COVID-19 Impacts: Best Practices. University of Massachusetts Amherst ADVANCE Program. ADVANCE is funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information on ADVANCE go to https://www.umass.edu/advance/.

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Documenting Pandemic Impacts: Best Practices

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Download the Tool The COVID-19 pandemic immediately impacted faculty members' workloads. Most faculty members have had to do significantly more work, moving courses online, mentoring students in need, reworking university programs and addressing COVID-19 risks, and helping communities manage current realities.

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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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A wave of departures, many of them by mid-career scientists, calls attention to widespread discontent in universities.

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PDF (412K)

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 ("Title IX"), 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., is a Federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex-including pregnancy and parental status-in educational programs and activities.

All public and private schools, school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any Federal funds ("schools") must comply with Title IX.
Here are some things you should know about your rights: Classes and School Activities - your school MUST: Excused Absences and Medical Leave - your school MUST:

Allow you to continue participating in classes and extracurricular activities even though you are pregnant. This means that you can still participate in advanced placement and honors classes, school clubs, sports, honor societies, student leadership opportunities, and other activities, like after-school programs operated at the school.

Allow you to choose whether you want to participate in special instructional programs or classes for pregnant students. You can participate if you want to, but your school cannot pressure you to do so. The alternative program must provide the same types of academic, extracurricular and enrichment opportunities as your school's regular program.

Allow you to participate in classes and extracurricular activities even though you are pregnant and not require you to submit a doctor's note unless your school requires a doctor's note from all students who have a physical or emotional condition requiring treatment by a doctor. Your school also must not require a doctor's note from you after you have been hospitalized for childbirth unless it requires a doctor's note from all students who have been hospitalized for other conditions.

Provide you with reasonable adjustments, like a larger desk, elevator access, or allowing you to make frequent trips to the restroom, when necessary because of your pregnancy.

Excuse absences due to pregnancy or childbirth for as long as your doctor says it is necessary.

Allow you to return to the same academic and extracurricular status as before your medical leave began, which should include giving you the opportunity to make up any work missed while you were out.

Ensure that teachers understand the Title IX requirements related to excused absences/medical leave. Your teacher may not refuse to allow you to submit work after a deadline you missed because of pregnancy or childbirth. If your teacher's grading is based in part on class participation or attendance and you missed class because of pregnancy or childbirth, you should be allowed to make up the participation or attendance credits you didn't have the chance to earn.

Provide pregnant students with the same special services it provides to students with temporary medical conditions. This includes homebound instruction/at-home tutoring/independent study.
Policies and Procedures - your school MUST: Helpful Tips for Pregnant and Parenting Students:

Protect you from harassment based on sex, including harassment because of pregnancy or related conditions. Comments that could constitute prohibited harassment include making sexual comments or jokes about your pregnancy, calling you sexually charged names, spreading rumors about your sexual activity, and making sexual propositions or gestures, if the comments are sufficiently serious that it interferes with your ability to benefit from or participate in your school's program.

Have and distribute a policy against sex discrimination. It is recommended that the policy make clear that prohibited sex discrimination covers discrimination against pregnant and parenting students.

Adopt and publish grievance procedures for students to file complaints of sex discrimination, including discrimination related to pregnancy or parental status.

Identify at least one employee in the school or school district to carry out its responsibilities under Title IX (sometimes called a "Title IX Coordinator") and notify all students and employees of the name, title, and contact information of its Title IX Coordinator. These responsibilities include overseeing complaints of discrimination against pregnant and parenting students.

Ask your school for help-meet with your school's Title IX Coordinator or counselor regarding what your school can do to support you in continuing your education.

Keep notes about your pregnancy-related absences, any instances of harassment and your interactions with school officials about your pregnancy, and immediately report problems to your school's Title IX Coordinator, counselor, or other staff.

If you feel your school is discriminating against you because you are pregnant or parenting you may file a complaint:

Using your school's internal Title IX grievance procedures.

With the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), even if you have not filed a complaint with your school. If you file with OCR, make sure you do so within 180 days of when the discrimination took place.

In court, even if you have not filed a complaint with your school or with OCR.

Contact OCR if you have any questions. We are here to help make sure all students, including pregnant and parenting students, have equal educational opportunities!

If you want to learn more about your rights, or if you believe that a school district, college, or university is violating Federal law, you may contact the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, at (800) 421-3481 or ocr@ed.gov. If you wish to fill out a complaint form online, you may do so at: http://www.ed.gov/ocr/complaintintro.html.

A school that is controlled by a religious organization is exempt from Title IX when the law's requirements would conflict with the organization's religious tenets.

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administrators; counselors; extracurricular activities; parents; pregnancy; students; teachers; title ix; classes for pregnant students; pregnancy and parenthood issues; parenthood issues under title ix

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Know Your Rights: Pregnant or Parenting? Title IX Protects You From Discrimination At School

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PDF (412K) Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 ("Title IX"), 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., is a Federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex-including pregnancy and parental status-in educational programs and activities. All public and private schools, school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any Federal funds ("schools") must comply with Title IX.

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America is a difficult place to be a mom. And yet many women are judged harshly for choosing not to be one. (iStock)

In the week before beginning maternity leave, I was trying to write a poignant and expansive essay on what it means to become a mother, but what I kept thinking about was why so many women aren't having children.

"How Low Can America's Birthrate Go Before It's A Problem?" asked a FiveThirtyEight headline last week. "Low Birthrates Beckon New Debate," read the Wall Street Journal. Both noted the stakes: fewer workers paying into Social Security, essential jobs without bodies to fill them. Our economy hums along based on the idea of growth, both of money and of people, and in the past few years demographers and pundits alike have pondered the decline. Last year was a record low for the American birthrate. Some of that was pandemic-related, some was not: The birthrate has fallen for six consecutive years.

You could, as I do, presume some positives - women with greater access to birth control, and couples choosing the size of their families more intentionally. Or you could, as many commentators have, view this as a terrible problem to be solved, representing a drift from classic family values.

So as a longtime childless woman who is now wading through insurance forms and hospital preregistration and breast-pump reimbursements, I'll offer a personal framework for "solving" the "problem": My family values are fine. The country's are not. For many years I did not have children because, in policies and practices, the United States is hell for mothers.

I did not have children because day care where I live costs an average of $24,000 per year, and renting a two-bedroom apartment can cost upward of $30,000, and in my childbearing prime my salary ranged from $37,000 to $45,000. Those numbers are far above the minimum wage that many mothers scrape by on, but still the math never made sense.

I did not have children because while other countries determined that investing in child care - making it free or inexpensive - is the easiest way to encourage motherhood, the United States has determined that what's easiest is simply berating families who can't make it work, telling them that they should have budgeted better, or saved more, or arranged for Grandma to watch the baby. (I did not have children because Grandma, my own mother, is still working full time.)

Perspective: Meghan McCain learned about the need for maternity leave the hard way. Nobody should have to.

Pregnancy and childbirth are bloody, messy, flesh-tearing endeavors after which American women are discharged from the hospital with no codified support. No free Finnish baby boxes containing all necessary baby gear. No free British midwives, dropping by your home to check on the mental and physical well-being of the new parents. No free Swedish lactation consultants, no German hebammen. No mandated paid maternity leave as exists throughout Europe and in other countries like South Korea, Israel, Mexico, Chile.

Compared with 40 other relatively wealthy countries, the United States is the only one that does not provide paid parental leave, that expects women to discharge themselves from the hospital and then cheerfully return to work, still wearing compression binders to hold in their angry Caesarean section scars, and that is why I did not have children.

Our culture loves nothing more than to judge women for the choices they make, and then rejudge them if they make different choices. More than a handful of readers, I know, have gotten this far into the column and have decided that the problem is not a systemic lack of empathy and accommodation for mothers but rather women like me: childless women who should have lived somewhere less expensive, or found unicorn jobs with high pay and flexible hours, or arranged child-care swaps with imaginary neighbors, or just shut up about it and not bore everyone with their whining.

Or, just not had children at all. Most of us want to be respectable, responsible, contributing members of society, and those options were presented as the only respectable choices: Have children and never expect an iota of help from anyone who is not a blood relative; or don't have them and be forced to explain yourself to people who can't seem to understand childlessness as something other than a sign of dysfunction, weakness or entitlement.

Perspective: The pandemic made the struggles of working moms impossible to ignore

Once I listened to a close friend cry in pain for several days after giving birth, declining to call a doctor because her relatives kept cheerfully clucking, "The sacrifice is just part of being a woman!"

Women are not having children because they know if something went alarmingly wrong with the pregnancy, they would have to go to an abortion clinic while strangers lined the building and called them murderers on what was already the worst day of their lives.

Women are not having children because they know the same people who insisted they cared about what happened to their fetuses would not care much at all about what happened to their children. Because nobody makes signs and marches in support of postnatal extended hospital stays (the average duration of postnatal hospital care has halved since the 1970s). Because there is no powerful, righteous bloc of single-issue voters in America who are threatening to make or break politicians over their support of universal preschool.

There were other reasons I personally did not have children, of both a thoughtful and ridiculous nature (What if I dropped him? What if I accidentally left her in the car, the way I sometimes accidentally leave my wallet in the car?).

But most of the reasons had nothing to do with me - with whether I liked kids, or thought I could be a loving and invested mother. I do, and can. I have hilarious nieces and nephews. I write novels for kids and teenagers, and love visiting schools and listening to the life philosophies of the 12-year-old readers who email me.

I did not have children because America is a difficult place to be a mom. And because every policy-based attempt to change that is met by telling women to buck up, drink a glass of rosé and download the Calm app. Screw that.

Now I'm having a baby, a plot twist that involved a lot of thinking and planning with my husband, paired with a lucky salary bump, paired with my employer's increasingly generous leave policies, paired with a soulful and biological pull that asked to be listened to rather than suppressed. I'll say that I expect motherhood to be very, very hard, but also as immense and rewarding and transformative and weird as everyone says it is.

I will also say, as I'm heading off on this immense and rewarding journey, that I will never forget what it feels like to be a woman who is not having children. And how that might be because a woman genuinely doesn't want to - an equal, valid and conversation-ending choice that should be respected unequivocally.

And how some of those women maybe do want to have children, but they are among the many American women for whom motherhood is not a practical choice. It's not because they are entitled, or weak, or dysfunctional. It's because their country is.

Monica Hesse is a columnist writing about gender and its impact on society. For more visit wapo.st/hesse.

Today's Headlines The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.

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Perspective | The unreasonable expectations of American motherhood

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In the week before beginning maternity leave, I was trying to write a poignant and expansive essay on what it means to become a mother, but what I kept thinking about was why so many women aren't having children. "How Low Can America's Birthrate Go Before It's A Problem?"

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business & economics / workplace culture

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family & relationships / parenting / motherhood

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family & relationships/parenting - motherhood

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political science/labor & industrial relations

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business & economics / workplace culture

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family & relationships / parenting / motherhood

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family & relationships/parenting - motherhood

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political science/labor & industrial relations

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Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality

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Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality [Orgad, Shani] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality

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academic motherhood: how faculty manage work and family

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women in higher education;united states;social conditions.

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social science : women's studies - general

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women college teachers - united states - social conditions

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women in higher education - united states - social conditions

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women in higher education;united states;social conditions.

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academic; academia; motherhood; teacher; professor; career; professional; women; working women; tenure; work and family; working mom; academic career

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social science : women's studies - general

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Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family

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Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family [Ward, Kelly, Wolf-Wendel, Lisa] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Academic Motherhood: How Faculty Manage Work and Family

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When the pursuit of doctoral studies and motherhood intersect, the risk of attrition increases. Although other studies have explored the challenges of student mothers in academia, this study looked at how mentorship might mediate them. This phenomenological study examined the mentoring experiences of doctoral student mothers or recent graduates in counselor education and supervision programs (N = 12). Unanimously, participants articulated that their professional identity was enhanced by their identity as mothers, but balancing multiple roles required supportive mentors. Participants described the personal qualities of effective faculty and peer mentors, many also mothers who understood their needs. Mentoring served as a protective factor in helping navigate barriers, providing academic and emotional encouragement, reducing isolation, and creating realistic timelines. Suggestions for mentoring programs and advocacy are discussed. mentoring, doctoral student mothers, counselor education, phenomenology, advocacy
Over the past decade, surveys have indicated incoming doctoral students are less traditional than previous generations (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2017; Offerman, 2011). These students (e.g., women, minorities, and international students) may experience cultural maladjustment while attending traditionally structured academic institutions (Holley & Caldwell, 2012; Ku et al., 2008; NCSES, 2017). This may lead to dissatisfaction, isolation, and subsequent attrition (Holley & Caldwell, 2012; Ku et al., 2008; NCSES, 2017; Offerman, 2011; Stimpson & Filer, 2011).

Focusing on women, the number earning doctoral degrees has steadily increased over the past 20 years (NCSES, 2017). Percentages reached a record high in 2008-2009 as women earned slightly over 50% of all doctoral degrees, except in male-dominated fields, including engineering, mathematics, and physical science (Miller & Wai, 2015; NCSES, 2015). Furthermore, with a ratio of six females to one male completing bachelor's and master's degree programs yearly, the majority of those entering the doctoral pipeline are expected to be female (Miller & Wai, 2015). These incoming female doctoral students are likely to be in their prime childbearing years, in dual-income households if married, and caring for dependents (Lester, 2013; Offerman, 2011; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Finding ways to assist these doctoral student mothers in completing a doctorate requires further investigation.

Although earning a degree in higher education can bring personal satisfaction, higher professional status, and economic gains, the process can also result in unforeseen stress and challenges to work-life balance, leading to dissatisfaction and attrition (Brus, 2006; Lynch, 2008; Martinez et al., 2013; Offerman, 2011; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Despite the rigorous selection process, attrition rates for doctoral students hover between 40%-60% (Council of Graduate Schools, 2010). Beyond academics, extenuating factors that contribute to the attrition of doctoral students include stress; financial hardship; commitment conflicts; unexpected life interruptions; mental and physical health issues; and changes in the family structure, including having children (Brus, 2006; Lynch, 2008; Martinez et al., 2013). When the doctoral student is a new mother or the primary caregiver, these factors become exacerbated (Brus, 2006; Holm et al., 2015; Lester, 2013; Lynch, 2008; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Because of the structural design of higher education and cultural pressures of motherhood that seem at odds with each other, graduate student mothers are at higher risk of attrition than almost any other American academic group (Lester, 2013; Lynch, 2008).

Challenges Facing Doctoral Student Mothers
The challenges of student mothers navigating the competing roles of academic scholar and primary caretaker are well documented (Holm et al., 2015; Lester, 2013; Lynch, 2008; Pierce & Herlihy, 2013; Trepal et al., 2014). Mothers pursuing doctoral degrees may find balancing academics and employment a daily challenge, compounded by the second shift of childcare and housework (Lynch, 2008; Pierce & Herlihy, 2013; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Despite movement toward an egalitarian view of child-rearing among contemporary couples, the burden of overseeing the household duties and childcare remain largely the mother's responsibility (Lester, 2013; Medina & Magnuson, 2009; Misra et al., 2012). Student mothers juggling multiple roles report dissatisfaction in their work-life balance because of time and scheduling demands, as well as hindrances in the workplace and higher education (Brus, 2006; Holm et al., 2015; Lynch, 2008; Trepal et al., 2014). Research on support for this vulnerable population points to faculty and peer support as possible mitigating factors to attrition and dissatisfaction (Bruce, 1995; Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al., 2014).

Mentoring Relationships That Mitigate Attrition
Research spanning almost two decades correlated strong advisor and mentor relationships with successful student outcomes (Bruce, 1995; Clark et al., 2000; Holley & Caldwell, 2012; Patton & Harper, 2003). Mentoring has been especially important for underrepresented populations such as international students; students of color; first-generation college graduates; women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines; and female students/faculty who were also mothers (Brown et al., 1999; Holm et al., 2015; Kendricks et al., 2013; Ku et al., 2008). A mentor is a person who provides professional and personal support to assist the less skilled mentee in becoming a full member of a particular profession (Brown et al., 1999; Clark et al., 2000). This study focuses on academic mentors, both formal and informal. Formal mentoring involves a faculty member, formally assigned to or requested by the student, whose roles may include but also extend well beyond that of an advisor, dissertation committee member, supervisor, or instructor (Hayes & Koro-Ljungberg, 2011; Patton & Harper, 2003). Informal mentoring can be categorized by who provides the mentoring: faculty or a peer. Informal faculty mentoring occurs as a faculty member organically connects with a student on common interests to provide support, often around motherhood, suggesting the importance of access to a faculty member who is also a mother (Hermann et al., 2014; Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al., 2014). Peer mentoring provides that connection through an informal relationship between a more senior doctoral student and a junior doctoral student (Noonan et al., 2007). Peer mentoring may occur as part of a structured program, but it more often occurs organically as upperclassmen fill this need through joint interests, scholarly activities, or motherhood (Lynch, 2008; Noonan et al., 2007).

Shifting from a traditional hierarchical model, relational mentoring encompasses not only the advising relationship to promote career and professional development but also the genuine empathic relationship that emerges from a reciprocal, collaborative approach (Gammel & Rutstein-Riley, 2016; Kelch-Oliver et al., 2013). Results are greater accessibility to the mentor, opportunities to share knowledge in research and publishing, extended support to students, knowing students on a more personal level, fostering friendships, and building community (Brown et al., 1999; Bruce, 1995; Hadjioannou et al., 2007; Hayes & Koro-Ljungberg, 2011). Benefits of relational mentoring include mutual growth opportunities for both the mentor and mentee, greater academic achievement, personal satisfaction, and increased social and emotional support (Gammel & Rutstein-Riley, 2016; Kelch-Oliver et al., 2013).

Connections with other student mothers is an important support mechanism, reducing isolation with increased social support (Hermann et al., 2014; Lynch, 2008; Patton & Harper, 2003; Trepal et al., 2014). Chief factors influencing female doctoral students' satisfaction in their programs were female faculty and peers serving in supportive/mentoring roles, sharing resources (such as childcare), addressing stress, and encouraging healthy choices around family life (Bruce, 1995; Brus, 2006; Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al., 2014). Studies specific to African American women in psychology found that same race/gender mentorship was imperative in recruitment, retention, and training of this population (Kelch-Oliver et al., 2013; Patton, 2009).

Female mentorship may be an untapped resource in counselor education and supervision (CES), as there is little research exploring the mentoring of doctoral student mothers (Bruce, 1995; Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al., 2014). Without clear guidelines on how mentoring might support doctoral student mothers, current mentoring programs and training practices may be inadequate. In this study, we sought to investigate the mentoring experiences of students who were navigating the dual roles of mother and student in CES programs. Although past studies have explored mentoring programs of doctoral students (Clark et al., 2000; Holley & Caldwell, 2012; Ku et al., 2008) and the experiences of student mothers in doctoral programs (Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al. 2014), we sought to determine how mentoring benefits doctoral student mothers.
Method
Qualitative research is a suitable choice for investigating questions pertinent to counselor education, as it lends itself to rich data collection through interactions between the researcher and participants (Hays & Singh, 2012). A subset of qualitative research, phenomenological research is aimed at increasing understanding of the complexity of people's lives by examining the individual and collective experience of a particular phenomenon (Creswell, 2013). We chose a phenomenological approach to understand how student mothers experienced mentoring while in a CES program. This seemed to be the best lens through which to explore our research question: What is the lived experience of doctoral student mothers formally or informally mentored by faculty and/or peers? With a greater understanding of this phenomenon, counselor educators may apply this knowledge in recognizing and meeting the needs of student mothers to reduce attrition.

Research Team
Our research team consisted of a doctoral student mother (first author and now a faculty member) and three faculty members in a CACREP-accredited CES program at a small, private university. During their doctoral studies, two of the three women were mothers of young children and the male faculty member became a first-time father. Currently, the faculty researchers are advancing through their tenure track while parenting elementary-age children.

Before the study, we met as a team to discuss our experiences of mentorship as students and junior faculty as well as how we experienced the climate of our institution toward families. The first author shared that her research interest grew out of her own experience as well as the struggles of doctoral student mothers in her cohort, necessitating support from peers and faculty members. Eager to learn how doctoral student mothers experienced faculty and peer mentoring across institutions, we watched this study begin to take shape. Acknowledging our biases and bracketing our assumptions, we set them aside to allow a fresh perspective of the participants' experiences to emerge. LeVasseur (2003) described this process of bracketing as suspending understanding of the topic to shift toward a position of curiosity.

Procedure and Participants
After receiving approval from the university's Human Subject Review Committee, we recruited participants using a professional counseling electronic mailing (CESNET-L) and by emailing CES department heads at four universities in the Eastern United States. The email provided criteria for the study with a link to the demographic questionnaire and informed consent form. Criteria included: (a) completed at least one year of doctoral studies in a CACREP-accredited CES program or had graduated within 2 years; (b) formally or informally mentored by faculty, peers, or both; and (c) mother of at least one child below the age of 18 residing with them during their counselor education doctoral training. Not wanting to limit participants because of location, we chose to interview participants using a telehealth video platform. This resulted in a wide geographical sample as shown in Table 1. University types included three Research 1, one historically Black college and university (HBCU), one hybrid, and seven liberal arts institutions. Twelve participants were selected to be interviewed based on meeting criteria and in keeping with sample size guidelines for phenomenological studies (Creswell, 2013). Participants ranged in age from 29-37 ( M = 34, SD = 2.4). Participants identified racially as European American ( n = 9) and African American ( n = 3). Ten became pregnant during their doctoral studies: six were first-time mothers, and two miscarried twice. Children's ages ranged from 10 months to 12 years, with most under the age of 3. In addition to being students, all participants were employed during their studies as school counselors, in private practice, or in agency clinical work. Six of the seven interviewees were employed as an adjunct professor, school counselor, researcher/consultant, program director of a counseling department, private practice counselor, and university counseling center director; the seventh was a new doctoral graduate.
Table 1
Participant Demographic Information

Data Sources
Each participant completed a demographic questionnaire and signed an informed consent form for voluntary participation. The questionnaire inquired about age; sex; race/ethnicity; relationship status; length of time in the CES program; year graduated; if they were pregnant or adopted children and the number of children/their ages while in the program; and if they were mentored by faculty, peer, or both.

The first author conducted the 12 interviews through V-SEE, a Stanford-created, telehealth videoconferencing application that supports online collaboration. It allowed the participants and research interviewer to interact synchronously via audio and video. Interview length ranged from 60-75 minutes as participants described their mentoring experiences. The interview settings were descriptively "in the field," as they were interviewed in their offices, cars, and homes. Three had their babies/toddlers with them during the home interviews. Participants described their university type, cohort structure, and employment status. The first author asked each participant open-ended questions using a semi-structured interview format developed from our review of the literature on mentoring, motherhood, and issues concerning doctoral student mothers. The questions included: (a) "What factors, if any, influenced your decision to be mentored?" (b) "Can you describe your mentoring experience in detail?" (c) "Can you speak to your work-study-life balance while being mentored?" (d) "Can you speak of your academic progress and/or professional development while being mentored?" (e) "Describe the characteristics or traits of a mentor that are important for doctoral student mothers," and (f) "What, if anything, could a counselor education department do to promote successful mentoring experiences for doctoral student mothers?" With qualitative inquiry, the goal is to include enough participants to adequately understand the phenomenon in question (Hays & Singh, 2012). Wanting to capture a fresh perspective from these doctoral students who were mentored, many while becoming mothers for the first time, all 12 interviews were retained, yielding in-depth descriptions of their experiences. Pseudonyms were assigned to participants prior to data analysis to protect their identities.

Data Analysis
Phenomenological data analysis is concerned with examining participants' experiences to understand the depth and meaning of those lived experiences (Hays & Singh, 2012; Moustakas, 1994). Delving into large amounts of transcription data, the goal is to develop a composite description or essence of the experience that represents the group as a whole (Moustakas, 1994). The first author began the inductive method of analysis by engaging in horizontalization, the process of identifying non-repetitive, non-overlapping statements from the first three interview transcripts (Hays & Singh, 2012; Moustakas, 1994). Next, the first author clustered these statements in units of meaning or themes and then wrote textual descriptions of "what" the participants experienced, including verbatim examples from the transcripts (Creswell, 2013; Moustakas, 1994). The first and second investigators met weekly to discuss and rework these themes. From there, they wrote a structural description, "how" the experience happened in the context of the setting or circumstances and who was involved (Creswell, 2013; Moustakas, 1994). The first author used these themes to analyze the rest of the transcripts with care given to reanalyzing previous interviews as new themes or subthemes emerged. The team met to finalize the central themes and subthemes that emerged collectively from the participants' reflections, contextualizing them into a holistic understanding of the essence of the mentoring experience (Hays & Singh, 2012).

Validation strategies included recognizing and controlling for research bias through bracketing, capturing participants' viewpoints through substantial engagement, and triangulation through cross-checking codes and themes and by using thick participant descriptions (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Using basic member checking, participants reviewed their transcripts for accuracy, with two making clarifying comments (Creswell, 2013; Hays & Singh, 2012). The first and second authors met weekly to process reflection notes to bracket any biases and discuss themes to allow triangulation of data (Creswell, 2013; Hays & Singh, 2012). The two other members of the team reviewed the themes/subthemes matched with descriptive statements for cross-checking purposes (Hays & Singh, 2012; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). To address confirmability and transferability, they kept an audit trail beginning with interview notes, transcripts, reflective journals, and coding pages with descriptive statements. Finally, the authors provided thick descriptions, allowing the reader to enter into the study to a greater degree to reach their own conclusions and stir further discourse around these critical issues in counselor education (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011).
Results
Three overarching themes centered on identity: the qualities and shifting identities of doctoral student mothers, the qualities and roles of faculty/professional and peer mentors, and the barriers and hardships that led to losses and unmet goals despite mentorship experiences. Participants shared how mentoring evolved around their identities as mothers, students, and professionals; what they experienced as support or discrimination by faculty and peers; how their mentors served as a protective factor despite hardships and barriers; and what was needed in terms of advocacy to successfully develop counselor educator identities.

Theme I: Identities and Qualities of Doctoral Student Mothers
Perseverance and resilience characterized the lived experiences of these doctoral student mothers facing unexpected challenges that threatened to slow progress or impede career goals. Sara, who found out she was pregnant shortly after being accepted into her doctoral program, shared, "I ended up having a really horrible labor and a C-section. My baby spent the first week in ICU. We were only home a short time after having major surgery, but I still went back to school 3 weeks later." Natalie also shared her version of perseverance: "I took my comps when I was 38 weeks pregnant [laughter]. I had to keep standing up and going to the bathroom. 'Then I said, I can have this baby now!'"

Making the shift from student to mother or mother to professional requires integrating multiple identities and corresponding roles. "I always had it drilled into my head by my mother that I would be called 'doctor' before I was called 'mom.' So many of us are both education-oriented and family-oriented, being in counseling," remarked Allison. Similarly, Lisa voiced how she embraced her changing identity: "You grow in confidence as a person and through motherhood. Learning what worked and what didn't work. Just having a better sense of myself, my strengths, knowing my worth, knowing my value, and just feeling secure in it."

With the multiple identities came the challenge of meeting academic rigor and motherhood responsibilities, often with conflicting timelines. Although all the participants described themselves as serious students, they made it clear that their children were their number one priority. They willingly sacrificed time and personal needs in hopes of careers that offered greater flexibility and financial stability. "Yes, you're exhausted because you are running a marathon every single day. At the end of the day, you don't have that little space for yourself," said Lisa. Mothers often felt the pull between having to choose work or studies and time with their families. Bethany, a school counselor, explained, "I struggle with mommy guilt even with my job, as my child is one of the first ones in the building and last ones to leave every day." Bethany also recounted, "One of the biggest mom guilts is a picture of my child around the age of 5. I am sitting in a chair surrounded by books and papers as he fell asleep on the couch waiting for me to do something with him. That was really tough." Amy described her typical schedule:

I get up at 6:00, play with the kids, get them off, and get to work . . . until 10:00 pm, kids come in my bed and snuggle. Then I finish grades and go to bed at 3:00 am. 100% of the weekends are dedicated to the children. Want them to say . . . 'Mom was present.' That's hard when the career path and academics are so consuming.

Lisa felt inadequate in both roles at times: "I'm working so hard. . . . and I am not a good enough mom and I'm not a good enough student. . . . not doing a great job at anything."

Several participants reported that their mentors helped them establish healthy boundaries and taught them how to prioritize commitments. Tonya shared, "Today is going to be about work . . . or today is going to be about school. I appreciated having faculty members who had young families, knowing that someone understood that." When the demands of work became unhealthy, Bethany revealed it was her mentor who said, "You've got to reshuffle. You are drowning, and you are miserable. You have to let some of this school stuff go." On prioritizing, Natalie shared, "When I went into this program, I said that I am not going to miss anything in my personal life, even if it takes 4 or 5 years."

Doctoral student mothers commonly identified as non-traditional students. Not only was this gender-influenced, it was also the result of added caregiving responsibilities that prevented them from engaging in opportunities afforded to traditional students. They often felt isolated from their peers or labeled as less committed, which resulted in differential treatment and exclusions. Lisa explained:

I always felt like some kind of outlier . . . like all the other cohorts are like these tight little units. I'm always slipping in and then dropping back out. Would see them on Facebook all hanging out and going out for drinks . . . or they would be publishing or going to conferences. I was working and taking care of children.

On being non-traditional, Morgan, a mother of two, working 25-27 hours per week, shared, "No one in my cohort had children and none had outside jobs." Several participants noted how their male counterparts were able to go full-time without having to deal with family-related interruptions, be questioned for having babies, experience guilt when traveling, or juggle as many commitments. Kayla, reflecting on experiencing negative remarks about her clingy child when she had to travel for work, noted, "They had wives that stayed at home, so their experience has been completely different." On comparing her needs to those of traditional students, Lisa shared, "Mentoring for students who don't have kids, it's . . . talking about publishing together or presenting together. For me, it really is how are you helping me navigate this program."

Theme II: Identities and Qualities of Effective Mentors
For all participants, mentoring was more than academic advising. Often, it was the mentor's combined qualities of temperament, leadership, scholarship, and friendship that helped these doctoral student mothers navigate their programs effectively. Participants described the criteria for selecting their mentors: specific personality traits, women who were also mothers, who shared research interests, and those who modeled career-life balance. The three African American women also considered race an essential factor in mentor selection. Tonya, the sole woman of color in her cohort, connected with other African American faculty outside her department and graduates who were mothers, while Dana experienced mentoring by most of the faculty at her HBCU. Allison based her mentorship selection on personality: "I needed someone who doesn't have my exact personality but who can keep my ideas focused and keep me on track-tough, but supportive."

Some chose female mentors because they believed they would provide greater support and speak to the female experience in academia. Lisa's mentor selection was through gender matching: "I chose the only woman in my program that has children . . . so I feel like she gets me, and she gets the experience of motherhood and has a great perspective on things." Amy shared that her mentor "could speak to my strengths and could commiserate the experience of being a woman in academia."

Participants described effective mentors as encouraging, supportive, and flexible, displaying qualities of warmth, empathy, and trustworthiness. Most depicted their mentors as master cheerleaders and challengers. Morgan explained that two mentors filled different roles: "I have the mentor's office that I go cry into . . . and the office that I go in and come out sharper for. I think you need both of them." Sharon chose four mentors: "One was especially about writing and research . . . one that was just about my self-care and well-being, and one primarily about the academics. . . . [and] one that kind of combined it all, but who I could talk to about the mommy guilt."

Mentors provided a balance between the demand for excellence and practicality and compassion. Creative flexibility and realistic expectations without judgment rounded out the mentors' qualities. Mentors were available beyond the usual office hours and willing to meet at convenient locations such as a coffee shop or home. Morgan commented on the open-door policy of her mentor: "Availability is important. You can walk in and talk . . . whether it is just casual conversation or coming in with a need." Participants described how their mentors went above and beyond to provide creative accommodations. Lisa shared the flexibility of her mentor: "We co-taught and she would work around whatever my schedule was. We would have meetings after the kids went to bed. She really understood my situation and was just so affirming."

Mentoring had a personal side that provided not only a safe interchange of ideas but allowed for vulnerability and transparency. As doctoral student mothers verbalized their hardships, their trusted mentors were not only an emotional outlet but a therapeutic balm providing empathy and care. Their mentors often shared similar lived experiences that created a deeper connection, emotional bonding, and lasting friendship. Sharon found comfort when she faced a personal challenge: "My youngest child was diagnosed with autism very early. When I went to my mentor, she shared that her child was diagnosed with autism as well. We were able to connect and really process our lives as working moms." During hardships and personal challenges, mentors provided comfort and encouragement. Tonya shared how her mentor was there for her after her miscarriage: "I told [my mentor] that I had this little person inside of me and now I don't. She started crying and asked me, 'What do you need right now?'" Tonya's mentor encouraged her to put off writing her comps for a semester to process the loss.

Effective mentors provided professional modeling and career guidance, being personally supportive while navigating the logistics of becoming a counselor educator. Mentors endorsed them for leadership positions, taught them how to negotiate salaries, and helped create a pathway for career satisfaction. On developing their professional identity, graduates were indebted to the mentors. Bethany explained how mentorship groomed her for research: "When I was accepted to the program, [my mentor] took me under her wing and said, 'Let's find a research project to do together.' So we wrote a grant for it and she mentored me through that whole process." Natalie explained how her mentor helped develop her professional identity: "She pushed me to see myself better. . . . something that women have a hard time doing is advocating for themselves in the workplace. She not only modeled that, but she taught me how to do it."

Participants valued the family orientation of their mentors and voiced the need for their mentors to be family advocates. Without these advocates, many felt unequipped to compete with negative voices and dismissive attitudes. Allison shared her experience of feeling supported in her decision to get pregnant:

My advisor/mentor and I were having one of those heart-to-heart conversations. I actually started crying and said, "All my husband and I talk about is babies . . . every weekend. I'm ready; but education-wise, it just doesn't seem like a possibility." My advisor looked me straight in the eye and said, "If you want a baby, have a baby." I shouldn't have needed permission, but I wanted to know that I was going to be supported.

Mentors helped doctoral student mothers create timelines that respected their family needs as well as their academic and professional goals. Morgan's mentor said, "We'll navigate your schedule in an appropriate way that works for the program and for your family." She then built her plan based upon her schedule and personal journey.

Effective mentoring paralleled hallmarks of counselor education in promoting wellness, advocacy, and empowerment. Seven of the 12 described how their mentors practiced good self-care and modeled positive well-being. Allison discussed how her mentor helped to put work-life balance in perspective: "She was a role model of balance. She would say, 'You're working too hard. You need to spend some time with your family.' I have been able to come out of the program . . . [with] great work-life balance." Mentors' practice of self-care made it easier to emulate wellness practices and achieve greater work-life balance. Allison summed it up: "My mentor has this beautiful, wonderfully doting family. . . . Successful children, a supportive husband, and a career-that's the type of woman I want to be."

Participants described how mentoring served as a protective factor in reducing attrition. Their rich mentoring experiences helped them succeed in the program and manage the challenges of conflicting roles. Their mentors' encouragement and support became their lifeline through transitions such as marriage, pregnancy, divorce, and illness. Mentors were especially protective of participants facing cultural or institutional barriers, advocating during their pregnancies and beyond. Allison described how she felt protected from other faculty by her mentor throughout her pregnancy: "I was tired a lot during my pregnancy. If other faculty members got upset that I wasn't able to fulfill a requirement, she went to bat for me . . . supporting me by saying, 'Well, in all fairness, she is pregnant.'"

Qualities of Peer Mentors
Three-fourths of the participants were peer mentored, having sought out peers who were also mothers. Although only two of the participants were involved in a peer mentoring program, all 12 conveyed the value of having a more senior member of their program available for questions, advice, encouragement, and engagement in academic activities. Many shared how mentors offered supportive advice, as they were familiar with the journey ahead. Nicole said, "Peer mentoring is beneficial because you get to see someone who has recently been there, and having others from older cohorts can provide help and insight." Participants gravitated toward other mothers who understood their plight and built mentorships based on the common ground of motherhood intersecting with student life. Peer mentors shared their journeys, insider information on coursework, and realistic timelines; they became fellow presenters and publishers, and provided encouragement along the way. Bethany shared that she often wrote with a peer mentor who understood when she said, "Let's have a realistic mom timeline." Natalie shared the reciprocal nature of peer mentoring: "She and I relied a lot on each other just for support and mentorship. She had her baby 6 months before I did and I am learning a lot about the work-life balance and stuff from her."

Peer mentorship was relational as well as academic. Several participants shared how peer mentoring helped reduce feelings of isolation, as their availability for meet-ups and socializing differed greatly from their peers who did not have children. Tonya explained how she was able to receive encouragement over mommy guilt from a peer mentor who was also a mother. She "talked to her a lot about what worked for her, how she really tried to put her son first . . . which was helpful for me to hear, because I just felt terrible about it all the time." Navigating the program without a faculty mentor, Kayla found much of her support through her peer mentor: "We became close and she would let me know about the things to be looking for, to be preparing for upcoming classes. She really had my best interest in mind." On the close friendships forged through mentorship, Dana stated, "She has become my sister. . . . We talk about frustrations, helping me lay boundaries and be okay leaving my child."

Participants provided specific ideas as to how to implement peer mentorship programs. Ideas included identifying other student mothers for networking opportunities and information, such as childcare services, understanding school policies, and general support. They also recommended working through organizations such as Chi Sigma Iota to create networks, organizing graduate student meet-ups that are family-friendly, and having older cohorts reach out to newer cohorts throughout the year.

Theme III: Identifying Barriers Facing Doctoral Student Mothers
Stigma and discrimination, lack of accommodations, and need for advocacy emerged from the participant interviews. These barriers produced the hardships these mothers encountered, generating losses and unmet career aspirations. Ten out of 12 expressed awareness of faculty and students' bias toward non-traditional students, especially women who had families. A majority of the participants felt that as doctoral student mothers, they did not have a strong voice in the institutions that they represented. Often, attitudes of faculty toward doctoral student mothers were dismissive and discriminating when they did not fit into the traditional mold of academia. Others determined that faculty and department heads were simply unaware of the hardships and needs of student mothers and therefore perceived them as less motivated or incapable of meeting the rigorous demands of academia. Perhaps some experienced it most deeply through the lack of research and training opportunities, such as graduate assistantships (GA). Amy discussed her frustration and discouragement at being overlooked for a GA position: "I got the strong inclination that it was because I [got] married and that I couldn't dedicate myself as a typical GA. . . . I would have liked to have been given a chance to prove myself."

Others also felt that their limited visibility resulted in biased and discriminatory attitudes from faculty and peers. Lisa explained feeling written off as "not the person looked [at] to do a presentation with someone or to do a publication." While her peers were writing with faculty, she regretted that she couldn't "be physically present . . . especially when [she] was working and trying to juggle all of these roles."

Over half of the participants experienced negative attitudes toward their decisions to marry or start their families while in their doctoral programs. Lisa shared that "a faculty member told me point blank that I shouldn't have a second child in the program." Amy shared the messages she received on becoming pregnant in her last year of coursework: "Comments from students and faculty were like 'Why can't you just wait until after you are done as you are so close?' or 'What are your plans when you have a kid?'" Bethany explained how the faculty's lack of understanding of her minimum progress on her dissertation during her season as a mom, new wife, and full-time school counselor was demoralizing: "For my [program evaluation] this year, I received a grade of no progress in all areas . . . so I have two articles published and won a regional school counselor of the year award. I walked away feeling like I don't measure up."

Many participants spoke of the feeling of invisibility as doctoral student mothers by the lack of accommodations such as lactation facilities, childcare options, and clear or even existent leave of absence policies. Of the participants interviewed, only two spoke of having access to childcare on campus. Most had to rely on partners, parents, babysitters, or other students to meet these needs, especially those needing evening hours or experiencing long commutes. During emergencies, when childcare failed or a child was sick, these mothers were at the mercy of professors, department chairs, and supervisors to decide if they could get coverage for their duties or bring their babies to meetings, classes, or groups. Few felt childcare issues or illnesses were justification for missing classes or meetings. Similarly, lactation facilities were haphazard, as the majority of buildings had no dedicated nursing rooms. These new mothers had to use student lounges, borrow windowless offices, pump in their cars, or get up early to pump to avoid the hassle on campus. Sharon revealed that "the only place to pump was the bathroom or car. I don't feed my child in the bathroom so I'm not pumping in the bathroom."

Finally, participants described frustration over the lack of clear policies when attempting to stop the doctorate clock for maternity leave and in taking time off from assistantship positions that carried weighty financial penalties. Some maneuvered through with placeholder internships, others accumulated hours so that they could take off after their babies were born, and still others shifted down to part-time. In most cases, their mentors helped them find the path of least hardship and greatest flexibility. Lisa reflected on a lack of clear policies: "There need to be better structures to support women and support children. It shouldn't all have to fall on me, because I'm always going to come up short." Despite these barriers, five participants were satisfied with the support provided and viewed their department as accommodating non-traditional students effectively even with ambiguous policies.

Regardless of the hardships encountered, what participants regretted the most was their unmet career aspirations. These doctoral student mothers worked diligently to complete their programs but often had significant delays. The range of doctoral completion/expected completion was 3-7 years. Some regrets included not being able to complete hours for licensure, having fewer research opportunities, presenting less often at conferences, and missing out on other duties that would have enhanced their curriculum vitae. Allison lamented her losses: "I wasn't able to commit the time to seeing clients, as I didn't want to be at the clinic until 9:00 pm when my son goes to bed." Lisa added humor to her dilemma of unfulfilled aspirations: "I want to be a full-time faculty member, tenure track at the end of this. That is going to be really challenging because my CV is very short. I am going to attach pictures of my children."

Call for Advocacy and Awareness
Although discrimination and other barriers in higher education institutions were fairly commonplace, participants articulated several solutions: (a) expand mentorship opportunities, (b) teach and model work-life balance, (c) improve accommodations for students with families, (d) provide professional opportunities around flexible scheduling, (e) increase awareness and support from faculty, and (f) promote advocacy at departmental and university levels. Five participants had already positioned themselves in the role of mentors and advocates for those coming behind them. Three were involved with research that highlighted these issues. "Mentorship should be a requirement and not an option because we know we work well if we have mentors," remarked Sharon. Dana suggested that graduate programs should survey students to determine the climate of the program and if students are receiving mentorship, and identify mentors who could best address their needs. Bethany believed that universities must expand mentorship, even if it means extending beyond department lines: "Counselor ed departments need to say, 'Hey, we can't meet all of your needs as a mother, or a single mother, but I know someone who can, and I want to be intentional and connect you with this person.'" Bethany also suggested that "peer support groups would be really cool. I was the 'lone wolf' for a little bit. Could create campus-wide support groups for graduate students . . . and provide childcare and free pizza for the kids." The important piece was not having to navigate this alone, as Sara remarked: "Facilitating connection between doctoral student mothers, rather than us having to find our own connections, would be helpful. Making sure there's a space for moms."

The main component named was to increase the visibility of the needs of student mothers and provide an understanding of their experiences by shifting the mindset of lowered expectations by faculty and peers to knowing that they can and will be successful with support. Advocacy requires understanding the experiences of women, especially mothers, and identifying the barriers they still face in academia and the workplace. Sara shared the need for greater equity for doctoral student mothers, saying that it "isn't fair that women who have decided to be moms have to put their own dreams secondary. Women need to know that they are welcome and there is a place for them if they do decide to get pregnant."

Participants suggested that counselor education programs should teach how to create a framework of work-life balance. Flexible timelines were part of the template for success. Allison suggested that timelines could be a helpful option for those considering doing both doctoral work and motherhood, because her mentor said, "Don't do it until after second year . . . [it's a] lot easier to stop and start the dissertation process."

Providing for physical needs, such as having a lactation room, was also critical to sending a welcoming message. Participants described the need for maternity and sick leave policies that were family-friendly. Participants agreed that they needed faculty and departments to acknowledge their capability to complete their doctorates, accept their value to the profession, and support their life choices. Allison voiced a clear directive for faculty and peer mentors:

The biggest characteristic needed for a mentor is supporting and that it just takes one person . . . one relationship at the school who was going to be accepting of me regardless and who was going to help me with my goals . . . not just my goals to be a PhD but [my] goal to be a mother and a good wife.
Discussion
Participants' voices highlighted how, with the support of their mentors, they were able to navigate the often murky waters of a PhD program. Perhaps because 10 of the 12 mothers were pregnant while in their program, they neither cared nor were able to hide their motherhood identity. This is only the second study at the time of this review that specifically included women who were pregnant while in CES programs. Similar to the findings of Holm and colleagues (2015), these participants viewed motherhood as a positive attribute that blended well with CES principles in enhancing their work and vice versa.

Participants experienced mentoring as relational and protective. Building on the findings of several studies that suggested mentoring might add a protective factor for success and satisfaction (Holm et al., 2015; Lynch, 2008; Neale-McFall & Ward, 2015; Trepal et al., 2014), this study found that mentors focused on providing logistical support to bolster academic progress while fostering work-life balance to promote the overall well-being of the student. These mentors provided emotional support for the participants' decision to become pregnant and provided regular check-ins throughout the pregnancy, new motherhood, and in many cases, beyond graduation into a professorship.

Also important to this study was the reciprocal relationship. Beyond responding with care and compassion, mentors shared their own motherhood experiences that mirrored their mentees. Supervisors who expressed vulnerability increased the feeling of friendship and deepening of the relationship. This supported other research that described mentoring relationships that include an emotional connection that was both empathic and empowering (Gammel & Rutstein-Riley, 2016; Holm et al., 2015; Trepal et al., 2014). In a similar finding to that emerging from Kelch-Oliver and colleagues' (2013) study of mentorship, the three African American participants experienced "mothering" by female African American faculty mentors and the "sisterhood" of peer mentoring that went beyond academic walls. For these women, mentoring helped navigate cultural barriers. Not only was it important that they have female faculty, but also choosing women who lived under "double minority" as Patton (2009, p. 71) described gave them both perspective and support around the complexity of race, gender, and motherhood in academic settings and society as a whole.

Doctoral student mothers connecting with other student mothers reported experiencing greater encouragement and satisfaction in those academic peer relationships compared with their relationships with peers without children. Similar to previous findings (Lynch, 2008; Trepal et al., 2014), peer mentoring by other student mothers reduced feelings of isolation, as often these women were the sole mothers in their cohort. They relied on other mothers in earlier cohorts or recent graduates to guide them on how to balance academics and family life.

Participants who had wellness and work-life balance modeled felt better equipped to pursue an academic career path, while those who had poor work-life balance modeled felt less prepared to be successful in academic institutions. Participants who experienced greater discrimination from their institution lacking in family-friendly policies shared their intentions to put their family's needs first by accepting non-academic jobs, moving closer to relatives, or waiting until their children were older to enter a tenure-track position. This coincides with decades of research (Alexander-Albritton & Hill, 2015; Wolfinger et al., 2008) on graduate women with academic careers that are perceived as non-supportive of family-work balance.

Results also gave voice to the need for change that promotes advocacy concerning parenthood and family-friendly accommodations to aid in decreasing discrimination, both structurally and psychologically. These women had already become advocates and peer mentors. Congruent to earlier research findings, participants identified the need for institutional support in the form of establishing peer mentorship networks that connect other mothers across cohorts and departments, clarifying maternity leave policies, adopting non-penalizing pause-the-clock policies for dissertation work, offering accommodations such as lactation rooms and childcare, and providing flexibility around timelines (Holley & Caldwell, 2012; Holm et al., 2015; Lester, 2013; Lynch, 2008; Stimpson & Filer, 2011). Finally, participants challenged counselor educators to lead the way in addressing inequalities and dismissive attitudes of motherhood in academia by creating a level of openness to family life and choosing to support their students' goals as counselor educators and mothers.

Limitations and Future Directions
This study has limitations because of transferability issues, the possibility of research bias, and delimiting criteria. Although major geographic regions and university types were represented, participants were racially, culturally, and economically similar, as all were married and in dual-income families. As this study recruited only mothers in CES programs, implications from this study for doctoral student fathers who are primary caregivers or doctoral student mothers in other disciplines may not be transferable. Additionally, several mothers in this study had children with medical or mental health issues, but this study did not specifically set out to focus on families with special needs.

Concerning the research design, as research instruments, we may have inadvertently interjected personal biases into the interview process and coding. The goal was to minimize this through bracketing, journaling, member checking, and reviewing themes with research members. Although semi-structured interview questions guided the research and allowed for organic responses, perhaps another approach might have yielded additional themes. All the participants held jobs in addition to their studies and motherhood duties. Several discussed the effects of work on life balance and needing to reduce hours to part-time, but no distinct theme emerged. Perhaps a specific question on how mentoring may mediate the strains of employment might reveal additional content. Finally, the experiences recorded represent women who remained in their programs. With attrition close to 50% (Council of Graduate Schools, 2010), this research did not address those who dropped out of the program, so other needs or barriers may be missed.

Suggestions for future research include either expanding the concept of caregiving or narrowing the focus to specific sub-groups. Specific to CES, research might investigate mentoring from a faculty point of view to determine why and how faculty choose to mentor, as well as any training for the role. A focus group or interviewing both the mentor and other faculty who interacted with these student mothers might also add to the thickness of the context. Revealed reciprocal benefits that mentors and mentees incur in their relationship could be applied to future training programs for counselor educators. A study specific to peer mentorship might yield unique findings and inform strategies for launching or enhancing successful programs. Quantitative studies might evaluate the effectiveness of existing mentoring programs and expand them for non-traditional students.
Conclusion

Findings from this phenomenological study are cautiously optimistic, as they appear to strengthen the body of knowledge around the importance of relational mentoring and suggest it may be an important protective factor for doctoral student mothers. Research suggests that mentoring is an effective means of support for women (Bruce, 1995; Holm et al., 2015; Kelch-Oliver et al., 2013), but in this study, it appeared to be the most salient component for successful completion of their doctoral programs. Combining the effects of dual roles, medical and mental health hardships, isolation, lack of family-friendly accommodations and policies, and struggles with work-life balance made the mentoring experience essential.

Adding to the body of knowledge around mentoring, this research denotes specific qualities of effective mentors and provides rich descriptions of the relationships and roles valued by these student mothers. This may be helpful in CES training, in selecting future mentors, and in setting up mentorship programs. Equipped with clear directives, CES departments can develop mentorship programs, pairing senior professor mentors with junior professors to teach mentoring skills, rewarding faculty for outstanding mentorship, establishing peer mentoring programs, and developing alumni mentorship opportunities. Within programs and across campus, faculty and staff can assist in connecting student and faculty mothers, promote family support groups, and organize family-inclusive activites. Meanwhile, counselor educators can provide flexibility around scheduling comprehensive exams, dissertation timelines, and research opportunities. Counselor educators can lead in bringing this issue to the discussion table around program development and advocacy initiatives. Medina and Magnuson's (2009) statement that "Mothers are the people through whom others' lives are changed" (p. 90) fits well with the ideals of counselor educators; therefore, retaining these mothers in higher education is an important endeavor.

Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure
The authors reported no conflict of interest
or funding contributions for the development
of this manuscript.
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Vanessa Kent, PhD, NCC, LCMHC-S, LMFT, is an assistant professor at Regent University. Helen Runyan, PhD, NCC, LPC, is an associate professor at Regent University. David Savinsky, PhD, ACS, LPC, LMFT, CSAC, is an associate professor at Regent University. Jasmine Knight, PhD, NCC, is an assistant professor at Regent University. Correspondence may be addressed to Vanessa Kent, 1000 University Drive, Virginia Beach, VA 23464, vaneken@regent.edu.

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Mentoring Doctoral Student Mothers in Counselor Education: A Phenomenological Study

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When the pursuit of doctoral studies and motherhood intersect, the risk of attrition increases. Although other studies have explored the challenges of student mothers in academia, this study looked at how mentorship might mediate them. This phenomenological study examined the mentoring experiences of doctoral student mothers or recent graduates in counselor education and supervision programs (N = 12).

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I have been tasked with creating a faculty mentoring program on my campus. I've surveyed our various colleges about what they have in place, and they're all over the map. While many of them do nothing (and seem uninterested in the idea), some have a mentor-matching program for new faculty, and others think mentoring is important but assume it happens organically. Based on a climate survey of our faculty members, there's a strong desire for more and better mentoring on our campus. We've had a number of faculty members who participated in your online programs and rave about them. My question is: How can I create an effective mentoring program on my campus? I don't have unlimited time, resources or support, so I'm hoping you can describe something that I can get up and running on a lean budget. Busy Administrator
Dear Busy Administrator,

I'm not surprised to hear that your faculty members want more and better mentoring programs in place. That's not a concern that's unique to your campus -- it's a broader trend that I hear about all the time. And it's also not uncommon for an already overwhelmed administrator to be directed to create an effective and popular program with few (or no) resources.

It's true, we do run highly effective mentoring programs, and I'm happy to share the guiding questions we use whenever we design a new program. I hope these questions will help you to efficiently build something that will benefit faculty members on your campus. I encourage you to take an entrepreneurial (instead of academic) approach by using these questions to create a lean and workable program that you can beta test for a semester. Then collect feedback while you're running it so that you can use that feedback to enhance your mentoring program in successive versions and share what you've learned with your colleagues.
Question #1: What Is Mentoring?
The most common approach to creating mentoring programs -- especially when resources are tight -- is to set up a mentor-matching program and then hope for the best. Please consider thinking outside this particular box! Mentor matches don't work for most people, most of the time, and while mentor matching can be an optional part of your program, it cannot be the entire program if you want to meet your faculty members' needs.

The success of our programs is rooted in the fact that we replace the guru model of mentoring with a network model of mentoring. That means we don't use the word "mentoring." Instead, we focus on identifying the broad range of needs that faculty members know they have and then providing concrete strategies for getting those needs met.

For example, most of the faculty members we serve need some combination of the following as they transition from graduate student to faculty member: professional development, emotional support, intellectual community, role models, accountability, sponsorship, access to opportunities and substantive feedback. It's simply impossible for one person (via a mentor match) to meet all those needs.
Question #2: Whom Will Your Program Serve?
In addition to determining what mentoring means on your campus, you must also figure out whom, specifically, your program is designed to serve. And please, don't say everybody!

When you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody well. Different groups of faculty have very different needs, so to get started, choose a specific group for your beta program. It can be tenure-track faculty, tenured faculty, underrepresented faculty, adjunct faculty, etc. It doesn't matter whom you decide to support with this first run as long as you make a choice.

Once you target that specific group, ask a sample of them to name the most pressing problems they experience on a daily basis and what they want from a support program. You may already have that data from the climate survey that you described, but I encourage you also to have several direct conversations so that you can hear how people describe their daily reality and be aware of the specific words that they use.

For example, whenever we work with tenure-track faculty members, their primary concern is getting tenure. But once we scratch the surface and ask about their specific daily challenges, they quickly start to describe solvable problems -- like finding time to write, managing classroom issues and conflicts with their colleagues, feeling overwhelmed by service requests, and/or balancing work and family.
Question #3: What Pain Point Can Your Program Realistically Alleviate?
Our mentoring programs produce positive outcomes because we build them on the articulated needs of faculty members -- rather than organizing them around what we think they should know. We do this by helping faculty members to address immediate and pressing problems. In other words, we identify existing pain points and then present solutions in ways that make those problems solvable through new skill acquisition, peer accountability, laser coaching and self-assessment.

Given that so many faculty members have said they want more mentoring, it may seem counterintuitive to frame your program more narrowly. However, we've found that when we invite time-crunched faculty members to a mentoring program, the ambiguity of what they will receive makes it difficult for them to invest their most precious commodity -- their time. They're left with the internal calculus of "Should I grade this stack of papers on my desk or schlep across campus to be 'mentored'?"

The most pressing concerns that pretenure faculty members bring to us are: 1) struggling to find time for research and writing and 2) feeling miserable because they are working all the time. When we get highly specific about these two pain points and design a program to alleviate them, we observe different levels of participation. The fact is that there's a differential response between "Would you like to join a mentoring program?" and "Would you like to become more productive and have better work-life balance?" The former is so generic that few people show up, while the latter is so specific and desirable that we end up with a waiting list each session.

And please don't miss the fact that faculty members will raise a wide range of concerns, some of which are beyond the scope of mentoring. A mentoring program cannot solve structural problems -- that requires collective movements over long periods of time. An effective one focuses on solvable problems at the individual level. In other words, you want to identify the issues that are under the faculty member's control and can be alleviated when that person learns and implements new skills. The success of the program you build on your campus will depend on your ability to discern that difference between the structural and the immediately solvable.
Question #4: What Will You Teach?
An effective program will require content. Sadly, what passes for content in many campus mentoring programs are panels of senior faculty members sharing their individual stories about how they personally navigated their own career transitions. While shared stories are helpful in creating community and opening up important conversations, anecdotes are no substitute for rigorous professional development training.

To deliver on the promise of alleviating the real pain points your faculty members are experiencing, you need to have some meat on your program. As such, you must be prepared to teach and provide a context for engaging in whatever empirically documented practices will alleviate the identified pain points.

The great news is that there are ample faculty development researchers, facilitators and trainers (both on and off your campus) who are knowledgeable about best practices and available to share them with your participants. You can bring in an expert facilitator or contact your campus-based faculty developers to deliver it, but you must provide content beyond individual stories if you want to see measurable outcomes.
Question #5: How Can You Create a Supportive Community for Experimentation?
What we know about mentor matching is that it may produce good advice, but it keeps faculty members isolated and rarely results in implementation. In other words, it's one thing to learn a solution, and it's a wholly different matter to experiment with that solution. What would it would look like to build a community to support faculty members in practicing what they learn, creating positive accountability structures and celebrating one another's successes as they occur?

There are so many ways to create supportive communities! You can establish write-on-site groups or writing retreats where faculty members gather and write together. You can form accountability groups for faculty members who want to support one another in meeting weekly goals or pair up accountability buddies among peers who want to encourage each other in experimenting with new skills. These are neither expensive nor difficult to organize, support and assess.
Question #6: How Will You Measure Success?
The biggest mistake I observe when busy administrators create mentoring programs is that they don't consider up front how they will measure whether their program is successful. Nobody seems to know what it looks like when mentoring has occurred or when it fails. And if you don't have data, all you're left with are anecdotes from those who had either very good or very bad experiences.

As you start building your program, I encourage you to identify how you will gauge success and what metrics you will use to measure the effectiveness of your program. If you get clear up front what you hope to achieve, you're more likely to build a program that ensures the success of your participants and can be implemented institutionwide in the future.

I hope these six questions will help you to create an effective mentoring program on your campus in the very near future. I'm sure that readers will have additional ideas and examples to share, and I encourage that collaboration in the comments section below.

Peace and productivity,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Ph.D.

President, N ational Center for Faculty Development & Diversity

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How to create an effective mentoring program on your campus (essay)

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I have been tasked with creating a faculty mentoring program on my campus. I've surveyed our various colleges about what they have in place, and they're all over the map. While many of them do nothing (and seem uninterested in the idea), some have a mentor-matching program for new faculty, and others think mentoring is important but assume it happens organically.

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Dekeda Brown, 41, lives in Olney, Md., with her husband and two daughters, one of whom has nonverbal autism.

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Covid-19 has precipitated a caregiving crisis with profoundly gendered effects. The well-documented decrease in women’s journal submissionsis an early example of the pandemic’s impact. In coming years, we’ll probably see additional consequences, including widening gender divisions in attaining tenure and an increase in the gender pay gap. These effects will be particularly stark for racially minoritized women.

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A year into the coronavirus pandemic, many in the academic scientific workforce are experiencing a state of chronic exhaustion known as burnout. Although it is not a medical condition and can occur in any workplace where there is stress, burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as a syndrome. Its symptoms are physical and emotional, and include feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from and feelings of negativity or cynicism towards one's job; and a reduced ability to do one's work.

At its core, burnout is caused by work that demands continuous, long-term physical, cognitive or emotional effort.

Indicators of the syndrome have risen sharply in some higher-education institutions over the past year, according to surveys in the United States and Europe. In a poll of 1,122 US faculty members that focused on the effects of the pandemic, almost 70% of respondents said they felt stressed in 2020, more than double the number in 2019 (32%). The survey, conducted last October by The Chronicle of Higher Education and financial-services firm Fidelity Investments in Boston, Massachusetts, also found that more than two-thirds of respondents felt fatigued, compared with less than one-third in 2019. During 2020, 35% felt angry, whereas just 12% said that in 2019. The results were released last month.

More than half of people surveyed said they were seriously considering changing their career or retiring early. Emotional and other effects of pandemic-related burnout were worse for female faculty members: 75% of women reported feeling stressed, compared with 59% of men. By contrast, in 2019, that number was 34% for female respondents. Around eight out of ten women also indicated that their workload had increased as a result of the pandemic, compared with seven out of ten men. Almost three-quarters of female faculty members reported that their work-life balance deteriorated in 2020, compared with just less than two-thirds of male respondents.

A similar survey in Europe offers an equally grim snapshot, showing a drastic increase in the rates of stress and mental-health concerns in the academic scientific workforce. Ominously, the pandemic's toll now also includes rampant career uncertainty.

As universities struggle with the economic fallout of repeated closures, burnout among academic researchers will probably continue for some time amid lay-offs or hiring freezes, say higher-education researchers. There are no quick or easy solutions to burnout, especially with no end in sight to its underlying structural causes; academic scientists are often largely left to muddle through as best they can (see 'Managing burnout').

Managing burnout

Mid-career minefield

A European poll of academic journal and book authors by De Gruyter, a scholarly publishing house in Berlin, found that mid-career researchers, particularly women, have been hit the hardest by work-related stress. According to its December 2020 report, Locked Down, Burned Out: "For many academics the pandemic has [been], and continues to be, a time of great stress, insecurity and pressure."

Researchers have got busier as the pandemic continues, says Deirdre Watchorn, senior manager of De Gruyter's insights and analysis team. The publisher conducted two surveys: one last May, involving 3,214 respondents from 103 countries, and another last October, in which 1,100 people responded from 78 countries. "One of the biggest shifts was how many hours people were working day to day," says Watchorn: most people's hours increased, largely caused by the global transition to digital learning. The need for academics to conduct teaching online can roughly triple the preparation time for a one-hour lecture, says Liz Morrish, who researches higher-education policy as a visiting fellow at York St John University in York, UK. That leaves less time for research.

In addition to online teaching demands, Watchorn says, survey respondents identified two other impediments to conducting academic research as normal: disrupted professional networks and working from home, often while caring for children. Academic researchers feel that their careers are on hold, and long-term collaborations are suffering as a result of the network disruptions and the inability to work together in person. "We saw the reported usage of Twitter increase as a result of the pandemic, and people trying to find collaborators," Watchorn says.

Pile-up effect

Thomas Kannampallil, who studies clinical decision-making at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, conducted three surveys of physician trainees in mid-2020 to determine whether burnout was exacerbated by their exposure to people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19. In the first survey, involving 393 trainees working in two US hospitals in April last year, he and his colleagues found that those who were involved in front-line medical responses to the pandemic experienced more stress and burnout than did those not caring for people with COVID-19 ( T. Kannampallil et al. PLoS ONE 15, e0237301; 2020).

Kannampallil says that greater job-related stressors affect one's ability to dissociate from work, resulting in a lower likelihood of engaging in activities such as exercise, sleep and self-care that help with recovery. The heavier workload, along with less ability to recover, produces a vicious cycle, Kannampallil says. "You are emotionally exhausted yet disconnected, which creates an inability to recover and leads to a 'pile-up effect'," he says.

An inherent problem

Even before the pandemic, many researchers in academia were struggling with poor mental health. Desiree Dickerson, an academic mental-health consultant in Valencia, Spain, says that burnout is a problem inherent in the academic system: because of how narrowly it defines excellence, and how it categorizes and rewards success. "We need to reward and value the right things," she says.

Lisa Jaremka, director of the Close Relationships and Health Lab at the University of Delaware in Newark, says that pressures leading to burnout are institutional and that academic structures must change. Those in power, including university administrators, members of hiring committees and department chairs, need to change expectations and set new ones, Jaremka says.

Yet evidence of empathetic leadership at the institutional level is in short supply, says Richard Watermeyer, a higher-education researcher at the University of Bristol, UK, who has been conducting surveys to monitor impacts of the pandemic on academia. Performative advice from employers to look after oneself or to leave one day a week free of meetings to catch up on work is pretty superficial, he says. Such counsel does not reduce work allocation, he points out.

The pandemic has exacerbated the existing inequalities in academia, says Mangala Srinivas, a clinical-imaging scientist who is outgoing chair of the Young Academy of Europe, an advocacy and networking group of leading young scientists and scholars. Dickerson expects a disproportionate increase in burnout in academic researchers from marginalized groups - among them, women, international students, carers and people from sexual and gender minorities (LGBT+) - alongside the increases in anxiety and depression already seen in those scientists. Rajvinder Samra, a senior lecturer in health at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, recommends that members of marginalized groups forge connections with those who might have similar vulnerabilities. This might help individuals to create a sense of belonging and to build confidence when raising concerns with people in senior positions.

And although many funders have granted extensions to help ease deadline pressures, often there is no extra money, Srinivas adds. On the upside, however, the pandemic has brought a greater institutional acceptance of flexible working hours and provided more opportunities to write or spend time with family, she says.

Morrish is not optimistic that workloads will ease any time soon. "Every university will be under financial stringency, which means fewer faculty members and more workload," she says. Redundancies have been under way since last year in many institutions, including a reported 17,000 job cuts in Australia, alongside lay-offs in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

For academic researchers who have the benefit of union representation in their institutions, Morrish recommends joining a union and participating in meetings. For other scientists, she says, it is important to review contracts. "Be vigilant, know your contract, and make sure the institution doesn't ride roughshod over you." Samra advises that academic scientists update their CVs with new skill sets they've had to learn as a consequence of pandemic-related changes. "Acknowledge and get credit for the skills you are developing," she says - it could lead to enhanced job prospects in the future.

Watermeyer thinks that early-career researchers, in particular, need to make clear decisions now about their future career prospects in academia. "Precarity", he warns, "is bound to increase."

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A year into the coronavirus pandemic, many in the academic scientific workforce are experiencing a state of chronic exhaustion known as burnout. Although it is not a medical condition and can occur in any workplace where there is stress, burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as a syndrome.

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On-demand access to the mentoring, tools, and support you need to be successful in the Academy.

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Professor Mommy is a guide for women who want to combine the life of the mind with the joys of motherhood. The book provides practical suggestions gleaned from the experiences of the authors, together with those of other women who have successfully combined parenting with professorships. Professor Mommy addresses key questions-when to have children and how many to have; what kinds of academic institutions are the most family friendly; how true or not true are the beliefs that many people hold about academic life, and so on-for women throughout all stages of their academic careers, from graduate school through full professor. The authors follow the demands of motherhood all the way from infancy to the teenage years. At each stage, the authors offer invaluable advice and tested strategies for juggling the demands and achieving the rewards of an academic career and motherhood.

Written in clear, jargon-free prose, the book is accessible to women in all disciplines, with concise chapters for the time-constrained academic. The book's conversational tone is supplemented with a review of the most current scholarship on work/family balance and a survey of emerging family-friendly practices at U.S. colleges and universities. Professor Mommy asserts that the faculty mother has become and will remain a permanent fixture on the landscape of the American academy.

Endorsements and Reviews:

"Bowdoin College professors address the challenges of pursuing an academic career while raising children, offering counsel and advice to women seeking to combine "the life of the mind with the joys of motherhood." Connelly, the mother of four sons, is an economist whose international research addresses intersections between work and family life; Ghodsee is an expert in gender and women's studies who received Fulbright and National Science Foundation grants. Their individual experiences inform the book, which provides not only a step-by-step program from graduate studies to tenure but also a "what to expect when you're expecting" and mothering while chiseling out a profile inside ivied halls. Connelly and Ghodsee tell tough truths-academics is a hard and demanding career for anyone, and most difficult for women with children-but they recommend outsourcing whatever does not contribute directly to your job; availing yourself of good full- or part-time child care; finding an institution with fair work-family policies; attending conferences, networking, and coauthoring publications; saying "no" to nonessential work; relocating as opportunities arise; and staying hypervigilant about time management. A well-presented guidebook for academics, there is little attorneys, physicians, CEOs, or other professional women would find useful. "(Publishers Weekly, Sept. 2011)

"Bowdoin faculty members Connelly and Ghodsee are mothers who've struggled with the challenges of research, teaching, publishing, and caring for children in defiance of the conventional wisdom that women in academia have to choose between family and career. They devote an entire chapter to debunking the myths that discourage many women from pursuing tenure during their most fertile reproductive years. Drawing on their experiences and on surveys of and interviews with a variety of women in academia, they first review the decision to have an academic career and the decision to have children, including how many and when to have them. They proceed with a detailed chronology of the tenure track, a comprehensive guide, and unwavering encouragement. They are frank about sacrifices and challenges encountered during graduate study and the PhD dissertation, and they detail the hurdles presented by low salaries, undesirable work locations, and long working hours. But they also note the rewards of both academic life and motherhood. Women interested in careers in academia should appreciate this helpful, encouraging resource."- Booklist

"Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee have written a book that is not just a must-read for anyone contemplating the intricate and as-yet imperfect balance of academic life and family life, but for anyone at all interested in promoting equity in the workplace and more importantly, in the world of ideas. Professor Mommy lays out in stark detail the dismal record and very real statistics of the maternal wall, glass ceiling and the steep personal costs that women academics often face. But rather than stop there, they offer detailed, practical and user-friendly guidance on how to set your own priorities, draw boundaries and forge a path through this thorny obstacle course. They show it is not easy, but it is indeed possible to be both a successful academic and a loving parent with a rich family life. More, Professor Mommy is a call to action: that lasting change and that longed-for balance will come only when men become aware of the stacked deck against women and when women academics make the hard decision not to opt out, but to opt in, writing, publishing, thinking, promoting their ideas, and by their very presence, change the calcified system from within."- Brigid Schulte, Washington Post, Pulitzer Prize co-winner

"Do read this 'can do book for mothers who want to pursue an academic career! Yes, you can succeed and this book guides you through every step and pitfall-from choosing the type of institution that is for you to coming up for full professor. It doesn't shy away from the very real obstacles, like exhaustion during the early child-raising years, but offers alternative strategies for climbing the ladder. The sound advice is aimed at mothers-but it could be the handbook for any Ph.D. who is deciding on an academic career. I will recommend it to all my graduate students."- Mary Ann Mason, professor and co-director of the Center, Economics & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; author, Mothers on the Fast Track

"Don't believe the myths-you can conquer the academy while raising children. It isn't easy, but few worthwhile things in life are. Connelly and Ghodsee show, step by step, how smart women win at work and win at home by protecting their time and focusing on what matters most (hint: it's not grading papers or ironing shirts!)."- Laura Vanderkam, author, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think

Media

Rachel Connelly and Kristen Ghodsee, Professor Mom: Finding Work-Family Balance Despite the Odds in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 24, 2011

When Enough Is (Good) Enough: A Review of 'Professor Mommy' Prof. Hacker, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 11, 2012

Motherhood After Tenure: "Professor Mommy," Inside Higher Ed, May 3, 2012

Wanted: The Academic Equivalent of the "Pretty Girl Rock, Guest Blog Post, October 7, 2011

Time of Day Flexibility: Our Blessing and Our Curse, Guest Blog Post by Rachel Connelly, September 5, 2011

T enure Tracks and Ticking Clocks, Guest Blog Post, August 22, 2011

A Research Career at a Liberal Arts College, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2008

Read a Sample

Chapter 3: Know Thyself - Part I: On Deciding to Become an Academic ( pdf)

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Professor Mommy: Finding Work/Family Balance in Academia (with Rachel Connelly)

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Professor Mommy is a guide for women who want to combine the life of the mind with the joys of motherhood. The book provides practical suggestions gleaned from the experiences of the authors, together with those of other women who have successfully combined parenting with professorships.

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Welcome to the website for Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008), edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant.

is a literary anthology of deeply-felt personal narratives by women both in and out of the academy, writing about their experiences attempting to reconcile bodies with brains. This anthology voices stories of academic women choosing to have, not have, or delay children. The essays in this anthology speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, and make recommendations on how to make the academy a more family-friendly workplace.

Robert Drago, author of Striking a Balance: Work, Family, Life (Dollars & Sense, 2007) says, "Through the voices of those who have weathered the storm, fills a crucial gap in our understanding of why gender equity has been so difficult to achieve in academe. More importantly, it provides invaluable lessons for young scholars - both men and women - striving to navigate family and academic careers."

Catherine Newman, author of Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family (Penguin, 2005) says, "All those sleepless nights and dirty diapers and baby food in your hair - where's the discursive construction of motherhood when you need it? It's here, in these smart, funny, poignant essays that struggle to balance mind and body, to balance body and soul."

And Mary Ann Mason, author of Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Families and Careers (Oxford University Press, 2007) says, "This is a charming, heartfelt book that expresses the difficulties and the joys of combining a life in academia with motherhood. Each story is different, but the experiences and challenges are widely shared."

Caroline and Elrena decided to assemble this collection because it's the book we needed when we entered graduate school and the academic job market. We wanted to know that blending family life with life in the ivory tower might be possible; we needed to know that other women were attempting this balancing act. Those women were invisible to us then, but as we began to seek out their stories, we discovered so many women living out this very challenge. We want their stories to be told, so that other women who face these difficult choices will know that they are not alone. We hope this book will encourage and inspire these women, as they try to decide if, when, and how to balance motherhood and academic work.

Our stories will be told more fully in the book, but for now, here's a brief look at our backgrounds. Caroline, an editor and columnist for Literary Mama, got married six weeks after earning her Ph.D, and got pregnant, two years later, the same week as finally landing a good teaching job. She thought she might attempt to balance teaching and motherhood, but over the course of her pregnancy and brief maternity leave realized that she needed to leave academia. Elrena (a contributor to Literary Mama and other publications) found out she was expecting during her second semester of Ph.D. studies, but her plans to sail blithely through her pregnancy while continuing her studies were radically altered by serious pregnancy complications. After trying to balance recovery, new motherhood, and graduate student life for a semester, she realized she needed to take a year off and rethink her commitment to the academy. Caroline and Elrena, having both left the confines of the ivory tower, are now working on this book.

Join our mailing list! Email us at editors (at) mamaphd.com

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Welcome to the website for Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008), edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant. is a literary anthology of deeply-felt personal narratives by women both in and out of the academy, writing about their experiences attempting to reconcile bodies with brains.

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After two months quarantining with their families, Odgers Berndtson consultants Catherine Bass Black and Lisa DeConto decided to examine the effects COVID-19 is having on executive-track mothers. Their conclusion: if employers do not act quickly, they may lose their next generation of female executives.

The "she-session"

In January of 2020, women composed more than 50% of the American workforce. Six months and fifteen million jobs later, this may not be the case.

It's been widely recognized that women in the United States are being disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Though women are more likely than men to be essential workers (where there have been fewer layoffs), they are also more likely to work in the hard-hit leisure, hospitality, retail, and healthcare sectors, which means that some 60% of the more than 25 million jobs lost over the last three and half months belonged to women. Indeed, the number of women who lost their jobs in April exceeds the total number of jobs created for women in the years between the Great Recession and the current pandemic. Because women do the majority of unpaid home labor in their households, they have been further burdened by the closure of schools, daycare centers, camps, and summer programs.

As recruiters, we spend a lot of time talking with executives and executive-track individuals. Over the last three months, a recurring theme in our conversations was that the pandemic's effects on women won't be limited to layoffs. In fact, the pandemic has exacerbated many of the pressures that traditionally cause even high-earning women to "opt-out" of their careers. It's become clear to us that if, as experts suggest, the pandemic continues to force intermittent lockdowns during the next 18-24 months it is likely to take to develop and distribute a vaccine, companies are at risk of losing significant numbers of the next generation of women executives-namely, today's mothers.

Summary of findings

In exploring this issue and preparing for this article, we talked to a number of executives, both women, and men. Some were optimistic about the long-term benefits that the work-from-home culture will have for executive-track women, arguing that the widespread adoption of remote work has normalized flexible work practices and will make it easier for some women to manage their roles as parents and employees in the future.

Others were far more pessimistic, citing the fact that many traditional barriers to employment for women-most notably childcare-have become daily challenges for parents thanks to COVID-19 and could increase the opt-out rate for high-potential women, adding that women who suspend their careers to raise children often find it difficult to restart them.

However, nearly all the executives we talked to agree that the response to COVID-19 has demonstrated that employers are capable of doing a far better job of accommodating the schedules of parents (regardless of gender or career phase) than they have been doing to date. These executives also had concrete recommendations about what companies can do now to help parents through this difficult time, and how they can change their policies to better engage and retain mothers in the long run. Most notably, they agreed that those employers who fail to invest in women stand to lose high-potential women employees and see long-term declines in their attractiveness to future employees.

Many mothers quit

Even before the pandemic, research shows that 43% of American mothers quit their jobs when they have children. These "opt-outs" often struggle to re-enter the workforce, a difficulty that compounds the longer they stay out. Many also tend to experience limited career growth relative to women who either do not have children or do not leave their jobs to raise kids, which in turn can translate into permanent limitations to their lifelong earnings potential. As a result, though 70% of women do eventually return to some form of paid work after having children, many don't return to the careers they originally left, and only 40% of those returnees come back full time. To translate: that means that one in four American mothers never returns to full-time employment after taking time off to have children.

Why?

There are many contributing factors, but generally speaking, the answer seems to have two parts.

Parenthood is a job-a hard one. Sure, it's unpaid and takes place outside a recognized workplace, but it's nonetheless important, time-consuming, and oftentimes stressful. This is compounded by the fact that mothers still devote significantly more hours to childcare and domestic work than fathers, though fathers are doing more than they did in previous decades. And single parents, the majority of whom are women, have to shoulder all the work alone. Although this article is primarily concerned with "working mothers," we realize there are plenty of families that are not described by traditional father-mother and/or single parent paradigms; we also recognize that the general trends we've described-particularly the apportioning of domestic labor-do not describe every heteronormative parenting arrangement and are not limited to them. We think that efforts to increase employer support for working mothers, however, can have positive effects on employees and families of every makeup.

The vast majority of American employers have yet to institutionalize adequate workplace flexibility and support mechanisms to help parents balance full-time employment with parenthood. Nor have they done enough to incentivize women to resume their careers without facing penalties for the time they took off to raise children.

This failure on the part of employers is one of the reasons why, after seeing significant gains in workforce engagement between 1950 and 2000,-gains made possible by the proliferation of commodities (washing machines, dishwashers, vacuums) and institutions (daycare, summer camps, school buses) that gave women enough time to manage their careers and run households-the percentage of women in the workforce has remained largely stagnant since the year 2000. This is despite the advent of digital technologies that could if widely accepted by the business community, enhance flexibility, and help companies retain and engage more mothers.

Enter COVID-19

Many of the same factors that cause mothers to opt-out of the workforce have been exacerbated by the pandemic. With daycare, schools, summer camps, and sports suspended, and other childcare options (grandparents, babysitters) impracticable for health reasons, parents are now forced to manage work and full-time childcare.

At the same time, many of the diversity & inclusion resources that companies do have in place have gone undernourished. D&I initiatives around the country have "slid backwards very quickly over the past few months," said Kristy Wallace, CEO of Ellevate Network. "They've just not been a priority."

And this comes at a time when many people need more support than ever before, as was noted by Dr. Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Pre-COVID-19 workplace inequalities have gone "on steroids" thanks to the pandemic.

Even the reopening that we're seeing in many states is not affecting all workers equally. Parents have greater barriers to returning to work than non-parents. Until schools and childcare facilities reopen, it will be difficult for many parents to return to a full-time traditional office schedule.

It's important to remember that even impacts that seem short term in nature can actually have long term career implications. Women who even briefly decrease their workforce participation may well see decreases in their career prospects, deflation of their long-term earnings potential, and a reinvigoration of the workplace stereotype that women are less committed to their careers than their male counterparts.

The bright side

On a positive note, thanks to widespread stay-at-home orders, working from home has become the new normal for millions of Americans. This has a number of potentially important implications.

Employers are realizing that remote work is viable

For years people have been calling "flex work" the future of work, but most companies have been hesitant to actually give it a try. However, as one of the executives we spoke to said, COVID-19 has forced us to move past our comfort zones. As Lisa Jones, the CEO of AmundiPioneer Asset Management USA, observed, "We've all, at every level, recognized that we can be hugely productive while working remotely. And as a result, decision-makers are more open to all aspects of flexible work and to retaining people with these new proven and productive ways of working." This could have a significant effect on giving women the choice of working from home while raising children without jeopardizing their careers.

Humanization of the employee

When you're conducting meetings out of your living room on Zoom, the previously ironclad distinctions between your life at home and your life at work are harder to make, and companies are starting to realize that there is an intrinsic relationship between the two. As Jones noted:

"The baby crying in the background, the cat walking over the keyboard-we've brought it all to life, in full color, and companies now see that the juggle of work and family life is real. Our collective tolerance has increased dramatically."

Flexible work options will become a competitive necessity

Now more than ever, flexible work options are a necessary element of talent attraction and a cornerstone of diversity & inclusion recruiting. Jones again: "Employers in the financial services sector have to ask themselves 'What flexibility can we provide going forward to make sure that financial services emerges as a sought-after industry by the next generation of employees?' Financial services is not the highly attractive employer it once was, in part because of the inflexible work arrangements and a somewhat weak performance record on the diversity & inclusion front. Increasing our work flexibility could help us to gain and maintain more diversity of thought and experience by recruiting people from other industries more successfully."

Action Steps For Employers

In order to remain competitive in the talent marketplace and retain executive and executive-track women, employers need to actively help parents manage the acute difficulties of the pandemic in the short term while working in the longer term to institutionalize a culture of support.

Here are some things that companies can consider:

Provide short term assistance

Companies need to actively help parents find a work-life balance while under quarantine. For some this may mean offering paid "COVID-19 Leave." For others, it may mean giving parents the option to temporarily reduce hours and pay, or giving unlimited PTO through the end of the year.

One option is for leaders to embrace the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which currently requires employers to provide employees up to 12 weeks of childcare leave at two-thirds pay. With many employees worried that actually taking this leave will negatively impact their careers, organizations need to talk to employees about the Act's provisions, urge parents of both genders to take leave and, perhaps most importantly, do the cultural legwork to ensure that no stigmas or repercussions are attached to doing so.

Companies are also allowing temporary roll-over of unused PTO balances during this time. By adjusting their short-term PTO policy, companies can help mothers to adjust for the dynamic nature of the current health crisis. Many camps, daycare programs, and schools are making last-minute decisions as to whether they are fully open this summer and fall, or will run with limited capacity, or will close. Faced with having to adjust to these last-minute decisions, having flexible PTO is incredibly helpful.

Adjust work schedules

As COVID-19 has forced us to rethink the viability of remote work, it should also make companies rethink the way they structure work and measure employee engagement. When your employees can go to an office and their children can go to school, a 9-5 work schedule makes sense to structure the workday, allowing parenting to happen before and after the 8-hour day. But for remote workers with children at home, a full eight-hour block isn't particularly tenable.

To accommodate parents during and after COVID-19, companies have several options:

Allow for customized schedules. For example, for some employees, it may be easiest to bifurcate the day into two major chunks, wherein a typical day might have a first shift from 6:00-10:00 AM, and a second shift from 4:00-8:00 PM.

Elongate the week. For many parents, it might be easier to work six hours per day and seven days a week rather than eight hours per day and five days per week.

Develop a project-based rather than time-based conception of work. For some employers, it may be more efficient to measure work based on output rather than hours and schedules. Many tech firms, for example, give engineers unlimited vacation time and flexible on-off hours, measuring their work based on the successful completion of projects.

Provide incentives

Companies can ensure that women executives feel valued-while offsetting burnout-by formalizing an incentive structure aimed at validating mothers and motivating them to push through stressful work-life situations. A great way to do this is to provide monetary incentives-stock ownership, annual bonuses, and post-leave retention bonuses-that give women a tangible financial reason not to opt-out of their career.

Rethink career timelines

Another option for employers is to formally incorporate parenthood into their business's promotion timelines. In other words, companies can (a) be transparent with would-be parents about what work options are available to them; (b) establish a set of expectations around how parents can manage parenthood and work schedules; and (c) articulate a clear promotion path for parents. But working toward these solutions with women employees does not mean companies need to overlook their bottom lines, Lisa Jones said. "Greater flexibility to offer a work from home opportunity builds tenure with employees who may feel the pressure to step away from one's career because of the challenges of balancing work and family. For employers, not being fixated on having employees work in an office affords us the opportunity to cast a wider radius and may attract a broader diverse talent pool. And some parents want to spread out their career trajectory during their child-raising years, and many will be willing to exchange short-term compensation for that flexibility."

Don't let up

Bringing diversity & inclusion into your business means designing a workplace that works for everyone, regardless of gender, dependents, race, class, or age. By giving all employees the kind of flexibility valued by parents, employers can avoid giving one employee demographic advantages over others. Similarly, it's important that employers don't take parents off of big-ticket projects or client assignments just because they're busy at home; in the long term, access to pipeline roles is crucial to the development of executive-level talent. "I don't see that we are really winning by saying we are supporting women by letting them carry the load at home and letting them off the big cases or projects", said Dr. Goldin. "CEOs and Senior Partners need to make sure they are not treating women as a special species of homo economicus. Whatever we do for women, we need to do the same for men." Companies have traditionally felt that altering societal norms lies outside their business function, shareholder mandate, and economic purpose, but this needs to change; companies that brand themselves as leaders of social and environmental change stand to gain a competitive advantage over their peers.

Support fathers

Many of the factors that contribute to women dropping out of the workplace-for example, the fact that men do less domestic labor than women-may feel outside an employer's ability to solve. In fact, companies can help lead change over time by urging male parents to take time off to support their families, especially during times of stress. "When fathers have the opportunity to spend more time at home and share more of the work, it's a benefit to men and it helps women," said Ashley Jones, Director of Executive Development and Team Member Engagement for Pilot Company.

Ask mothers what they need

"Employers need to ask women what they need to be successful in their roles," said Dr. C Nicole Mason, President, and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, "and it has to go beyond mentoring. Mentoring is fine, but lack of mentorship is not what is holding women back today. What's holding women back is structural and it's practical. Ask women what they need." The simplest suggestion in this road map is all too often overlooked: Listen to your employees, hear their needs, and be creative about how you can work for them so that they can work for you.

Download the full report

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How to retain executive-track mothers during and after COVID-19: a road map for employers

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After two months quarantining with their families, Odgers Berndtson consultants Catherine Bass Black and Lisa DeConto decided to examine the effects COVID-19 is having on executive-track mothers. Their conclusion: if employers do not act quickly, they may lose their next generation of female executives.

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Key findings

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a striking blow to a child care sector that was already failing to support all families, and 4.5 million child care slots could be lost permanently.

There were nearly 10 million mothers of young children in the labor force in 2019. This report explores how insufficient child care could affect their work, their wages, their long-term economic outcomes, and the economic recovery.

This report estimates that the risk of mothers leaving the labor force and reducing work hours in order to assume caretaking responsibilities amounts to $64.5 billion per year in lost wages and economic activity.

Without both immediate and long-term action to shore up the child care infrastructure and establish more progressive work-family policies, the United States cannot achieve continued economic growth nor protect and advance gender equity.

Four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force in September, roughly 865,000 women compared with 216,000 men. This validates predictions that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women-and the accompanying child care and school crises-would be severe. In July, a Washington Post article-titled, "Coronavirus child-care crisis will set women back a generation"-pointed out that "[o]ne out of four women who reported becoming unemployed during the pandemic said it was because of a lack of child care-twice the rate among men." In August, CNN ran the headline, "Working mothers are quitting to take care of their kids, and the US job market may never be the same."

This report aims to give quantified answers to two questions: What might be the impact of the pandemic-induced reduction in child care options on women's employment and the U.S. economy? And extrapolating from those data, what are the possible implications for long-term gender equity and the well-being of women and families?

The losses in child care and school supervision hours as a result of the pandemic could lead to a significant decline in women's total wages. This report estimates that if conditions for families do not improve-and if the levels of maternal labor force participation and work hours experienced during the April 2020 first-wave peak of infections and COVID-19 lockdowns persist long term-lost wages would amount to $64.5 billion per year. This is a crushing loss to families and communities that are still reeling from the pandemic-induced economic collapse. Furthermore, without a significant public response, these consequences will have additional ripple effects that will continue to hurt communities and stifle the economic recovery.

This report begins by looking at the impact of the pandemic on the child care sector and how that affects families-particularly working mothers-and especially mothers of color. It then quantifies the potential loss to women, families, communities, and the economy as mothers reduce work hours or exit the workforce entirely as well as how racism and sexism contributed to these outcomes. The report concludes with a list of policy recommendations to both repair the hole in the nation's economy by building a robust child care infrastructure and establish work-family policies that would help achieve gender equity during the pandemic and beyond.

The disastrous economic crisis precipitated by the pandemic has hit child care providers especially hard. Many providers halted their services temporarily or had families drop out and stop paying. In April, the Center for American Progress estimated that as many as 4.5 million child care slots could be permanently lost due to the pandemic. This number may be an underestimate as the ongoing economic effects of the pandemic are met with insufficient federal action. To put that into perspective, there were roughly 9.7 million working mothers with a child under the age of 6 in 2019 before COVID-19 hit the United States. There is an average of two children per family in the United States; even if we assume that each family using paid child care has two children under the age of 6, the loss of 4.5 million child care slots would affect at least 2.25 million families.

In addition to the need for child care for young children, many school-aged children require significant supervision and care as well. This became even more apparent as many schools reopened entirely or partially online this fall. While some high school students may be able to self-direct, elementary students require assistance navigating virtual education. The fact that a child is enrolled in elementary, or middle, or high school does not necessarily mean that they do not still require significant attention from a parent during school hours. Many parents are finding themselves in the position of having to provide remote learning supervision for their children even though they are enrolled in a public or private school. In fact, one recent study showed that 80 percent of parents plan to work and facilitate remote learning, and 90 percent who have both school-aged and younger children will be primarily responsible for caring for both, even while meeting their work and other obligations. This situation is untenable.

Data on how parents are responding to the pandemic and the lack of child care availability are still being collected and analyzed, and results are likely to change over time based on whether conditions improve, worsen, or stay the same. But preliminary results show that there is ample reason to suspect that the ongoing lack of child care will have extremely negative impacts on working parents.

Interruptions caused by child care affect women more than men. Study after study has shown that in response to school, child care, and camp closings, as well as reduced hours and reduced class sizes, significantly more women than men have reduced their work hours, left work to care for children, and spent more time on education and household tasks. The latest evidence shows that due to COVID-19 school and child care closures, mothers with young children have arranged reductions in their work hours that are four to five times greater than the reductions arranged by fathers. These disproportionate reductions have more than doubled the gap between the number of hours worked by women and by men. Similarly, looking at the effects of COVID-19 on the maternal workforce, Misty L. Heggeness, an economist at the U.S. Census Bureau, found that women of school-aged children in early-closure states were 20 percent more likely to take temporary leave and 30 percent more likely to leave a job compared with those in states that had not yet closed. The difference in work hours before and after closure was not significant for men, as other peer-reviewed studies have also shown. In sum, Heggeness states, "The impact on short-term work productivity and engagement appeared to be borne entirely on the backs of mothers of school age children.

Black, Latinx, and Indigenous women especially-all of whom face intersecting oppressions-are also feeling the multiple effects of being more likely to have lost their jobs, being on the front lines as essential workers, and solving their child care challenges on their own. As a result of a variety of factors, including policy choices grounded in racism and sexism, low-wage workers, solo mothers, and women of color-three groups with considerable overlap-are all too often not in the economic position to leave the paid labor force to care for their children. Women of color, and Black women in particular, have historically had much higher levels of labor force participation when compared with white women, but they also experience many more job disruptions due to inadequate child care. Women of color and immigrant women have often provided domestic labor that facilitates the employment and leisure time of wealthy and middle-class white women but prevents them from spending more time with their own families. As CAP Senior Fellow Jocelyn Frye explains, "Because of the combined effects of entrenched racial, gender, and ethnic biases, women of color historically have not been seen as equal to white women or men-and little consideration has been given to their personal needs and challenges." Thus, white women and wealthier women are more likely to leave the labor force, while women of color and low-paid women are more likely to make changes to their work schedules and rely on other child care solutions, as they have long done.

While no one study shows how many mothers have left or will leave the workforce to provide child care, the data do give us a range of possibilities to consider. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey collected between April 23, 2020, and August 31, 2020, found that, on average, 10 percent of working mothers reported not working each week because they were providing care to a child who was not in school or child care. In keeping with this finding, preliminary data from forthcoming research conducted at Northeastern University show that 13 percent of working parents either cut back their hours or stopped working due to a lack of child care. And a member survey conducted by Cleo, a company that supports working parents, found that 20 percent of working parents or their partner were considering leaving the workforce to provide child care. Analysis conducted by sociologists Liana Christin Landivar, Leah Ruppanner, William J. Scarborough, and Caitlyn Collins using Current Population Survey data found that reductions in labor force participation and work hours differed by age of the youngest child. They found that in April, during the peak of the first coronavirus wave, labor force participation was reduced by 3.2 percent among married mothers with a child under the age of 6; 4.3 percent among mothers with a child age 6 to 12; and 2.7 percent among mothers with a child age 13 to 17. Work hours, regardless of whether telecommuting or working an in-person job, were reduced by 1.8 hours for mothers with a child under the age of 6; 1.4 hours for mothers with a child age 6 to 12; and 1.3 hours for mothers with a child age 13 to 17.

Table 1 shows the potential aggregate losses in family earnings if mothers scale back their labor force participation and work hours in response to COVID-19-related child care demands based on each of these scenarios. Even as small a shift as 1 percent of mothers leaving the workforce would result in an estimated $8.7 billion economic hit to working families. Only 1 percent of full-time working mothers shifting from full-time to part-time work would mean an estimated $5 billion less in wages per year, which doesn't take into account the value of lost benefits such as paid leave and health insurance.
Table 1
The frightening reality is that the potential negative effects on maternal labor force participation are far greater than just a 1 percent reduction. Using Landivar and her colleagues' analysis, if 3.2 percent of mothers with a child under the age of 6 and 3.5 percent of mothers with a child age 6 to 17 leave the labor force, the result would be an estimated $29.4 billion in foregone wages. In further keeping with their findings, if mothers with a child under the age of 6 reduce full-time hours by 4.5 percent and part-time hours by 7.2 percent, the result would be a $16.4 billion paycut to families. If mothers with a child age 6 to 17 reduce full-time hours by 3.4 percent and part-time hours by 5.4 percent, the result would be a loss of an additional $18.7 billion. The total for these reductions in labor force participation is $64.5 billion in lost income.

When fewer mothers participate in the labor force or when they reduce their work hours from full to part time, whether by choice or by circumstance, the result is less money to pay for household necessities. This is particularly troublesome for lower-income families because the lower a family's income is, the more likely it is that the mother is the family's breadwinner, and the less able the family is to easily absorb a decrease in earnings.

The impact on individual families is immediate and clear. Approximately 1 in 5 workers were on unemployment insurance in August, receiving a meager $300 per week on average, with dramatic effects on families' economic security. One in 8 households has faced food insecurity, and anywhere from 29 percent to 43 percent of renter households could face eviction by the end of the year. Even if a strong eviction moratorium were in place, it would not save households from financial ruin or homelessness when the moratorium expired. Black and Latinx households are much more likely than white households to face these serious financial problems.

There will also be a macroeconomic impact if women must scale back their employment en masse. Businesses and the overall economy are already struggling with decreased demand due to the pandemic, and significant hits to families' incomes will only exacerbate this problem. Even in instances of more-privileged, dual-earner families, if a mother's drop in earnings means tightening spending for nonessentials such as dining out or leisure activities, then the sectors of the economy that COVID-19 has already hit hardest will experience additional prolonged pain.

Undoing 25 years of progress

The impact of this level of disruption to women's ability to work would be enormous. Maternal labor force participation has been increasing over time steadily, but slowly; even a 5 percent decline would undo the past 25 years of progress.
Table 2
These estimates are intended to give a sense of scale, but they only capture one year of potential foregone earnings. However, women who exit the labor force to provide care often have difficulty reentering employment at a later date-an experience likely to be exacerbated in an economy with high unemployment rates. In addition, extended time out of work has significant negative effects on future earnings potential and can undermine future retirement security. Previous CAP research found that a 26-year-old working woman earning the median wage who took five years off to provide care would reduce her lifetime earnings by 19 percent. This includes not just lost wages over that time period but also lost wage growth and lost retirement assets.

These estimates, based on the limited available data, point toward a future in which working families would face increased economic insecurity in both the short and long term.

While the estimates shown here are based on one year of annual estimated earnings, there is reason to believe that the potential impacts may be long lasting. It is important to keep in mind that being able to easily reenter the labor force at a future date is never a given, and one's ability to find another job in the future will likely be affected by the very high rates of current unemployment.

First, when schools return to in-person instruction and if child care providers reopen or expand enrollment, it may still be difficult for mothers who exited the labor force to find work. For example, one experiment found that job applicants with relevant experience who were out of work for more than six months were less likely to be called back than those with no relevant work experience who had been unemployed for less time. This is potentially compounded by the hiring discrimination that mothers, and specifically mothers of color, experience. Second, without intervention, a significant portion of the child care available prepandemic is likely to disappear. If mothers are unable to access child care because there simply are no providers available, it will be virtually impossible for them to return to work. Previous CAP research found that more than half of families with young children lived in a child care desert, "a census tract with more than three children under age 5 for every licensed child care slot." Prepandemic, child care deserts were more likely to be in low- or moderate-income neighborhoods, predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods, and rural communities. There is every reason to believe that without swift and significant government intervention, these existing inequalities will only deepen and spread.

Hard-won progress on closing the gender wage gap may also be set back decades. Increases in women's labor force participation rates fueled the significant narrowing of the gender wage gap in the 1970s and 1980s. Women's labor force participation reached its peak in the late 1990s, and progress on closing the gender wage gap has remained virtually stagnant ever since. Research has shown that strengthening labor force attachment is critical to increasing women's earnings. One study found that women who took just one year out of the workforce had annual earnings that were 39 percent lower than those of women who did not.

In addition to the impacts on those who leave the workforce entirely, those who reduce hours will also experience short- and long-term effects on their economic security. Part-time work, whether for economic or noneconomic reasons, tends not to offer the same wages and benefits as full-time work. In addition to working fewer paid hours in total, part-time jobs tend to pay lower hourly rates than comparable positions with full-time hours. Therefore, part-time paychecks are smaller both because there are fewer hours worked and because the part-time worker earns a lower hourly wage. Part-time workers are also much less likely to have access to any form of paid leave, with only 41 percent having access to paid sick leave and only 8 percent having access to paid family leave in 2019. And, of heightened importance during a public health emergency, part-time workers are far less likely to have access to medical care benefits through their job; only 22 percent did in 2019.

Wages, benefits, and retirement assets are not the only losses facing the United States if mothers are pushed out of the labor force in large numbers. Tax revenue will also take a significant hit if mothers quit working or scale back their hours in significant numbers.
Table 3
While more precise tax modeling is beyond the scope of this report, simply assuming the average effective federal tax rate on women's forgone income shows potential losses of billions of dollars in federal revenue. Even a small, 1 percent reduction in the maternal labor force rate coupled with a 1 percent reduction in hours from full to part time would result in $2.6 billion in lost revenue, while a scenario in line with Landivar's findings would result in a total of $12.2 billion in revenue lost. If 20 percent of working mothers left the labor force in a worst-case scenario, the result would be $32.8 billion dollars in lost revenue-equal to, for example, more than half of what the federal government spent on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2019. This does not even take into account the potential losses in state tax revenue, which would occur in the midst of overall declining state revenue and looming budget crises.

These outcomes are not inevitable-but the longer Congress waits to act, the more likely they become. The below sections map out how we arrived at this point and what is possible for the future.

This blow to the economy will not be felt equally but rather will fall most heavily on women of color. U.S. policies and norms have long pushed women of color into the workforce-into jobs that pay less and purposefully have fewer workplace protections-while setting up barriers, and in some cases supports, to keep white women out of the workforce. The choices made by policymakers-primarily white men of means-have deliberately failed to establish a robust care infrastructure and family-supporting workplace policies and have not addressed the nation's outdated mismatch between school and work schedules. All of these factors contribute to the vicious cycle of racism and sexism, whereby not having good child care and workplace policies in place is both a cause and effect of discriminatory cultural norms and the gender and racial imbalance in resources and formal positions of power.

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare these long-standing failures of American institutions and social structures. Decades of government failure to lead on equitable social policy has forced the vast majority of Americans to go it alone during tough times, followed by only incremental, Band-Aid-style policy solutions. This system, which leaves working parents scrambling to cobble together individual solutions, was always destined to fail. The degree to which mothers of color and mothers of all races have been able to enter and remain in the workforce, despite the outsize responsibilities of caregiving and other domestic work, is remarkable. However, it is not a new dynamic.

While other countries have invested in work-family policies such as access to paid leave and affordable or free high-quality child care, the United States has not; as a result, it has seen maternal labor force participation rates decline relative to other comparable economies. That the communities at highest risk from COVID-19 are also the communities that have been most shortchanged in terms of employment, work-family policies, access to child care, and income and wealth inequality is not a coincidence. The root causes are the same: structural racism and sexism. Long-standing inequalities, entrenched in our laws, institutions, and cultural norms, had already pushed many families to the brink of collapse, and COVID-19 may be the final push for too many working mothers.

Before the pandemic unfolded, families across the country were already facing inhospitable workplace policies, out-of-reach child care costs, and child care deserts. The pandemic-related school, camp, and child care closures have merely exposed the vulnerabilities the United States has created by not investing in and maintaining family-friendly workplace standards and a robust child care system-and it has shown why we cannot go back to the way things were. If the United States is to avoid further economic contraction led by women exiting the labor force and reducing their hours, the federal government needs to make both immediate and sustained long-term investments in the child care sector. Not only will these investments preserve jobs by keeping this critical industry afloat, but they will also help avoid a cataclysmic setback in gender equity. Furthermore, the nation must double down on implementing progressive work-family policies so that American households-and particularly mothers-will not be held back for having children.

Immediate relief

First, Congress must shore up child care in this moment of crisis with at least $50 billion as soon as possible as part of a comprehensive coronavirus relief bill. The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed, with bipartisan votes, multiple child care bills that await action in the Senate, including the Child Care Is Essential Act, which consists of $50 billion to stabilize the child care sector, and additional child care legislation that the House passed as a down payment on the long-term child care infrastructure. Congress should also invest in a study to explore the costs for families, employers, and communities of remote and hybrid learning and plans for summer care and make recommendations for additional funding to support parents and the child care sector.

Establishing child care for all

Short-term fixes are not enough. Moving forward, there also needs to be a focus on the long-term need to build a strong child care system. Congress must declare child care a public good and pass legislation to ensure all families can access safe, affordable, high-quality, and convenient child care in their own homes, family care homes, or child care centers. Congress should build on smart legislative solutions such as the Child Care for Working Families Act to ensure equity along with good care jobs.

Child care policies must make child care affordable for all families and prioritize the needs of historically marginalized communities. They must include affordable and accessible child care and early education options for children age 0 to 13 and older children with disabilities. Policy solutions must ensure public funding to serve the diverse needs and preferences of families, including culturally and linguistically competent care options, home-based care, and care during nonstandard hours such as weekends, after school, nights, when job schedules change, and in areas that are currently child care deserts. Child care solutions must demonstrate that they value early educators by providing them at minimum a living wage with benefits and a pathway to higher wages as well as the ability to work with dignity, the chance to use their voice on the job, and bargaining power to further worker organizing and raise standards for all workers. Furthermore, these solutions must work toward ensuring that the early education workforce reflects the diversity of families served.

Work-family policy implications

Building out a robust child care infrastructure is only the first step in protecting gender equity during the pandemic and beyond. The workplace rules in the United States were not built with caregivers in mind and need major restructuring to prioritize care and caregiving, which in turn will accelerate gender equity. Permanent solutions are necessary to ensure that we do not continue making the same mistakes over and over again.

Policy solutions that acknowledge families' need for caregiving must include comprehensive emergency and permanent paid family and medical leave and paid sick and safe days; fair scheduling and workplace flexibility policies; rights and parity for part-time workers; and equal pay policies that focus on transparency and employer accountability. Congress has taken the first steps with emergency paid leave provisions, and some states and localities have adopted permanent paid family and medical leave and paid sick days, fair scheduling, and equal pay laws that contribute to greater gender equity in the workplace. However, full equity will remain elusive as long as national workplace rules remain outdated and wholly inadequate.

Against all odds, in February 2020, data showed that women held more than half of the nation's jobs. Smartly, women did not celebrate this as a workforce equality victory, recognizing all of the barriers that continue to hold women back. Still, it was progress. When COVID-19 hit, even those limited women's workforce gains threatened to disappear.

Unless U.S. leaders abandon their failed every-family-for-itself approach and take significant action to address the school and child care challenges-starting with the federal funding needed-we are at risk of a significant drop in maternal work hours and labor force participation. The results of this loss will have ripple effects for families, communities, and economic recovery. The job and wage losses will lead to more food insecurity and evictions than families are already facing. Less income means less spending in their communities, which will hurt local businesses that are already struggling from closures. Employers will lose trusted employees to the child care crisis.

While the data are insufficient to give the full picture-and time will tell for certain-without congressional action, gender equity may be set back decades. This will hurt women, men, families, communities, employers, and the possibility of a true economic recovery. It's time for Congress to act.

Julie Kashen is the director of women's economic justice and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Sarah Jane Glynn is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Amanda Novello is a senior policy associate at The Century Foundation.

The authors wish to thank Katie Hamm and Michael Madowitz from the Center for American Progress for their feedback and review.

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How COVID-19 Sent Women's Workforce Progress Backward - Center for American Progress

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The collapse of the child care sector and drastic reductions in school supervision hours as a result of COVID-19 could drive millions of mothers out of the paid workforce. Inaction could cost billions, undermine family economic security, and set gender equity back a generation.

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Female Founders
4 Strategies to Keep Women Working During Covid-19

Thwarting the "she-cession": How employers can drive progress and create a stronger workforce.

Peggy Shell, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member in Colorado, is founder and CEO of Creative Alignments, a time-based recruiting agency providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional recruiting with a unique, client-centric approach. We asked Peggy what steps leaders can take to support women in the workplace during the global pandemic. Here's what she shared.

Employers are at a crossroads. One path goes forward. The other moves backward.

After decades of women increasingly becoming a vital part of the labor force and a gradual narrowing of the gender wage gap, the impact Covid-19 is disproportionately having on women threatens to send our workforce reeling back in time to pre-1980s numbers.

In order to have the employees we need to run businesses when the economy stabilizes, and honor positive societal progress, employers must work to understand the drivers of the so-called "she-cession" we're experiencing -- and take steps to keep women working and continue narrowing the gender gap.

Women leaving the labor force is bad for business and economic stability

As a result of the pandemic, women are more likely than men to lose their jobs or purposely scale back hours, take less demanding roles, or step out of the workforce entirely to care for family. A significant reason for this is women generally carry a disproportionate burden when it comes to providing child care when daycare centers and schools are closed and learning is based in the home. This shift from paid labor to unpaid labor will have a decades-long impact on both women's income potential and employers' ability to have a viable workforce.

Suppose employers do not take direct action to avoid this gender-regressive trend. In that case, global GDP growth could be $1 trillion lower in 2030 than in a scenario where women's unemployment matched that of men in each sector, according to a study by McKinsey Global Institute.

How employers can keep women working

The unusual times we currently face are temporary and call for creative solutions. Employers must understand the demands working parents -- especially women -- are juggling, and make short-term accommodations to support them adequately so they can remain in the workforce. Because budgets are tighter than ever for many businesses, accepting that some employees may not be as productive right now presents a real challenge. Keep in mind that the costs of short-term accommodations will likely be offset by savings from increased employee retention, improved employment brand, and faster, smoother recruiting. Beyond that, consider it a long-term investment in your people and your business.

Here are four steps employers can take to support women in these turbulent times:

1. Consider cases on an individual level

Have open and honest conversations with your employees, and craft a compassionate action plan that provides support in areas the employee values most. When employees feel supported, they are more likely to work harder, and your generosity will be repaid with greater loyalty and dedication. If you've built a culture of collaboration among your employees, that effort will really pay off now when your employees need to support each other to reach goals together.

2. Be flexible and provide creative working options

Beyond work-from-home options, flexible work hours, and access to virtual business tools, what more can you do to enable employees to work most effectively in the new normal?

Allow people to go part-time and adjust jobs as needed.

Provide job-sharing opportunities.

Offer to advance PTO with an agreement of how they will compensate the company for this in the future.

Pay full-time salaries for part-time work for a set number of months.

Keep in mind, hiring, onboarding, and training new employees is likely far more costly to your bottom line than these temporary accommodations.

3. Re-evaluate goals, expectations and deliverables

As you shift roles, hours, and efficiencies, make parallel adjustments to your overall business goals, individual expectations, and performance evaluations. Taking advantage of an agreed-upon flexible work option should not count against an employee in a performance review or preclude them from future promotions. Remember that women in leadership roles are especially vulnerable in this current environment, so don't lose ground by losing them.

4. Providing flexibility for men can keep women working

If your goal is to retain a balanced, diverse workforce by keeping women employed, offer flexible working options to fathers, too. Women being able to stay engaged with work often requires men taking on more of the child care and home-schooling duties.

If ever compassion was a smart business strategy, it's now. By adjusting your human capital strategy to keep your people employed, you help employees retain the skills, legitimacy and experience your business will rely on in the future.

As business leaders, we need to seize this opportunity to shape our future workforce and affect generations to come.

Peggy Shell, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member in Colorado, is founder and CEO of Creative Alignments, a time-based recruiting agency providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional recruiting with a unique, client-centric approach. We asked Peggy what steps leaders can take to support women in the workplace during the global pandemic. Here's what she shared.

Employers are at a crossroads. One path goes forward. The other moves backward.

After decades of women increasingly becoming a vital part of the labor force and a gradual narrowing of the gender wage gap, the impact Covid-19 is disproportionately having on women threatens to send our workforce reeling back in time to pre-1980s numbers.

In order to have the employees we need to run businesses when the economy stabilizes, and honor positive societal progress, employers must work to understand the drivers of the so-called "she-cession" we're experiencing -- and take steps to keep women working and continue narrowing the gender gap.

As a result of the pandemic, women are more likely than men to lose their jobs or purposely scale back hours, take less demanding roles, or step out of the workforce entirely to care for family. A significant reason for this is women generally carry a disproportionate burden when it comes to providing child care when daycare centers and schools are closed and learning is based in the home. This shift from paid labor to unpaid labor will have a decades-long impact on both women's income potential and employers' ability to have a viable workforce.

Suppose employers do not take direct action to avoid this gender-regressive trend. In that case, global GDP growth could be $1 trillion lower in 2030 than in a scenario where women's unemployment matched that of men in each sector, according to a study by McKinsey Global Institute.

The unusual times we currently face are temporary and call for creative solutions. Employers must understand the demands working parents -- especially women -- are juggling, and make short-term accommodations to support them adequately so they can remain in the workforce. Because budgets are tighter than ever for many businesses, accepting that some employees may not be as productive right now presents a real challenge. Keep in mind that the costs of short-term accommodations will likely be offset by savings from increased employee retention, improved employment brand, and faster, smoother recruiting. Beyond that, consider it a long-term investment in your people and your business.

Here are four steps employers can take to support women in these turbulent times:

1. Consider cases on an individual level

Have open and honest conversations with your employees, and craft a compassionate action plan that provides support in areas the employee values most. When employees feel supported, they are more likely to work harder, and your generosity will be repaid with greater loyalty and dedication. If you've built a culture of collaboration among your employees, that effort will really pay off now when your employees need to support each other to reach goals together.

2. Be flexible and provide creative working options

Beyond work-from-home options, flexible work hours, and access to virtual business tools, what more can you do to enable employees to work most effectively in the new normal?

Allow people to go part-time and adjust jobs as needed.

Provide job-sharing opportunities.

Offer to advance PTO with an agreement of how they will compensate the company for this in the future.

Pay full-time salaries for part-time work for a set number of months.

Keep in mind, hiring, onboarding, and training new employees is likely far more costly to your bottom line than these temporary accommodations.

3. Re-evaluate goals, expectations and deliverables

As you shift roles, hours, and efficiencies, make parallel adjustments to your overall business goals, individual expectations, and performance evaluations. Taking advantage of an agreed-upon flexible work option should not count against an employee in a performance review or preclude them from future promotions. Remember that women in leadership roles are especially vulnerable in this current environment, so don't lose ground by losing them.

4. Providing flexibility for men can keep women working

If your goal is to retain a balanced, diverse workforce by keeping women employed, offer flexible working options to fathers, too. Women being able to stay engaged with work often requires men taking on more of the child care and home-schooling duties.

If ever compassion was a smart business strategy, it's now. By adjusting your human capital strategy to keep your people employed, you help employees retain the skills, legitimacy and experience your business will rely on in the future.

As business leaders, we need to seize this opportunity to shape our future workforce and affect generations to come.

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How Business Leaders Can Prevent The She-cession With Compassionate Strategies to Keep Women Working During Covid-19

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Female Founders Peggy Shell, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member in Colorado, is founder and CEO of Creative Alignments, a time-based recruiting agency providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional recruiting with a unique, client-centric approach. We asked Peggy what steps leaders can take to support women in the workplace during the global pandemic.

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Working parenthood was hard enough before Covid-19 - and now it's an all-out crisis. But as we exit the pandemic, we don't want to return out of habit to the way things were. It's time to reimagine how we combine children and career, moving from Working Parenthood 1.0 (hiding our struggles, buckling down, and feeling perennially bad, guilty, failing, lonely) to Working Parenthood 2.0, in which all working parents can feel more confident, connected, and in control. Each of us can begin making this shift on three levels: personal, team, and organizational. In this article you will learn small, feasible actions that can lead to 2.0 - that can make a huge difference for you today, and for every other working mother or father going forward.

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Working parenthood was hard enough before Covid-19 - and now it's an all-out crisis. But as we exit the pandemic, we don't want to return out of habit to the way things were.

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It has become alarmingly clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is threatening women's careers. In September 2020 alone, 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 216,000 men. Furthermore, one in four women are considering either leaving the workforce or reducing their work hours. A stream of advice has suggested how working mothers can work from home with kids, manage work/life boundaries (or lack thereof), and handle anxiety over school decisions. Yet when we interviewed working mothers about these challenges this summer, we learned how many have taken it upon themselves to address the challenges they're facing, rather than their employers and managers stepping up and getting involved.

We asked the mothers we interviewed how their managers were-and weren't-supporting them. These women were all employed, had children under the age of 16 at home, and had partners. Our conversations revealed a situation that is not sustainable and could further push women out of the workforce. As we brace for a spike in Covid-19 numbers and many areas consider lockdowns, our findings suggest three ways that managers can ensure mothers remain on the job - during the pandemic, and beyond.

Provide certainty and clarity, wherever possible.

In our interviews, we heard frequently that uncertainty about the future was adding stress and chaos to participants' lives. General anxiety about the pandemic, worries of job insecurity (including being new to their job or seeing their industry decline), and apprehension over calls to work from home or return to the office have all caused stress. One IT analyst shared that her employer was giving only one-week guarantees that employees wouldn't have to return physically to the office. For working parents, these windows were far too short to adequately plan for child care.

Recommendation: When possible, provide employees with certainty. Be clear about job expectations and performance standards. Communicate policy changes in a timely manner: letting employees know where they stand, informing them on what decisions are being made and why, and sharing the plan for what's coming next. As an example, employers who have provided guarantees such as "you can continue to work remotely if you choose to do so through January 28, 2021" or "we will commit to not laying off any employees until at least December 15, 2020" can help to alleviate stress that comes from uncertainty.

Rightsize job expectations.

As work and kids simultaneously stormed into the home, many were not prepared for the collapse of boundaries between the two domains. Nearly all of our participants were still recovering from the upheavals of March and April. While they wanted their lives to return to normal, childcare demands remain consuming and self-care nearly unattainable. For many of the mothers we talked to, pre-pandemic level work performance is still impossible. Still, we heard from some women that their employers were proactively responding to these constraints by calibrating expectations. One participant reported that her senior leader told employees "If you are able to operate at 50% right now, I'll consider that a win." A graphic designer described how her supervisor "was literally asking me permission to send me work; she was beyond understanding." In both these cases, the women we interviewed said that this recognition made them feel as though their struggles were being seen and they expressed an unwavering commitment to their employers.

Recommendation: Implement parent-friendly scheduling policies, and ensure that everyone knows it's okay to use them. Studies show that a compressed work week or a shorter workday can reduce burnout. To help accommodate heavily impacted employees (such as working parents), managers can update job descriptions, enact organizational development processes, or allow employees to job craft. Taking everyone's circumstances into consideration can create developmental opportunities for employees with more bandwidth, which can foster career development. In a work-first culture, however, such policies may not be easily embraced by all managers; companies should therefore train and evaluate their leaders on how to successfully implement them, to reinforce that the organization is serious about support.

Continue the empathy.

Several of our participants shared how managers were responsive and compassionate with them earlier in the pandemic, but that during the summer months, weary of remote work, "the empathy seems to have run out." Arriving late to a Zoom call or having a kid run in the background were forgiven in April; however, multiple participants shared that the mood has since shifted. One participant described it as "It's like people forgot that the pressures were still there. My kids are still home!" A part of empathy is understanding the challenges that working mother employees face, which not all managers are personally familiar with. This is complicated by the stigma of working mothers, which makes many reluctant to ask for help. A manager at an accounting firm described how "the weight is now put on the shoulders of employees to ask for help, when asking for help is not made easy," as the act of asking was stigmatized as a sign of weakness or lack of commitment.

Recommendation: Managers should continue to (or begin to) proactively ask employees what they need, how they feel, and if they feel comfortable in how they work. Leaders can discuss suffering and show vulnerability, to help normalize such conversations. Workplace compassion is associated with a series of desired outcomes, including enhanced collaboration and lower turnover. A very simple approach is to start all meetings with a check-in. Just as it is recommended to start virtual meetings with a time for team members to share wins, there can also be time spent to check in on how people are doing. This generates understanding of lived experiences that may not be familiar to all on the call. Remember that life, and work, are still far from normal. Employees- particularly working mothers - need compassion, empathy, and understanding more than ever.

Your Employees Are Paying Attention.

It is no longer an option for managers to pretend that their employees do not have lives outside of their jobs, as these evaporated boundaries between home and work are not going away anytime soon. And as we heard from our participants, employees are taking notes right now: they are paying attention to how their employers are handling this crisis. Our evidence supports that managers who follow these suggestions will be most likely to motivate and retain their working mother talent, an important source of human capital. A specialist in a law firm relayed how "I went to my boss and made a different schedule. Small adjustments made things so much better. My boss asked 'Are you okay? I know this is so bad for you with the kids.' They are such incredible people. It makes me want to work my butt off for them." This commitment will likely persist even after the pandemic subsides. While our study focused on working mothers, creating a workplace environment that is supportive of them extends support to all employees. Organizations have the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve by providing the support that employees need. We hope employers and managers heed these calls, as the productivity, well-being, and retention of their working mother employees are on the line.

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3 Ways Companies Can Retain Working Moms Right Now

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Executive Summary As Covid-19 forces women - particularly mothers - out of the workforce, the authors ask what managers can do to help reverse this trend. The authors interviewed employed women with children under the age of 16 at home and who had partners.

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Humour is one way for women in academia to face the pandemic's consequences for their work and family lives. Last month, a viral Twitter post read, "The next person who tweets about how productive Isaac Newton was while working from home gets my three year old posted to them!"

Since COVID-19 closed my university on 12 March, I've seen more sunrises than in the rest of my previous life. Now, I must be at work before daybreak.

Silence and concentration are pivotal for my thinking and teaching. When I record lessons for my students to watch online, minimizing background noise is a must. But my son is two years old. In the first lesson I tried to record, you can clearly hear his toy trumpet playing during the last two slides of the presentation. Night and dawn - when he's asleep - are my only options for recording.

Another demand on my time are colleagues located around the globe who have the atavistic desire to meet face-to-face online. At any hour of the day. And that's how my colleagues have come to know my son, whose little head pops up on the webcam now and again.

This means I have less time for writing scientific articles. Instead of working, my colleagues and I are aiming to make it through daily life. Of course, when compared with the drastic consequences of contracting COVID-19, this is a trifling matter. And we know that we are all lucky to have the jobs we do. Wealth, or lack thereof, and other social inequalities are affecting people's access to work, health care, shopping and other services.

Still, I am a social demographer who studies how families manage household and paid work. I often focus on academic and professional women, and now I feel as if I am my own subject. I am already working with colleagues to set up interviews and an online ethnography study.

This pandemic can teach some of us an important lesson: mothers and fathers together are facing a short-term reorganization of care and work time. In the long run, these changes in productivity will affect careers. Those with fewer care duties are aiming for the stars. Will anyone in the academic community take into account our unbalanced approach to family care and work? No. All of us will participate together in open competition for promotion and positions, parents and non-parents alike.

Academic work - in which career advancement is based on the number and quality of a person's scientific publications, and their ability to obtain funding for research projects - is basically incompatible with tending to children. I expect that data on publication records over the next couple of years will show that parents in academia were disadvantaged relative to non-parents in 2020.

Those data might also reveal the consequences for women. Care work is, in fact, unbalanced - even among highly educated couples. Women devote significantly more time to household work than do men. When married mothers and fathers in the United States are compared, the former spend almost twice as much time on housework and childcare. In the gender-egalitarian countries of northern Europe, women still do almost two-thirds of the unpaid work. Even among heterosexual couples with female breadwinners, women do most of the care work.

Overall, the COVID-19 experience is changing the way research is done, especially in some sectors: the new mechanisms of accelerated peer review, the increased quantity and speed of available data and the distribution of funding across sectors are changing the equilibria of the academic world, and we will need to pay attention to the effects this has on disparities.

So, what happens if both members of a heterosexual couple are at home? The greatest likelihood is that this will exacerbate gender inequality.

The beginning of an academic career is marked by a prolonged period of precariousness, one which coincides with women's reproductive period. The term maternal wall, referring to the discrimination and limitations faced by working mothers, has been in use for well over a decade. Policies such as guaranteed work leave and accommodations to care for family members can be particularly important for women. One immediate idea is to count this period of lockdown as care leave for those tending to any dependent family member, and this can be considered when they are later evaluated, for example, in an open competition for career advancement. This might be extremely helpful for families that are even more disadvantaged during this time - particularly those with single parents, who are more likely to be women.

Men can have a role. Paolo Brunori, an economist colleague of mine at the University of Florence in Italy, has two children, aged 18 months and 5 years. His wife is a paediatrician. She is still working at the hospital, while he is working remotely. He confesses: "Keeping your head on the research duties is almost impossible, because I never have three to four consecutive hours of peace to be concentrated. I try to break down the things I have to do in many small tasks and do them when Silvia, my wife, is at home or when everyone is asleep." Paolo and all the others who are experiencing similar situations should spread the word: the hours that even members of our own household put into its care and running are so often invisible and overlooked.

The only real solution is the classic one: a long-term investment in gender equality.

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Humour is one way for women in academia to face the pandemic's consequences for their work and family lives. Last month, a viral Twitter post read, "The next person who tweets about how productive Isaac Newton was while working from home gets my three year old posted to them!"

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It was easy to foresee: within academe, female professors would bear the professional brunt of social distancing during COVID-19, in the form of decreased research productivity.

Now the evidence is starting to emerge. Editors of two journals say that they're observing unusual, gendered patterns in submissions. In each case, women are losing out.

Editors of a third journal have said that overall submissions by women are up right now, but that solo-authored articles by women are down substantially.

In the most obvious example of the effects of social distancing carving into women's research time, Elizabeth Hannon, deputy editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, wrote on Twitter that she'd received "negligible" submissions from women within the last month. "Never seen anything like it," she added.

David Samuels, co-editor of Comparative Political Studies, in response shared that submissions to his journal are up 25 percent so far in April, compared to last year. That increase was driven entirely by men, however, he said. Women's submissions stayed flat.

The American Journal of Political Science on Monday published a longer-term analysis of submissions and publications by men and women over the last three years, as part of a larger effort to understand publication patterns for authors from underrepresented groups. Co-editors Kathleen Dolan and Jennifer L. Lawless also examined the last few weeks, in particular, and found that submissions have picked up. To their surprise, 33 percent of submitting authors since March 15 were women, compared to 25 percent of authors over the three years studied. Looking at these recent submissions another way, 41 percent of the 108 papers had at least one female author -- slightly more than usual.

This doesn't mean that COVID-19 "hasn't taken a toll on female authors, though," Dolan and Lawless wrote, as women submitted just eight of the 46 solo-authored papers during this time. That's 17 percent, compared to 22 percent of solo-authored papers in the larger data set.

"As a percentage change, that's substantial," the editors said. "Even if women's overall submission rates are up, they seem to have less time to submit their own work than men do amid the crisis."

The revelations generated much chatter, including from gender studies scholars and women in all fields who are desperately trying to balance teaching and otherwise working from home with increased caregiving responsibilities. Those responsibilities include all-day minding of children due to school and daycare closures, homeschooling, and the cooking and cleaning associated with having one's family at home all day, every day. Women are also spending time checking in with friends, relatives and neighbors.
SOS, Different Circumstances
It's not that men don't help with all this, or that they're not also individually overwhelmed by work and family life. But women already juggled more domestic and affective, or emotional, labor with their actual work prior to the pandemic.

Female academics, as a group, also struggled more with work-work balance, as well: numerous studies show they take on more service work than men and are less protective of their research time, to their detriment.

The coronavirus has simply exacerbated these inequities by stripping away what supports women had in place to walk this tightrope, including childcare.

"My productivity is definitely taking a huge hit having both my 2- and 5-year-old at home full-time," said Vanessa LoBue, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University at Newark and author of 9 Months In, 9 Months Out: A Scientist's Tale of Pregnancy and Parenthood. "My husband is working full-time at home, as am I, and what I'm finding is for men, there is more of an expectation that he can be working all the time than there is for me."

That leaves LoBue with the kids more of the time -- and less time for her own work.

"COVID-19 restrictions are just exacerbating gender inequalities that already exist," she said.
No Protected Time
Anecdotes such as LoBue's aren't hard to find. Case in point: a recent Nature op-ed by Alessandra Minello, a social demographer at the University of Florence in Italy with a 2-year-old son and colleagues around the globe who expect her to be able to videoconference at all hours.

"Silence and concentration are pivotal for my thinking and teaching," she wrote. "This means I have less time for writing scientific articles."

While she and her colleagues know they're lucky to be employed and healthy at this time, it still feels "as if I am my own subject" in some work-life balance study.

Minello also expressed concern about when the crisis is over, both parents and nonparents "will participate together in open competition for promotion and positions, parents and nonparents alike."

Just like academic fathers, nonparents don't have it easy right now -- no one does. But, again, there are well-documented challenges that academic mothers, in particular, face. Those challenges, together, have been dubbed the motherhood penalty. And they're laid bare right now.

Hannon of the British journal, who is also associate director of the Forum for European Philosophy, said Monday that her sample size is still too small for anything "particularly meaningful" to be gleaned. This could be a "blip," for example, and submissions numbers could soon normalize as women find ways to cope.

This could also be "an age thing," Hannon added, in that in fields that have been slow to admit women, such as philosophy, women are more likely than men to have young children. That would skew the gender balance, even where childcare duties are evenly spread within families, she said.
Following the Numbers
In any case, Hannon's following the numbers. She and her co-editors have also partnered with other journals and agreed to share patterns, across publications, as they reveal themselves.

Her own hypothesis about the early stats includes increased caring duties, including of friends and parents, and increased domestic labor: shopping, cooking, cleaning.

Samuels also said it's too early to discern anything definitive. March and April brought an increase in submissions from non-U.S. scholars, as well, he said, which have been desk-rejected at a higher rate than U.S. submissions. So there are other things happening, beyond gender. In any case, Samuels guessed that the gender dynamic won't matter much in the end, in terms of productivity as measured as successful publications -- at least in his journal. That's because it has too few willing reviewers right now.

"The reason we're seeing less from U.S.-based scholars is pretty clear," he said via email. "Anyone with kids or family needing care is just not getting any research/writing done, and it's just a stressful time for everybody."

In response to discussions about gender imbalances in submissions, some have suggested that journals shut down during COVID-19. That's perhaps palatable to editors who, like Samuels, are having trouble finding reviewers, and to reviewers who don't have time to read articles.

Hannon, however, said it's not clear that a moratorium on submission would help, and said it might even make things worse. Women who are still writing but taking longer to do so would find it impossible to finally submit, while their less burdened male colleagues would have made it in under the wire. "Unburdened" academics could also continue to write and "stockpile" papers to submit later, she added.

"It just kicks the can down the road."
Taking Care of the 'Family'
Victor Borden, professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, co-wrote a 2017 study finding that women "take care of the academic family" more than men by picking up more service duties. The paper warned that this is problematic for women because service isn't rewarded in the ways that research is, even when the service is essential.

Of journal submissions and gender during the pandemic, Borden said that men and women both seem to expect women to do more "housekeeping," based on existing research. From that point of view, "men would be more likely to see this as an opportunity to focus their time and attention on finishing articles, research projects, revising manuscripts, etc., while women faculty would have a tendency to focus on activities related to making sure that family, colleagues, students, etc., are doing OK."

There is a lot of variation even within groups, Borden cautioned, meaning that one man and one woman plucked at random wouldn't necessarily behave this way. But, in general, if men aren't "stepping up" to tend to group and family cohesion, "women step in."

Joya Misra, professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has also studied the gendered dynamics of academic labor. She said her institution has been flexible with and supportive of faculty members this spring, assuring them that their performance during the disruption will not negatively affect their careers.

Even so, she said, "some faculty don't believe that this won't be held against them, due to the culture of their department or college." Some female colleagues in the sciences and engineering with young children have even doubled down on research, "putting in proposals for studying this particular moment" or writing regular grant proposals because they can't be in their labs.

Then there are other professors, both with and without caregiving responsibilities, "who feel paralyzed." Misra said she'd observed that colleagues who are performing more emotional labor with their students tend to be part this latter group. And in general, women experience "higher levels of expectations from others for emotional labor, and even from themselves."
Setting Boundaries and Making Accommodations
As for advice, Misra said that it's "completely normal" to want to be as responsive as possible to everyone around you during a crisis.

Yet "taking care of your mental health and family is critical," she said. And so academics "need to set reasonable schedules," that entail checking email, say, twice a day, working until 5 p.m. and then shutting off their computers.

Misra said her own chronic health issues forced her to create these kinds of boundaries long before to the pandemic. They've been helpful. "But I also know that this is hard for everyone. There is no-one-size-fits-all."

Kiernan Mathews, executive director of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at Harvard University, said that "anyone familiar with the productivity literature in higher ed wouldn't be surprised" by the new journal submission figures. Still, the "magnitude of effect suggested by these early reports is what is really, freshly disheartening."

Mathews said he hoped journal editors will get these data into scholars' hands as soon as possible -- and noted the twin ironies in saying so. Some men might be able to write up these studies faster than women, he said, and the peer-review process for any such papers could take too long to influence relevant tenure and promotion decisions.

Beyond data, Mathews suggested disciplinary societies might play a role in advocating for a leveling of the playing field for women during COVID-19. Referring to backlash against so-called manels, or all-male panels of experts at disciplinary conferences, Mathews also wondered if journals that don't take demographic balance into account right now might expect to face similar criticism.

"Without national or global leadership reaching across institutions," he said, "you just have this loosely coupled system of committees, each acting in its parochial self-interest and not in society's, reviewing faculty primarily for what's quantifiable and not for what's equitable, ethical or humane."

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Early journal submission data suggest COVID-19 is tanking women's research productivity

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It was easy to foresee: within academe, female professors would bear the professional brunt of social distancing during COVID-19, in the form of decreased research productivity. Now the evidence is starting to emerge. Editors of two journals say that they're observing unusual, gendered patterns in submissions. In each case, women are losing out.

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Mapping a Mentoring Roadmap and Developing a Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement

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Mapping a Mentoring Roadmap and Developing a Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement

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This article presents a proactive, individual-centered mentoring model which meets a recognized need for defined, practical methods for supporting comprehensive career planning and strategic development grounded in personal career aspirations. The developed model consists of a mentoring roadmap charting process and construction of a developmental mentoring network based on an integrative literature review of successful mentoring practices and adaptation of tested methods for retrospective analyses of effective mentoring. The mentoring roadmap concept encompasses the following steps: (a) self-reflection, (b) establishment of mentor-mentee relationship(s), (c) maintenance of mentoring relationships, and (d) advancing in mentoring relationship(s). To support strategic advancement along a defined mentoring roadmap and toward attainment of individual goals, the identification and cultivation of a broad collection of mentoring resources or mentors (i.e., nodes) and the relationships (i.e., edges) which connect these nodes in an effective mentoring network topology are discussed. The mentoring roadmap and network model is proposed as complementary to top-down or formal organizational mentoring interventions and as effective for short- and long-term career development planning as a self-guided assessment or mentor-engaged tool to support individuals seeking mentoring.

Introduction

Mentoring has been widely recognized as one of the key factors contributing to skills development, psychosocial or socioemotional support, and career advancement and success ( Haggard, Dougherty, Turban, & Wilbanks, 2011; Jacobi, 1991; Kram, 1985; Packard, 2016). As such, effective mentoring can contribute to increased self-efficacy and effectiveness ( Kram, 1985) and improved and expanded skills and competencies ( Jacobi, 1991), which can support individual advancement, including in educational and career domains. In the context of careers, mentoring is often viewed from a top-down or hierarchical perspective in which a senior individual or organization-sponsored mentor provides information needed for an individual to recognize and achieve defined milestones required for success in a specific context ( Redmond, 1990). In this regard, top-down mentoring serves effectively to socialize individuals to organizational norms during pursuit of success ( Ensher, Thomas, & Murphy, 2001). Recently, however, there has been an increasing appreciation that mentoring centered in the needs and personal aspirations of individuals can empower individuals toward personally-defined career advancement ( Rockquemore, 2013). Such individual-centered mentoring is best served by developing a network of mentors ( Higgins & Kram, 2001; Rockquemore, 2013; Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007). Notably, both forms of mentoring contribute to success, with top-down mentoring having greater implications for short-term career outcomes and individually-driven, network-based mentoring having been shown to support long-term career goals, advancement, and retention ( Higgins & Thomas, 2001).

Despite a general recognition of the importance of mentoring, there is a dearth of established, evidence-based tools for guiding individuals in determining their personal mentoring needs and/or establishing effective mentoring networks to support their aspirations and professional growth in an individual-centered mentoring framework. Herein, a review of mentoring literature is engaged to support the development of an individual-centered mentoring model for guiding comprehensive career planning and strategic development based on personal career aspirations. The developed mentoring roadmap and network model includes an individual mentoring roadmap tool based on mapping self-identified needs and career goals. The mapping process includes an assessment of a personal need for mentoring to support successful advancement along a career roadmap. The process and benefits of mapping a personal mentoring network to support comprehensive career planning and progress along a defined trajectory are delineated. To facilitate development of a suitable support network, a mentoring network mapping tool is presented. The network construction model is based primarily on adapting tested methods used to evaluate qualitative data from interviews or surveys related to retrospective analyses of success in individual careers ( Long et al., 2013) and a scholarship of integration approach ( Boyer, 1990) to incorporate knowledge derived from effective mentoring (e.g., Haggard et al., 2011) and developmental mentoring models ( Kram, 1985; Megginson, Clutterback, Garvey, Stokes, & Garrett-Harris, 2006; Washington & Cox, 2016). This mentoring network tool is useful by mentees for self-assessment or as a planning or progress assessment tool in mentoring relationships. Rather than a focus on "retrospective sense-making" about mentoring ( Higgins & Thomas, 2001, p. 230), this approach meets a recognized need for defined practices to support cultivating multiple developmental relationships or a mentoring network to support long-term career advancement ( Higgins & Thomas, 2001). The described roadmap charting and network construction tools enable proactive sense-building regarding personal mentoring needs and the supportive mentoring networks needed to support specific individuals. A review of relevant literature is provided throughout the text to present the theoretical underpinning and to support the development and use of the mentoring roadmaps and networks model.

Mentoring and Mentors Defined

What Is a Mentor?

There are myriad definitions of mentor available ( Haggard et al., 2011). These definitions often engage the concept of a senior or experienced individual who provides advice and guidance to a novice, or individual with limited experience, in a particular domain. Mentoring in this top-down framework then emerges as interactions, largely based on a one-way flow of information, between a mentor and an individual being mentored (i.e., a mentee). The focus of the mentoring can include a range of goals, including skills or competency development, psychosocial or socioemotional support, and career development ( Haggard et al., 2011; Jacobi, 1991; Kram, 1985). Alternative forms of mentoring, including peer mentoring ( Driscoll, Parkes, Tilley-Lubbs, Brill, & Pitts Bannister, 2009; Eby, 1997; Kroll, 2016) and group mentoring ( Eby, 1997; Kroll, 2016; Montgomery, Dodson, & Johnson, 2014; Varkey et al., 2012), also serve as effective means to realize these goals. Some of these alternative models move toward bidirectional engagement of mentor and mentee, which has been shown to improve mentoring outcomes in many cases ( Sorcinelli & Yun, 2009). Bilateral engagement is particularly important as such exchanges promote adapting mentoring to individual mentee goals and needs. Thus, a working concept, or functional approach, to conceptualizing mentors and mentoring begins to emerge, which is distinguished here from advising or more classically defined top-down hierarchical mentoring ( Yun & Sorcinelli, 2009), both of which are typically designed to facilitate progress by advisees or mentees toward organizationally defined goals.

Mentors versus advisors

Advisors tell any individual what steps or activities are needed to complete a task, degree, or attain tenure or promotion ( Baker & Griffin, 2010; Montgomery et al., 2014; Ramirez, 2012). In this regard, advising is instruction or guidance that would benefit any student pursuing a particular educational course or any individual on a particular career path. Advising, then, centers on providing factual information about the particular activities that must occur to complete an educational course of study or actions pertinent to any individual pursuing a particular career or goal-directed trajectory ( Montgomery et al., 2014). Advising, though necessary and highly desirable in many cases, is largely a one-way transfer of information from advisor to advisee in pursuit of an organizationally specific context of success. In this sense, many forms of top-down "mentoring" can appear to more aptly fit a role of advising of individuals toward organizational norms or institutionally driven goals for individual workers and their contextual success.

By contrast, mentoring is positioned as a distinct and deeper engagement that is based on a thorough personal understanding of one's mentee and that individual's personal career aspirations. Mentoring very frequently includes some advising, yet transcends advising in its provision of individual-specific information and bilateral engagement and interactions that include the offering of advice based on a deep personal understanding of the mentee's cadre of prior experiences, strengths and weaknesses, personal aspirations, values, and professional goals ( Montgomery et al., 2014). The investment of a mentor in getting to know the personal strengths and weaknesses of an individual-"learning" the person ( Montgomery, 2015a)-allows the mentor to address an individual's unique needs in the mentoring relationship ( Baker & Griffin, 2010; Kirchmeyer, 2005; Montgomery et al., 2014; Ramirez, 2012). This learning includes gaining an understanding of the individual's strengths and weaknesses to the degree that a mentor can suggest and help guide the mentee along a path of action that engages and capitalizes on the mentee's strengths, while providing opportunities to improve recognized weaknesses for the benefit of personal growth and successful attainment of educational and/or career goals. Effective mentoring may, and perhaps should, also engage personal values of the mentee and mentor. Such a values-based focus provides an opportunity for personalized mentoring with a goal of promoting improved outcomes for individual mentees, yet also addresses the recognition that differing values can lead to conflicts or differences in expectations that can impede or derail mentoring exchanges. Thus, impactful mentoring focuses deeply on personal growth as one recognizes and considers the whole person, and also seeks to support an individual's values-based personal advancement in a specific domain ( Montgomery, 2015b). This individual-centered view of mentoring is distinct from many top-down approaches, which again can very often reflect an advising perspective associated with specific and often time-delimited goals related to instrumental facets of career success ( Lewis & Olshansky, 2016), and in fact often meet the needs of a smaller part of one's comprehensive and career-long mentoring needs.

Lifeline of Mentoring

The attainment of comprehensive mentoring to support an individual's mentoring needs is a process. It is a process, however, that has identifiable elements that comprise stations along a lifeline of mentoring. A specific individual's mentoring lifeline is based on particular goals or milestones paired with the individual mentoring capital required for achievement of personal career aspirations. An individual mentee has many needs at any one station or along the trajectory of the mentoring lifeline and to successfully traverse the lifeline requires a complex and comprehensive set of mentoring resources and expertise.

Multiple roles versus multiple mentors?

Mentors can fill many roles, including the provision of practical advice about careers or a course of study, contributions to professional development, or dissemination of political guidance and strategies ( Montgomery et al., 2014). In all of these engagements, there is a need for mentors who understand an individual's personal commitments, values, and future goals to provide the most efficacious mentoring. To support complex mentoring needs, people often seek a comprehensive mentor. However, the wide range of areas to which mentors can make contributions suggests that mentors either have to serve effectively in multiple roles or alternatively that mentees need to engage multiple mentors, each with specific strengths and/or expertise, to gain the comprehensive mentoring needed. Thus, the focus of mentoring should shift to the goal of assembling comprehensive mentoring, which may-and perhaps should-include input from multiple mentors rather than seeking a single individual to fill multiple roles as a comprehensive "guru" mentor ( Chesler & Chesler, 2002; de Janasz & Sullivan, 2004; Ensher et al., 2001; Grant, 2015; Long et al., 2014; Long et al., 2013; R. McGee, Lee, Pfund, & Branchaw, 2015; Packard, 2016; Packard, Kim, Sicley, & Piontkowski, 2009; Rockquemore, 2013; Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007; Wilson et al., 2012; Zambrana et al., 2015). There are many formats for gaining access to comprehensive mentoring, including collective mentoring by a group of preassembled individuals ( Blue, 2001; Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Davidson & Foster-Johnson, 2001; Dodson, Montgomery, & Brown, 2009; Eby, 1997; R. McGee, Saran, & Krulwich, 2012; Montgomery et al., 2014; Smith, Cech, Metz, Huntoon, & Moyer, 2014), as well as the alternative of assembling a personal collection of mentors into a mentor network that is strategically constructed to serve the comprehensive needs of any particular mentee ( Hetty van Emmerik, 2004; Higgins & Kram, 2001; Long et al., 2013; Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007; Trube & VanDerveer, 2015; Zambrana et al., 2015). Based on longitudinal analyses of mentoring relationships, the engagement of mentoring networks has been associated with long-term career outcomes, whereas top-down approaches more effectively support short-term career goals ( Higgins & Thomas, 2001). Despite the recognized value of mentoring networks for supporting long-term career outcomes, practical mechanisms for enacting the building of individual mentoring networks to complement the provision of an organizational mentor are limited. Based on theoretical frameworks introduced in the literature, a model for mapping an individual mentoring roadmap is introduced and followed with a description of the building and sustaining of mentoring networks that support comprehensive career planning and strategic development for individuals. The roadmap charting and network construction processes include both descriptions of specific mentoring types and resources (i.e., nodes of the mentoring network) and the mentoring relationships that connect the individual mentee with identified resources (i.e., edges in the network).

Constructing a Mentoring Roadmap

An individual's mentoring roadmap draws on the lifeline of mentoring concept that consists of identifiable stations along a planned career trajectory. The mapping out of these stations is based on the consideration of driving questions and the path from one station to the next comprises what is referred to as the drafting or charting of a complete mentoring roadmap. Despite its simplified depiction (), the mentoring roadmap is intended as nonlinear. The path starts with, and returns frequently to, self-reflection which is absolutely critical as a starting point in the individual-centered mentoring model as a means to identify individual mentoring needs based on self-defined career goals. From self-reflection, the roadmap progresses to the establishment and maintenance of mentoring relationships, and then proceeds to considerations of advancing in mentoring relationships as progress with career development or other goals are achieved. Ultimately, the "moving ahead" portion of the roadmap includes consideration of renegotiating and/or ending mentoring relationships, as needed (). Such mentoring roadmaps have immense potential for supporting both short-term and long-term personal envisioning regarding one's individual mentoring needs, or the recognition of mentoring needs and provision of mentoring capital from the perspective of the mentor when used as planning or progress assessment tool. The process of composing a personalized roadmap using driving questions and based on insights from the mentoring literature is described.

Self-Reflection

What do I need and why do I need it? Self-reflection is a start pointing for individuals to identify mentoring needs related to their personal aspirations

Without a clear understanding of what support is specifically needed to attain self-defined goals or in what specific areas support and mentoring are needed, how can an individual adequately identify the right source(s) or mentors for obtaining what is needed? A role for self-reflection or self-assessment in identifying professional mentoring needs or goals and suggested tools and professional development opportunities for targeted self-assessment have been recommended ( R. McGee, Lee, et al., 2015; Sorcinelli & Yun, 2009; Tull & Tull, 2012). Self-reflection is of key importance to facilitate robust self-awareness about one's individual strengths and weaknesses and to cultivate an ability to receive constructive criticism. These are critical factors in being able to effectively engage in and benefit from robust mentoring relationships. Some tools have emerged which are intended to facilitate strategic self-assessment, including versions of an individual development plan (IDP; Clifford, 2002; Vincent et al., 2015). The use of IDPs in particular has been supported as critical for promoting structured bilateral conversations between mentors and mentees ( Faber, 2015; Vincent et al., 2015).

When do I need a resource?

Having identified a core set of needs, another consideration is whether these are all needed simultaneously or whether resources can be engaged in specific phases. This is a critical consideration as it helps mentees identify when particular mentoring resources will need to be identified and engaged. This knowledge facilitates the prioritization of the search for mentor(s) and mentoring resources, which will serve as nodes in the building of a mentoring network (described below). This idea that not all resources are needed at once begins to draw on the idea that mentoring networks are dynamic in nature ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005). Attention to strategic management of the dynamics of one's access to mentor(s) and mentoring resources can support career success and advancement over time ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005; Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005).

Where or in what areas must the resource be located?

The consideration of the identified areas of mentoring needs and whether these resources need ideally be local or can be engaged from a distance is a vitally important one. Once specific needs are identified, the process of reviewing whether there are already individuals known to the mentee (i.e., known nodes; ) that can serve in a particular needed capacity can be engaged. If there are areas for which no resources are known, a specific plan for identifying these sources of mentoring can be formulated as discussed in detail below related to construction of mentoring networks (). In addition, the availability of access to mentors or mentoring resources online is increasingly possible. Indeed, a growing number of electronic sources are available to aid in the identification of mentors or resources, the actual provision of mentoring that is needed, or to supplement information needed by the mentee in addition to heuristic knowledge needed locally (e.g., Blake-Beard, Bayne, Crosby, & Muller, 2011; Wadia-Fascetti & Leventman, 2000). Engagement of such mentoring resources can become a critical component of developing an individual plan for comprehensive mentoring.

Establishing and Maintaining Relationships

The initiation or establishment of mentoring relationships is the starting point for many classic and newer developmental mentoring models ( Kram, 1985; Megginson et al., 2006; Washington & Cox, 2016). Whether directly following self-reflection as suggested here or as a first step, initiation begins with relationship building between mentee and mentors in the network. To truly facilitate the attainment of comprehensive mentoring to support personal aspirations, mentoring resources and mentor(s) must be identified and effective relationships must be established and maintained through specific means. To facilitate the use of the roadmapping model, evidence related to distinct purposes and types of mentoring relationships that support progress along a career trajectory are described.

What is the framework?

The framework of mentoring relationships should be defined from both the point of view of the mentee and the mentor and overlap or connections between the two should be optimized. Particular points to be addressed in establishing a shared understanding about the framework of a mentoring exchange include the preferred mode of contact, frequency and format of meetings, goals of meetings or planned interactions, and expectations ( Cunningham, 1993). It is vitally important to pay attention to the expectations and responsibilities of each party in the mentoring exchange ( Grant, 2015; Washington & Cox, 2016) and to be clear and specific about the goals and expectations for both the mentee and mentor. Where possible, it is important to establish measurable outcomes associated with the defined goals and expectations. To enable the reaching of a joint consensus about expectations or to facilitate compromise where individual needs and expectations of the mentee and mentor diverge, it is critical to arrive at a common understanding of both the purpose of the mentoring exchange ( Megginson et al., 2006) and type of mentoring relationships that will emerge to support this purpose and to promote effective engagement.

Establishing purpose of the mentoring exchange

The purpose of mentoring relationships can take many distinct forms, including a goal of comprehensive mentoring, that is a more traditional type of mentoring that typically indicates that one's total mentoring needs are being addressed largely by one individual in a particular mentoring relationship; maintenance mentoring, which can help one navigate or maintain success in a current placement; transitional mentoring, which can be critical when moving from one career stage or placement to another; or, aspirational mentoring, which often positions individuals to move toward a career or opportunity to which they aspire.

Comprehensive mentoring
Comprehensive mentoring can fulfill the complete mentoring needs of different types, at different times, and/or for different individual weaknesses and/or strength-building opportunities ( Anderson, Silet, & Fleming, 2012; Griffin & Toldson, 2012). Finding all that one mentee needs in a single source is very unlikely, and thus here the quest for comprehensive mentoring, rather than finding a comprehensive mentor, is supported. Comprehensive mentoring can be obtained through the building of a multidimensional network that engages many different mentoring types and relationships. As each individual mentee will have different mentoring needs, each individual's comprehensive mentoring network will be uniquely constructed and maintained.

Maintenance mentoring
Maintenance mentoring is more specific in being critical for supporting the advancement of individuals that have committed to a particular course of study or career placement-to keep one moving toward accomplishment of a specific goal that may be part of a larger ongoing trajectory. In this regard, maintenance mentoring can be a smaller more defined portion of a comprehensive mentoring exchange in some cases. Maintenance mentoring is most parallel to the stage of mentoring described as cultivation in Kram's (1985) developmental mentoring framework. This type of mentoring provides the support needed to maintain one's placement and to complete a particular, and often time-delimited, portion of one's larger career path. The needs vary at particular portions of an individual's path and thus the person who may serve as a valuable and effective maintenance mentor at one stage may not be the same individual needed to maintain one's placement and performance at distinct stages. The particulars of maintenance mentoring needed specifically at different stages of the academic path have been recently discussed ( Montgomery et al., 2014).

Transitional mentoring
Transitional mentoring is critically important when an individual is moving from one career stage to another or from one type of environment to another. Such mentoring can be absolutely critical for initiating progress in a new role or position. It has been regularly recommended that special attention to the provision of mentoring during such transitions can support recruitment and retention of individuals broadly ( Brown, 2011; Gibau et al., 2010; Malone & Barabino, 2009; E. O. McGee, Robinson, Bentley, & Houston, 2015; Stassun, Burger, & Lange, 2010; Stassun et al., 2011; Whittaker & Montgomery, 2012, 2014; Williams et al., 2011). Transitional mentors may be individuals with whom a mentee has a long-term association. Alternatively, this type of mentoring can very frequently be effectively accomplished through short-term transitional mentoring.

Aspirational mentoring
Aspirational mentoring can be based on mentoring needed for a future position or role to which one aspires, or based on future potential that an individual's mentor identifies or recommends. Aspirational mentoring is based on the concept of mentoring centered on gaining aspirational capital, defined by Yosso (2005) as one of six forms of cultural capital. Aspirational capital encompasses the ability of an individual to foster aspirations that appear to transcend what is possible based on the individual's current skill set, experiences, or station in life, or currently available resources ( Yosso, 2005). In this regard, aspirational mentoring is comprised of the interactions with a mentor that facilitate mentees successfully, and hopefully strategically, navigating the gap between where they are currently and the role(s) and/or position(s) to which they aspire.

Defining the relevant type of mentoring exchange

In addition to having distinct purposes, the nature of mentoring relationships that are most appropriate for a particular goal, stage or progress along the roadmap can occur in many different types. Those distinct types discussed here and which can support specific mentoring purposes include formal versus informal, continuous versus episodic, and on-site versus off-site mentoring. Each of these relationship types and associated relevant literature is described in brief.

Formal versus informal
Formal mentors are often assigned to students, junior faculty, or employees based on their intake into a particular unit, department, or organization ( Chao, Walz, & Gardner, 1992; Grant, 2015; Monroe, Ozyurt, Wrigley, & Alexander, 2008; Montgomery et al., 2014; Ragins & Cotton, 1999; Redmond, 1990; Wallace, Moore, & Curtis, 2014). These mentoring relationships are often dyadic and may or may not be based on identified personal factors or complementary characteristics of the mentee or mentor that could lead to a particularly productive, or alternatively avoid a nonproductive, exchange ( Bass, Rutledge, Douglass, & Carter, 2007; Chao et al., 1992). By contrast, informal mentoring relationships can emerge through a senior mentor seeking out a more junior individual to offer support or guidance, or from an industrious or proactive mentee recognizing the potential assistance or capital that may be available from an individual and the mentee initiating an engagement ( Chao et al., 1992; Edmondson, 2012; Grant, 2015; Monroe et al., 2008; Ragins & Cotton, 1999). It is much more likely that informal mentoring relationships may be built based on personal factors, or perceptions thereof, that the mentee and/or mentor have that the relationship may be a "good fit." There has been much discussion that the need to seek out informal mentoring can be critical for women or racial/ethnic minorities who may be underrepresented in particular institutions, and thus where the formal connections may not engage factors particularly relevant or of concern to the mentee ( Edmondson, 2012; Monroe et al., 2008; Wallace et al., 2014). Notably, such informal mentoring may largely be an "add-on" to mentees' established networks, including both formal and informal mentoring resources.

Continuous versus episodic
Continuous mentoring is the form that is often thought about as a default-a long-term relationship between a mentor and mentee. Continuous mentoring often occurs throughout a particular trajectory or the course of the mentee's career. Episodic mentoring is a frequent, if under recognized, mentoring type. Episodic mentoring centers around events or isolated moments that occur once or infrequently that result in a mentoring exchange, yet do not require long-term or ongoing engagement ( Long et al., 2014; Long et al., 2013). Episodic mentoring is often an effective type used to fulfill the purpose of transitional mentoring needs.

On-site (local) versus off-site (distance)
Finding effective mentors that are not in the same physical location is becoming increasingly plausible ( Haggard et al., 2011). The use of such "offsite" mentors has been recognized as critical for providing underrepresented minority (URM)-specific mentors for URM faculty that have limited access to such mentors at their home institutions ( Zambrana et al., 2015). Off-site mentors can be engaged in conversations at a distance through technology ( Ensher, Heun, & Blanchard, 2003; Grant, 2015; Guerrero-Medina et al., 2013; R. McGee, Lee, et al., 2015; Packard, 2003; Whittaker, Montgomery, & Martinez Acosta, 2015), engaged via electronic platforms ( Blake-Beard et al., 2011; Ensher et al., 2003; Guerrero-Medina et al., 2013; Long et al., 2014; Wadia-Fascetti & Leventman, 2000; Whittaker & Montgomery, 2014; Whittaker et al., 2015), or at locations such as annual meetings of joint disciplinary societies ( Eby, 1997; Grant, 2015; Guerrero-Medina et al., 2013; R. McGee, Lee, et al., 2015). Online mentoring can serve as a critical part of an individual's mentoring networks; however, it has been strongly argued that off-site mentors should not replace or circumvent a need for local mentors at one's home institution or workplace as on-site mentors often have critical input into sharing heuristic knowledge needed for successfully navigating a particular place or work environment ( Whittaker & Montgomery, 2014; Whittaker et al., 2015; Zambrana et al., 2015).

Bilateral interactions

Mentoring relationships of distinct types and to fulfill defined purposes are all bilateral engagements ( Byars-Winston, Branchaw, Pfund, Leverett, & Newton, 2015; Grant, 2015; Greco, 2014; Montgomery et al., 2014). Although the benefits of mentoring for mentees are often highlighted in discussions of mentoring relationships, "mentorship is a bidirectional activity" (Pietro De Camilli in Yammine, 2015), with mentors also being enriched and gaining benefits from engaging with the mentee ( Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Lechuga, 2011; McKinsey, 2016). Indeed, these relationships have been described as based on "mutual benefit and mutual responsibility" ( R. McGee, Lee, et al., 2015, p. 23), as well as "truth and mutual trust" ( Greco, 2014, p. 3252). In addition, the bilateral nature of mentoring relationships includes "reciprocity or mutuality of social exchange" ( Long et al., 2013, p. 1). This is important in contributing to the strength (or distance) of connections between an individual mentee and mentors or mentoring resources (depicted as edges in topology of mentoring networks) ( Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005). As the relationships have benefits to both engaged parties, it is critical to nurture productive bilateral interactions.

Moving Ahead: Renegotiating or Ending Mentoring Relationships

Periodic review of goals

As mentoring relationships develop, it is important for both mentee and mentor to occasionally reassess their continuing goals, and indeed need, for the exchange. It is important periodically to assess whether the framework and bilateral interactions established for maintaining a specific mentee-mentor relationship still work for both parties ( Grant, 2015). Such an assessment may result in the realignment of goals and mentoring activities or the identification of new goals.

Reaffirmation or renegotiation

Occasionally, a review of a current mentoring exchange may result in the realization that a particular relationship is complete or no longer serves the needs of one of the involved parties. Even as a good mentor can help you creatively and critically think your way out of a bad "station" along your path, an ill-effective mentor can sink a good opportunity, or lead you astray. Such diversions from identifying and working toward goals represent a time, energy and motivation "sink," in which efforts are not moving the mentee forward in an individual career timeline. Periodic, intentional assessments of mentoring relationships allow recognition of whether a relationship is working well and should be reaffirmed, or whether a particular mentoring exchange has fulfilled its intended purpose or is no longer working well. This potential transition has been referred to as a "redefinition phase" in Kram's (1983) phases of mentoring relationships. In the event that a relationship needs to be significantly renegotiated or even concluded, negotiating the way forward requires attention to fully acknowledging the valuable contributions that have been made. It is always advisable to make the transition out of the relationship gracefully and amicably ( Grant, 2015).

Mapping Your Mentoring Network

Having established a roadmap for specific educational or careers goals, either short- or long-term, the task at hand is to engage a process that allows one to progress toward building, cultivating, and sustaining a developmental mentoring network that supports personal aspirations. To establish a supportive mentoring network, it is important to identify the specific mentoring resources (i.e., nodes) that will be included in a developmental network and to initiate the appropriate relationships (i.e., edges) that will be needed to support advancement.

What or Who Are the Key Nodes?

Based on an understanding of one's individual mentoring roadmap (), the next steps are to move toward identifying the specific mentors and mentoring resources that will comprise the nodes in a developmental mentoring network needed to support individual progress along the crafted mentoring roadmap. Identifying the types of mentoring nodes needed to support individual goals is the first step (). Once the types of nodes needed are identified, specific individuals or resources can be sought. It is likely that at least a portion of the needed nodes will already be known or available to the mentee; thus, the first sorting is of the identified types of nodes needed into known and unknown resources (). The next step is to search for the remaining unknown nodes. One of the first sources of information that is likely to be helpful is to query known mentors about connections to identify unknown nodes. Additional sources include conducting general searches or seeking connections through venues such as meetings, seminars, and other places that individuals who possess the expertise that you seek may be found (). The need for both personal and professional mentors has been recognized ( Eby, 1997; Grant, 2015), and should be strongly considered in the building of one's network.

What Is Their Relationship to You?

Having identified relevant nodes, promoting an understanding or visualizing the quantity or nature of the nodes, as well as the edges or ties between these nodes, is the next stage in constructing a supportive mentoring network. The degree to which one has a diverse set of nodes in one's network has been described as "network diversity" ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005; Hetty van Emmerik, 2004; Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005). The degree to which these nodes originate from different contexts or social origins is referred to as "network range" ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005). An assessment of the relationships between the mentee and mentoring nodes may be that the relationships are characterized as either close or more distant, or as having strong or weak connections, all of which are depicted by different lengths and widths of the edges or ties connecting the nodes in the network model (). Distance between nodes is determined by multiple factors, including emotional, professional, personal, or physical distance ( Hetty van Emmerik, 2004). In addition, there may be nodes that are yet to be identified, or that are identified yet will be needed at different times based on the assessment of when a particular resource is needed. Such nodes may remain unconnected by an edge in a network at a given time point. Building stronger networks as needed occurs through initiating or strengthening connections of nodes to the mentee, and occasionally on reformulating or severing mentoring ties.

Are there relationships between nodes directly?

An additional consideration is whether there may be connections between some of the mentoring nodes directly. The interconnectedness of a mentoring network can be described as "network density" (Dobrow & Higgins, p. 570). A low-density network consists of nodes that are largely independent, whereas a high-density network has nodes that have interrelationships or are well known to each other ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005; Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005). Occasionally facilitating connections between nodes or groups of nodes can enable synergistic mentoring outcomes ( Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005). Such inter-network connections can also contribute to "access to a diverse array of skill sets" ( Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005, p. 2). Notably, low-density networks have been associated with benefits to individuals in the early stages of exploring professional identity ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005). The degree to which network interconnectedness contributes or adds to a mentee's interaction with each mentoring node should be considered and cultivated, when helpful. Periodic assessment of relationships and current or developing needs may result in the addition or removal of nodes or movement in the position of nodes in the network.

Network Shuffle

Over the course of a goal or a career, a mentoring network has to be dynamic to accomplish maintaining the nodes and edges of the network in a topology that serves evolving career advancement needs. The management and reformation of one's network has been previously described as managing a "network shuffle" ( Zambrana et al., 2015, p. 55) or network management ( Uzzi & Dunlap, 2005). In the network shuffle, individuals identify a network of individuals with different, yet complementary, skills and/or resources to fulfill different mentoring needs and functions of the mentee ( Long et al., 2014; Long et al., 2013; Zambrana et al., 2015). The inclusion of relevant nonhuman resources (such as books, Internet resources or courses, etc.) in networks has also been described as beneficial ( Contractor, Monge, & Leonardi, 2011; Long et al., 2013). Such networks are dynamic, and changes in an individual's network over time can prove beneficial to improving career or goal trajectories ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005). Indeed, a personal mentoring network should facilitate targeted, strategic, and effective movement along an individual roadmap. In this regard, a particular network model may be helpful for short-term planning, yet a different network may be more relevant or supportive for long-term planning. Thus, networks have to be evaluated periodically, particularly as related to current or short-term goals and long-term career trajectories. In this regard, Uzzi and Dunlap (2005) describe the need to periodically diagnose your network and then to reformulate and manage it to maintain a stronger supportive network in direct facilitation of individual needs, goals, and aspirations.

When and how to reposition nodes?

Transitions in one's network may be critical for movement from one stage to another in one's career or course of study ( Dobrow & Higgins, 2005; Grant, 2015). Mentoring has been described as effective in serving to "support in significant transitions" ( Megginson et al., 2006, p. 5). This transitional mentoring (introduced above) likely will require the identification of new nodes (both in service to network diversity and network range) or shuffling of existing nodes, closer or farther away or through facilitating interconnections (to improve network density), as the need for engagement with a particular mentor or mentoring resource changes throughout the course of advancing along an individual roadmap. A concerted effort may be needed to strengthen edges between nodes already in an individual's network or to alter the distance of edges between nodes. Also, as described above, on occasion it becomes apparent that mentoring relationships are complete and, thus, nodes may need to be removed and/or replaced altogether.

Conclusion

The need for evidence-based tools for supporting career planning, development and strategic obtaining of the mentoring required to support these efforts are clear ( Poodry, 2006; Valantine & Collins, 2015). Furthermore, there is a need for greater focus on the interpersonal processes involved in effective mentoring relationships ( Hamlin & Sage, 2011). Here, career planning and reflection practices and knowledge about beneficial interpersonal exchanges are adapted to present tools helpful for supporting individual mentees in planning a mentoring roadmap and mapping a supportive, developmental mentoring network to guide individual advancement along a personal roadmap. The tools described can also be engaged by mentors in planning for effective mentoring or facilitating co-planning or progress assessment with mentees. The partnering of the generation of a mentoring roadmap and construction of an individualized supportive mentoring network with other evidence-based tools, including participating in top-down or organizationally provided mentoring that may support understanding the framework for success in particular contexts, are anticipated to add strength to an individual's career planning and promote progressive outcomes. There are other ways in which integration of the models described here could be beneficial for a broad range of individuals from graduate students and academics to career professionals. One with great potential is integrated use of the network modeling process described here with other resources, such as an IDP (e.g., myIDP.sciencecareers.org, Clifford, 2002) for mentee self-assessment, mentoring websites (e.g., CienciaPR, www.cienciapr.org, Guerrero-Medina et al., 2013; MentorNet, http://www.mentornet.net/, Muller, Blake-Beard, Barsion, & Wotipka, 2012; MicroMenter, http://www.micromentor.org/; National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, NCFDD, https://facultydiversity.site-ym.com/; National Research Mentoring Network, https://nrmnet.net/, R. McGee, Lee, et al., 2015), or emerging tools for mentor training ( Byars-Winston et al., 2015; Pfund et al., 2014; Pfund, Maidl Pribbenow, Branchaw, Miller Lauffer, & Handelsman, 2006) and mentoring assessment ( Tull, 2015). Overall, the model presented here is one integrated approach to assess a personal need for mentoring and to initiate a plan to obtain it in support of comprehensive career planning and strategic development.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant numbers MCB-1243983 and MCB-1241970] and by the Michigan State University Foundation.

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Author Biography

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Mapping a Mentoring Roadmap and Developing a Supportive Network for Strategic Career Advancement - Beronda L. Montgomery, 2017

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This article presents a proactive, individual-centered mentoring model which meets a recognized need for defined, practical methods for supporting comprehensive career planning and strategic development grounded in personal career aspirations. The developed model consists of a mentoring roadmap charting process and construction of a developmental mentoring network based on an integrative literature review of successful mentoring practices and adaptation of tested methods for retrospective analyses of effective mentoring.

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COVID-19 | SPECIAL REPORT

The pandemic has led to a series of losses, from financial security to the lives of loved ones. How can we heal?

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The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist retired from private practice who now focuses on grief training and mentoring. "It's important that we start recognizing that we're in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now."

Many people are confronting the loss of a loved one to the novel coronavirus-a challenge made even more difficult by physical distancing orders that prevent them from saying goodbye in person or gathering with others to mourn. Deaths aren't the only losses that people are reckoning with, however. Millions of people are facing loss of employment and financial upheaval as a result of the pandemic. Yet even people who haven't lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are grieving, Cormier says. "There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems-all of these systems we depend on-destabilize," she says.

The crisis isn't just shaking our faith in those systems. It's upending our understanding of the world around us, says Robert Neimeyer, PhD, director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Memphis. "The losses include our sense of predictability, control, justice, and the belief that we can protect our children or elderly loved ones," he says.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, psychologists will play a key role in helping people manage the many losses they're mourning, Neimeyer adds. "We'll have an immense challenge as a profession, but also a vast opportunity to help people address these elements of suffering."

Grieving a living loss

Research from the bereavement literature shows that the nature of a person's attachments has an effect on their grief reactions. Of course, we aren't only attached to other humans, Neimeyer says. "We're capable of losing places, projects, possessions, professions and protections, all of which we may be powerfully attached to," he says. "This pandemic forces us to confront the frailty of such attachments, whether it's to our local bookstore or the routines that sustain us through our days."

Many of the losses we're experiencing now are so-called ambiguous losses. "These lack the clarity and definition of a single point like a death," Neimeyer explains. That fuzziness can make it hard to move forward. As the pandemic has evolved, people have had to confront a series of losses: the loss of a sense of safety, of social connections and personal freedoms, of jobs and financial security. Going forward, people will experience new losses we can't yet predict. "We're talking about grieving a living loss-one that keeps going and going," he says.

We don't only grieve for what's missing, but also for the ways in which those losses affect our senses of self, says George Bonanno, PhD, a psychologist who heads the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University. "You can experience grief over anything that feels like a loss of identity." Research shows, for instance, that losing a job can trigger a period of prolonged grief distinct from anxiety or depression. That prolonged grief seems to be related to the impacts of job loss on self-esteem and belief in a just world (Papa, A., & Maitoza, R., Journal of Loss and Trauma, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2013).

Though grief is difficult, it helps to recognize that it's natural and useful, Bonanno says. "Grief is really about turning inward and recalibrating, and thinking: 'This is not the way the world is anymore, and I need to adapt,'" he says. "It's okay to feel grief over what we're losing. When we do that, it allows us to let grief do its job, so that we can move on."

His research suggests that once a crisis has passed, most people are able to bounce back and move on with their lives. Grief is also transient, even when we're in the midst of its clutches. People should expect to fluctuate between moments of sadness and mourning, and moments of acceptance or even happiness, he says. "People who cope well with loss usually move in and out of those states. It's OK to allow yourself to be distracted and entertained, and even to laugh."

It helps to 'name and claim' our grief

With almost the whole world confronting losses large and small, how can people cope as they mourn their pre-pandemic lives? For starters, mental health providers can help patients "name it and claim it," Neimeyer says. "People often have a vague sense of anxiety or wordless suffering. We can help them wrap language around that," he explains. "We can ask people to consider what they're losing in the context of this pandemic, what they can do to strengthen those ties." It's not a fatalistic view, he says. Rather, it's an organized way of taking action to help people cope with their losses, from jobs and relationships to sources of self-worth and self-efficacy.

Cormier suggests people keep journals to put words to losses and to help identify ways to move forward. As the work of psychologist James Pennebaker, PhD, at the University of Texas at Austin, has shown, writing about emotional upheavals can improve both physical and mental health (Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2018). "Name what you're losing, individually and collectively, and write about your personal strengths and coping skills," Cormier suggests. "Most of us have never been through anything like this, but we've been through other challenging transitions. It can help to write about how you got through a divorce, or losing your job, or other challenging transitions. How did you heal and recover?"

Social support is another well-established tool that can be critical in helping move on from grief, instead of getting stuck in it. That poses a problem in an age of physical distancing, when people are isolated in their homes away from loved ones. "During this time, there may be an erosion of social support and the meaningful social roles that buttress our identities," Neimeyer says.

Psychologists can encourage people to stay connected with their social support networks through phone calls, text messages, video chat and social media. And those reminders should continue even after we emerge from isolation, says Erika Felix, PhD, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who treats and studies survivors of trauma and disasters. "One thing we've learned from disasters is the ongoing importance of social supports. The lesson is to keep checking in on people, and keep the support going even after this period of lockdown ends," she says. "For some people, the stress will continue after quarantine ends, especially if their jobs or relationships are affected."

Saying goodbye in the age of physical distancing

While we're mourning the loss of our pre-pandemic lives, many people will also face the grim task of mourning the deaths of friends or family members. Whether it's sitting shiva, lining up for a New Orleans-style jazz procession or sharing a meal with loved ones after a secular memorial service, cultures and customs around the world share a key element of mourning: social connection. In the age of COVID-19, physical distancing is driving a wedge in those moments of connection.

"One of the most time-tested ways of coping with grief is to practice social connection, to be with other mourners. Now, we may be having to cope with grief and sorrow alone, socially isolated, where we don't get the physical comfort we need from friends and family," says Cormier. "We're having to figure out new systems and new rituals for trying to honor death when everything else around us is shifting."

The act of saying goodbye to a loved one often begins well before a funeral or burial. For many people, the days and hours at the end of a loved one's life are especially poignant. "Normally, we can hold a loved one's hand, have meaningful conversations, affirm the bond, make amends," says Neimeyer. "When we are able to practice these things, it softens the blow of loss."

With strict isolation measures in place in most hospitals, people are missing out on those final farewells. That's true when people die from COVID-19, but also from more familiar causes such as heart attacks or cancer. While critical to slowing the spread of the disease, those measures also make it hard for mourners to come together to grieve. Some people have begun filling that void with virtual shiva and funerals, but technology is an imperfect substitute for an in-person embrace. "Being in close physical proximity with friends or other mourners helps us produce feel-good hormones like oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin," Cormier says.

When people aren't physically present to say goodbye and grieve with other mourners, they may be more likely to experience a sense of ambiguous loss, she adds. "With an ambiguous loss, it's very hard to get closure. There's often a lot of frustration and helplessness, because people feel disempowered," she says. "The question becomes, how can we construct new rituals to help us cope with death and dying for this situation that we're in right now? We're facing the question of needing to find some new way for honoring the dying process and also coping with our grief. And we might have to look to psychologists, along with faith leaders and others, to find those new mechanisms."

Prolonged grief disorder

Such difficult circumstances may increase the odds that a bereaved person will develop complicated grief, also known as prolonged grief disorder, says Neimeyer. Prolonged grief is an intense grief that is distinct from depression. The DSM-5 favors the term "persistent complex bereavement disorder," defined as prolonged grief lasting at least 12 months. A proposed addition to the forthcoming ICD-11 defines prolonged grief as lasting at least six months. Though those diagnostic criteria disagree on the timepoint at which grief becomes prolonged, they agree on the key feature of the condition: grief that endures and interferes with normal functioning. "It keeps going and going like the old Energizer bunny," Neimeyer says.

Prolonged grief is marked by persistent longing and sadness for the deceased, and a sense of disbelief or inability to accept the loss, as M. Katherine Shear, MD, at Columbia University, has described. Without treatment, prolonged grief increases the risk of substance use, sleep disorders, impaired immune functioning and suicidal thinking (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 372, No. 2, 2015).

Over the past decade, researchers have learned a lot about prolonged or complicated grief, Neimeyer says. Risk factors include social isolation, attachment insecurity, anxiety and experiencing a loss that is sudden and inexplicable. "The circumstances under which deaths are now occurring, with plenty of unresolved relational issues, represent a perfect storm for producing complicated grief," he says.

Depression and anxiety can coexist with prolonged grief, and pharmacological treatments can sometimes help address those co-occurring symptoms. But for prolonged grief disorder itself, psychotherapy is the gold standard. Shear, for instance, found that adding an antidepressant to her complicated grief treatment did not improve symptoms of prolonged grief (JAMA Psychiatry, Vol. 73, No. 7, 2016). "The core of complicated grief is unaffected by pharmacotherapies. The only evidence-based treatment is psychological," Neimeyer says.

Psychology can embrace its purpose

Even after the COVID-19 crisis has subsided, many people will continue to struggle with grief and trauma for some time, says Felix. "As things return to normal, most of us will also return to a kind of normal, albeit changed by going through this experience. But there is a subset of people who will be chronically disrupted and will need support," she says.

Psychologists may have to build their expertise on grief and trauma to meet that need, through continuing education in areas such as disaster mental health, psychological first aid and trauma-focused therapies, Felix adds. "When working with people who have experienced trauma, it's important to know your strengths and to know what you can and can't do."

Unfortunately, grief and loss are given cursory attention in many psychology training programs, Neimeyer says. "Few of us have any serious training for dealing with grief and loss. Deepening competencies around treating grief will need to be a priority of many psychologists for years to come."

But the field is up to the challenge, he adds. "One thing about crisis is that it can galvanize creativity and commitment," he says. "Psychology has a purpose and direction in this crisis that is quite clear. We can retreat from it, or we can embrace that moment."

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The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist retired from private practice who now focuses on grief training and mentoring.

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Bereavement in the Time of Coronavirus: Unprecedented Challenges Demand Novel Interventions

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Bereavement in the Time of Coronavirus: Unprecedented Challenges Demand Novel Interventions

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By Jillian Kramer Oct. 6, 2020

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The pandemic is a new setback for women in academia who already faced obstacles on the path to advancing their research and careers.

Lisa Warner in her lab at Boise State University. Credit... Alex Hecht for The New York Times

Whatever big plans Lisa Warner had for the year, the pandemic scrambled them. It forced online the biochemistry classes she taught as an assistant professor at Boise State University in Idaho, and it temporarily shut down her laboratory. Her 4-year-old son's day care closed, and Dr. Warner felt her productivity wane. She feared for her chances of receiving tenure, the long-term job security that most early-career academics ardently pursue, by the 2024 deadline in her contract.

Around the same time, Maria Fernanda Escallón, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oregon and mother to a 3-year-old daughter, was working from a walk-in closet and occasionally a backyard shed to steal quiet moments away from the demands of caregiving. She was trying to write a book, one of many publications she feels she will need to secure tenure.

Late at night, she swapped horror stories of lost time and depleted research over email with other women faculty.

"I hope the administration realizes that anything they do now to alleviate this issue for caregivers will directly impact how the professoriate will look five to 10 years from now - how diverse it will be, and how many women will be in positions of power within academia," Dr. Escallón said.

The pandemic has laid bare gender inequities across the country, and women in academia have not been spared. The outbreak erupted during universities' spring terms, hastily forcing classes online and researchers out of their laboratories. Faculty with young or school-aged children - especially women - had to juggle teaching their students with overseeing their children's distance learning from home.

Many universities struggled to put meaningful policies in place to help faculty, especially caretakers and women. During the summer break ahead of this fall semester, administrators at some institutions, including the ones where Dr. Warner and Dr. Escallón teach, began to reassess and develop strategies that experts say are a palatable start to stymieing crises caused by Covid-19.

But the issues that women in academia are now facing are not new. Instead, they are more severe versions of longstanding gender gaps that already cause universities to hemorrhage female faculty, particularly women of color, and will require measures that go beyond institutional responses to the pandemic.

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Maria Fernanda Escallón at the University of Oregon said the decisions that administrators make now will affect who works as a professor years into the future. Credit... Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

Multiple studies have already shown that women have written significantly fewer papers than their male counterparts during the pandemic. Reports showed that at least one-third of working women in two-parent households exclusively provided child care after schools and day cares shuttered and babysitters quit or were let go because of Covid-19. Years of research have proven that female faculty struggle to balance work and family, often causing them to exit academia - or what experts refer to as " leaking from the academic pipeline." Anecdotal reports and Twitter outcries highlighted female faculty suffering from reduced productivity, which could affect their ability to get tenure.

At the same time, the country was reckoning with its history of racial injustice, placing an added burden on women of color in academia. They were faced not only with the pandemic's fallout - which has disproportionately affected and killed Black and Latino Americans - but also the "emotional, physical and social ramifications" of police violence and unrest, said Michelle Cardel, a nutrition scientist at the University of Florida who has studied how the pandemic affects early-career women scientists. She pointed out that faculty of color often provide support and mentorship in such circumstances.

Some women faced harsher student evaluations during the outbreaks, too. Research shows that gender bias is rampant in end-of-term evaluations, with women and people of color more likely than men to get comments related to "their appearance or the tone of their voice - things that are less closely related to the ability to successfully teach," said Jenna Stearns, an economist at the University of California, Davis.

Women are more likely to provide child care and step into caretaking roles than men. Because of that, experts have warned that evaluations might be more critical of women during lockdown.

Faced with these situations, universities have had mixed records in their attempts to alleviate the burdens of faculty and caretakers. Joya Misra, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies gender-related faculty inequities, said that at some institutions, "there's not a thoughtful recognition of what is actually happening" to female faculty and how the pandemic has made existing problems more severe.

This summer, for example, Florida State University alarmed and upset employees when it announced that they were not allowed to care for children while working remotely. (The university has since amended its stance.) At the University of Michigan, unionized graduate instructors went on strike when the administration would not agree to a list of demands that included flexible subsidies for parents. It later established a temporary expansion of an existing child care subsidy.

But other universities have moved to address the issues more directly, instituting policies meant to help faculty achieve tenure and prevent women and caretakers from suffering short-term academic losses.

Like many women, Dr. Warner wrestled with the decision of whether to apply for a tenure extension, worrying it might be held against her. Credit... Alex Hecht for The New York Times

Tenure - an indefinite appointment that comes with a raise - is usually achieved based on a combination of research, coursework and service, with the heaviest weight placed on research. As recently as spring 2019, women accounted for 40 percent of all tenured faculty in American universities; and women of color accounted for around 11 percent of all full-time faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the fall of 2018.

An interruption to research can hamper an early-career academic's ability to gain tenure. And the coronavirus crisis is causing such delays for many faculty.

Most universities provide gender-neutral tenure clock extensions, which prolong the time a professor has to apply for tenure by one year. Back at Boise State, Dr. Warner was contemplating seeking such an extension. But the application was arduous, and she was mired in an endless to-do list of child-care duties, online coursework and one-on-one time with students.

She also worried about the implications of asking for an extension: What if,she feared, her decision was later held against her - framed as a woman, a mother, who couldn't keep up?Some research bears out her concerns, showing those policies traditionally don't benefit men and women equally.

The university's interim provost, Tony Roark, heard rumblings that some faculty, like Dr. Warner, were hesitant to tap into the institution's extension policy for "fear of being perceived as unwilling to step up or incapable of adapting to the circumstances," he said. So, the university allowed faculty to opt in to a guaranteed extension, no questions asked.

Dr. Warner requested and received her one-year tenure extension in June. Twenty other faculty members, including eight women, have opted into the policy, too.

Boise State also allowed faculty to ask for their spring 2020 student evaluations to be expunged, as they might have been influenced by the pandemic's disruptions to classes.

And instructors at the university won't have to worry about subtle gender slights in future evaluations, such as comments about mothers bouncing crying babies during online classes. Dr. Roark said the university has completed a policy that was in the works pre-pandemic: Faculty can now request the removal of portions of student evaluations that evince such bias. At least three professors have taken advantage of the policy, he said.

At the University of Oregon, some new policies initially gave Dr. Escallón a sense of relief. The administration conducted a survey to better understand the toll of Covid-19 on caregivers and faculty of color, pushed most of its classes online and offered its own automatic optional tenure clock extension.

But as time went on, she worried the university's solutions didn't address additional problems she and other caregivers were experiencing.

Dr. Escallón co-wrote a letter to the university's administration in June, requesting additional action: repurposing funds to support caretakers; waiving all nonessential service, such as serving on committees and administrative duties; suspending standards for research productivity; and giving teaching relief to faculty with the heaviest caretaking loads.

So far, the university has taken some additional steps. It rolled out an Employee COVID-19 Relief Fund for all workers, funded by donations (which falls short of the letter's request for reallocating unused funds to caregivers). And in September, it introduced two online networks where employees in need of caregiving and support can connect with one another or find others providing babysitting, tutoring or elder care.

Dr. Escallón said she is encouraged that the administration has been responsive, but she also remains on the lookout for additional policies more targeted to ensure that women don't lag behind their male peers.

Dr. Escallón in her home office in Eugene, Ore. She swapped horror stories with other women at the university about lost time and depleted research while juggling caregiving at home. Credit... Moriah Ratner for The New York Times

At Boise State, Dr. Roark said administrators will be planning for two calendar years of "disruption and recalibrating expectations." They will also be fortifying existing policies and creating new ones to face up to the reality that women on the faculty need longer-term support.

"It's really just been brought into stark, stark relief during the pandemic," he said, "but those needs will remain, even when they are less intense."

When universities moved classes online, one of the reasons that women were hit hardest is that they have higher teaching loads and also take on more academic service roles than men.

Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said teaching and service are often stereotyped within universities as more feminine than research.

"Caregiving and femininity are closely linked in U.S. society - seen as an inherent or natural feminine trait rather than a skill that is acquired," she said. "This means that women are more likely to be asked to do this work, and may be more likely to agree or volunteer to fill these roles."

Women are also more likely to mentor students, who "disproportionately come to women for advice," said Maike Philipsen, a sociologist at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on faculty work-life balance.

And during the strains of Covid-19 and lockdown, students are likely more stressed out than usual, something Dr. Warner said she observed as she "spent a lot of one-on-one time with students that I wouldn't necessarily have spent with them in non-pandemic times."

As universities struggle to retain students and push resources toward online teaching, experts say it's important to change the benchmarks of success to move away from research and to recognize teaching and service work as more valuable criteria for tenure, promotion and salary increases.

"Not only is the pandemic not going anywhere, but work-life integration was the barrier for women's success even before Covid-19," Dr. Philipsen said. "And if there ever is an era of after Covid-19, work-life integration will continue to be a barrier to women's success unless we begin transformative change."

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The Virus Moved Female Faculty to the Brink. Will Universities Help?

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The pandemic is a new setback for women in academia who already faced obstacles on the path to advancing their research and careers. Whatever big plans Lisa Warner had for the year, the pandemic scrambled them. It forced online the biochemistry classes she taught as an assistant professor at Boise State University in Idaho, and it temporarily shut down her laboratory.

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MORRA AARONS-MELE: I'm Morra Aarons-Mele and this is The Anxious Achiever. We look at stories from business leaders, who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up and how they hope workplaces can change.

When I read an interview with today's guest in Anne Helen Peterson's excellent newsletter, Culture Study, I just could not stop thinking about it. I told everyone I knew, I shared it on social media, but I simply felt I had to reach out to the article's author, Jessica Calarco, and try to bring a conversation with her to you because her work is so important, especially right now. Jessica McCrory Calarco is Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University, and she's the author of two books, A Field Guide To Grad School: Uncovering The Hidden Curriculum, and Negotiating Opportunities: How The Middle Class Secures Advantages In Schools. Her research examines inequalities in education and family life. And she is the mother of two young children. Like me, she did her undergraduate education at Brown University. Although unlike me, she graduated Magna cum laude with many honors. My conversation with Jessica Calarco.

Welcome Jessica.

JESSICA CALARCO: Thank you for having me.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: So I want to dive right in. One of the recent studies that you worked on is called Let's Not Pretend It's Fun, which personally, on a lighter note I loved because I just thought it was so true. We're supposed to love parenting, especially younger children, and it's supposed to be the most joyous time. And oftentimes it's not. And data, even pre-pandemic data, bear that out. So thank you for being honest, even in your title of your paper.

JESSICA CALARCO: Yeah. And certainly that's something that's been true for me as well. I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old and at the very beginning of the pandemic, my very well-meaning extended family members, grandparents would send us things and say, "Oh, here's some fun craft activities to do with the kids and here's all these goods." And at the time it just felt overwhelming. Like now I have to try to find time to do fun craft activities with my kids on top of getting them to do online learning and trying to get my own work done, sort of this pressure to appreciate the extra time with kids. I think it speaks to the larger pressures that women, especially, and mothers, especially, face to be these perfect parents and these sort of intensive mothering norms, and then how completely untenable those are in the wake of the pandemic and the way that it has just completely disrupted a normal life.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Yeah. And I have to admit when people make those suggestions or even if you see it on the internet, I mean, I feel a mix of both sort of rage and anxiety. Rage at the fact that like, "Oh my gosh, aren't I doing enough?" And anxiety in that my children are going to suffer because I'm not doing craft time with them. How do you feel?

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. I mean, I think certainly for myself too, that mix of fear-and-anxiety-plus-rage. And I think that there has seemed to have been a shift. And certainly the moms that we talked to at the beginning of the pandemic, it was so much about feelings of failure and feelings of anxiety, about how would this pandemic impact their kids, would this affect their development because they were spending too much time watching television or on their iPads, worries about kids not getting enough social interaction or not getting the academic preparation that they needed. And I think over time, I mean, certainly the moms that we talked to were blaming themselves and feeling like failures as workers and as mothers and just struggling under the weight of this extra time.

Over time though, it seems like some of that sort of internalized frustration and anxiety has started to turn outward. And I'm a little bit hopeful in the sense that I think that this is a moment for collective rage and that it's really only through that sort of externalized collective rage that we have the potential to change anything. If moms are just sitting at home, blaming themselves, feeling like failures, it's very hard to change anything. But if we're able to turn that into rage and into recognizing the larger structural forces that are pushing us into these problems, then I think we have a much better chance of actually changing the systems that were in place pre pandemic, and that have made things so difficult for mothers during the pandemic as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: What is your research showing about the impact on mothers' mental health, especially mothers who work outside the home in this pandemic?

JESSICA CALARCO: Sure. So that paper that you mentioned, Let's Not Pretend It's Fun. We were surveying and interviewing mothers in April and May asking them about their experiences during the pandemic, asking about the kinds of challenges that they've faced. And certainly we found overall that across the board, many of the moms that we talked to were reporting increased stress, increased anxiety, and increased frustrations with their kids during the pandemic. We also found though that those mental health symptoms are especially common among mothers who are spending more time with their kids. And most of those mothers are moms whose child care has been disrupted and who are now working from home.

And so those moms in particular seem to be reporting extremely high levels of... 80% of those who have greatly increased their time with their children report that they're now experiencing more stress than pre-pandemic. 72% reported more anxiety than pre-pandemic and 56% reported also more frustrations with their kids, if they were experiencing this sort of substantially increased time. And so it tells us that really that extra time, as much as for some mothers - especially for moms who had still had access to childcare, were in some cases enjoying that extra time with their kids and having the time to do those Pinterest craft activities - but the moms who were trying to provide full-time childcare while also being full-time workers just felt the weight of that time in such a burdensome way.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: And you also found that increased time with their kids may have been particularly hard for moms engaging in what you call "intensive work" and what others might call "trying to conform to the ideal worker norm," that you are a professional superstar. So why would mothers who engage in intensive work feel more stress and anxiety?

JESSICA CALARCO: So we live in this highly capitalistic society where workers, especially professional workers, are told that their value as workers and even as people is dependent on sort of their contributions to their job or their commitment to their job. And so there's long decades of research showing this, this push toward overwork, especially in sort of professional and elite occupations, with sort of this pressure to devote as much time as possible and as much attention as possible to your job. And that requires often more than 40 hours a week of work. It requires being on call constantly, being willing to go above and beyond what you're actually paid to do in your job in many cases. And even pre-pandemic research has shown that those kinds of intensive worker norms are challenging for working parents especially for working mothers. And this comes from the fact that women don't just face intensive worker norms, but also intensive motherhood norms.

This idea that women should be fully devoted to their children, should sacrifice anything for their children, any of their own needs or wants or desires for their children's wellbeing. And so those two norms come into direct conflict and you have these two norms that are telling mothers that they should be these ideal workers, and then they should also be these ideal parents. And you only have one person and especially when you're trying to do all that.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: You can't win. You just can't win.

JESSICA CALARCO: Exactly, exactly. And especially if you're trying to do all those things from home at the same time. The ability to simultaneously be the ideal worker and the ideal mother, it's just almost impossible.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: One of the themes that you really pulled out, which I thought was so interesting was mothers' sense of failure in all of this, that mothers very personally felt like failure. And of course, that creates anxiety. What does failure feel like for the women that you've studied and interviewed?

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. So talking to these moms about their experiences during the pandemic, they said, like, where's the time going? Like I feel like I'm failing as a parent. I'm not giving the time to my kids, but I also feel like I'm failing at work and I'm not getting the work done. And just feeling like the time is disappearing. And then at the same time, feeling this pressure to enjoy that time at home. And they just felt like I'm not accomplishing anything and I'm not actually even doing a decent job of any of the jobs that I'm supposed to be doing right now. And that feeling of sort of losing time and that feeling of sort of not getting anything done, and that feeling of not being able to provide even the basic level of parenting or the basic level of work that they're expected to be able to provide, just left these mothers feeling in many cases, so shattered. And turning to food, turning to alcohol, turning to... and in some cases, turning to friends and text messages and funny memes as a way to cope with it.

But in some cases, somewhat more difficult coping behaviors as well. And behaviors that we know are symptomatic of mental health struggles.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Do you think if you interviewed these women's employers, their employers would report that the mothers aren't doing as good a job or the kids 20 years from now would say, "Oh, my mom was really a lousy parent during that pandemic?"

JESSICA CALARCO: I would bet, to speak to that, the second part first, I think that I think the kids know that their parents are stressed, and certainly my kids know that I'm stressed.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Oh yeah.

JESSICA CALARCO: And I think that they pick up on our moods and our temperaments and there's good research to show that as well, that kids do recognize when their parents are facing difficult times. I don't necessarily think that they would say that their parents are bad parents, but I think that they can definitely tell that something is wrong. And I think that that can also create a challenging cycle within families, where the more stressed out the parents are, the more stressed out the kids can be as well. And that can then make it even more difficult for everyone to cope.

In terms of employers, I suspect that a lot of these moms are actually doing a better job hiding their struggles than the struggles that they actually feel. And so I'm curious to know whether employers are as aware of the challenges that women are facing right now, especially because women may feel reluctant to acknowledge to their employers how difficult the situation is. Certainly some of the moms that we talked to are planning to leave the workforce or take time off. And in that case, employers may be aware, but those who want to keep their jobs or have to keep their jobs because they don't have any other option, I suspect that many of them are hiding the challenges that they're facing.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: And just getting up at 5:00 AM to get the work done and fit it in as they can.

JESSICA CALARCO: Exactly. And that's one of the reasons that I worry a little bit about seeing flexible workplace policies as the only solution right now, because so many of the moms are trying to do in order to be able to provide full-time care for their kids and get their work done. When they have workplace flexibility in place, it often does mean that they're extending their own days, getting up at 5:00 AM or staying up until midnight to get their work done and not getting enough sleep as a result of it. And then waking up more tired and more stressed and less able to do their work the next day as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: You also talked about self-blaming, which I think is probably a sister to feeling like a failure. Do you think that the self-blaming is sort of new to the pandemic or it's sort of been drawn out? Talk about what women told you about blaming themselves in all aspects of their lives and do they feel responsible for fixing things?

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. And there's a terrific book called Making Motherhood Work by sociologist Caitlyn Collins. And she did interviews pre-pandemic with mothers in four different countries. And the US was one of them and the other countries had much more developed, robust sort of social welfare programs and safety nets for families. And what she found was that the highly individualistic culture in the US pushed women to blame themselves for the challenges of navigating or combining paid work with parenthood in a way that she didn't see among mothers in other countries. That there was sort of this distinct difference in the way that US women and US mothers blamed themselves for facing challenges and being able to be a full-time paid worker and also a full-time parent. And so I think kind of extrapolating to the pandemic context, this kind of self-blame for mothers in the US, it's certainly not new, and it's not surprising given that sort of culture of individualism, this idea that people in the US should just sort of self-care their way through problems, as opposed to recognizing the deeper structural roots of many of the problems women face. Yeah.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: You even write, and this was actually a quote that I pulled out because as an author of self-help books, I was a little offended, but you also say that we, especially women and people from other systematically marginalized groups are taught to, "Self-help book our way out of structural problems. That only if only we could follow whatever path or plan our problems would go away." Like, why do you feel that way? And what evidence do you have for that?

JESSICA CALARCO: Sure. I mean, I think there are certainly individual solutions that can help people in terms of putting in place kind of structural or kind of step-by-step plans that people can follow. They can be highly beneficial in terms of giving people a system to follow or a set of structures to put in place in their own lives. But my concern is that when we rely too heavily on those, we ignore the challenges that some people might face in being able to benefit from those solutions, if they don't have the resources in place to have the stability necessary, to follow a routine for example. The fewer resources that people have in place and the more uncertain their circumstances, the harder it is to develop routines, the harder it is to minimize stress and the harder it is to sort of navigate through changes in your life.

And so I think my concern isn't that those programs never work out or that self-help books are not helpful for anyone. Certainly, they help many, many people. But I think if we push those as the universal solution, that it ignores the challenges faced by folks who... and especially by people from systematically marginalized groups and including women who might not have the kinds of structures and contexts in place that are needed to be able to benefit from those kinds of plans or programs.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: So it's almost like these mothers and many of us are facing two kinds of anxiety. I mean, we're facing this global anxiety of what will next week look like? Will my kid have school in January? The big things that we absolutely have no control over. And then this internally created anxiety of "I'm a bad mother, I'm a bad partner, I'm so angry all the time, my boss hates me, I'm not doing anything right." Which creates a totally different kind of anxiety.

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. And I think that it is important to stress, too, that the health-related anxieties... and that's something we look at in some of our other research is sort of how those concerns about the pandemic itself are a source of anxiety for many mothers, especially if they have partners who are not supporting them in those anxieties and who, in some cases, even gaslight mothers and deny the seriousness of the pandemic. That then creates a whole other sort of set of frustrations and anxieties for many mothers as well. So we find, for example, one of the women that we talked to, she's an ICU nurse. And despite that fact, I mean, she has seen patients die from COVID-19. And despite that, her husband refuses to wear a mask, refuses to take the pandemic seriously, doesn't think it's a big deal and thinks society should be reopening as quickly as possible. And that the title of the paper that we talk about her in is called "My Husband Thinks I'm Crazy."

And that's a quote from her talking about how her husband sees her fears of the virus and her efforts to keep her family safe. Those couples are not the majority of couples, but there's a pretty substantial number of them at least in the mothers that we talked to, where mothers are taking the pandemic more seriously than fathers and their partners. And in those kinds of households, what that ends up meaning is that moms are not only in some cases questioning their own fears about the virus, but also having to be the ones, if they decide that they are confident in their fears, that they're then the ones who have to take the steps of protecting their families, of making sure that things are cleaned, of making sure they have enough protective equipment, of trying to nag their husbands into wearing masks or washing their hands even in some cases. And thinking about the extra burden that that then places on mothers on top of the other work that they're already doing with childcare and with their own paid work as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: I want to talk a little bit about norms and I want to talk about the systemic impact of sort of overwork and the drive to be the ideal worker and the ideal parent and the intensity of it all. And of course there are class and privilege implications in all of this. But one of the things that really why I wanted to talk to you so badly is that I think that a lot of us, especially white people, have woken up the past few years to the mental health impact of systemic bias on marginalized groups. And I've done episodes of this show where I've talked to experts on black mental health, for example, and who've talked about the years and years' impact and anxiety created just by being black in America. That just the existence of it can create strain and anxiety and depression.

But one of the things that your work touches on and that we're never taught to consider often are the structural and systemic forces that create anxiety in us because we feel this drive to work so hard and to meet norms that are created by patriarchy. Like did you have an "Aha!" moment about this or what led you to pursue that?

JESSICA CALARCO: That's a good question. I mean, I think, so as a sociologist, I mean, we're taught to think about the world, that there's this concept of the sociological imagination, and it's this idea that the people's lives are shaped by... C Wright Mills talks about it as history and biography, which is essentially about this idea that people's lives are shaped by their social position within society. And then also by the context, kind of the historical moment and physical space in time where they happen to operate and sort of the intersection between those two things. So who you are and where you are essentially is what determines your ability to make choices. It determines the level of power that you have in society, it determines which norms you're held to, and it determines your agency to some extent in making choices and pushing back against the larger structures that exist around you.

And so being trained as a sociologist, I think it's somewhat easier to see those larger structural forces, because that's what so much of the work that we do is focused not on looking at individual... Certainly we do our research often with individual people, but we try to see how those individual people represent the larger forces at play and how their lives are shaped by these larger forces at play, as opposed to just saying, "Did they make a bad choice here?" It's "How was their choice shaped by forces beyond their control?" So certainly I think coming into the pandemic with an understanding of those structural forces, of things like capitalism and patriarchy and white supremacy and how those forces operate in many cases to create the kinds of norms that we're held to. I mean, certainly we can think about how the ideal worker norms that we have in the US are created and maintained for the benefit of our capitalistic, patriarchal and white-dominated society in the sense that they push workers to work as hard as possible for as little pay as possible.

And who does that benefit? The people who own, and own shares of, corporations who are overwhelmingly affluent white men. And so we can think about how those interests, capitalistic interests, patriarchal interests, white supremacist interests have an interest in enforcing these kinds of norms that push us all to work as hard as possible. And so what that does... the whole idea of norms is that they enforce compliance and that they push us to continue behaving in ways that often benefit people who enforce those norms and especially people in power who've created and maintain those norms for their own benefit. And so it's easy to judge women or to judge workers who are following these norms to see them as sheep who are just sort of following what everyone else tells them to do.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Like, why are you answering emails at 5:00 a.m.? Why are you so overly responsive? It doesn't really matter if you reply within 30 minutes, that kind of stuff.

JESSICA CALARCO: Exactly. But essentially the way that norms work is, is that people who break norms are judged for doing so. And we're also taught to judge ourselves in the sense that we are taught to define that the whole way norms work is that they teach us to define our own selves and our own self-worth by whether or not we're complying and following the norms that we think everyone around us is following. We feel out of place. I mean, just like if you step into an elevator backwards, you feel awkward and that's kind of a very minor breach. And you can think about how on a much grander scale, if you feel like everyone else in your workplace is putting in 70 hours a week, and you feel like you're only putting in 35 because that's all you can possibly do, or even less than that, then you're going to feel out of place and awkward and like a failure. And that's where those feelings of failure come from. It's feeling like you're not living up to the standard that is set for everyone else who is like you.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: And that creates anxiety.

JESSICA CALARCO: Exactly. That kind of minor stress that gets amplified if day in and day out, you're not able to follow the norms that are set for you.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Who benefits from the overly-amazing-on-all-fronts mommy norm? Like our generation, I feel you're a bit younger than me, it really has the double whammy of having to be super attentive. Moms who cook and really nurture children while being ideal workers. But who benefits from us doing crafts with our kids? I mean, our kids might, I hope they do, but you know what I mean, from a societal perspective?

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. I think these ideal motherhood norms came out of two sets of forces and benefit two sets of forces. They really stemmed in large part from backlash against women's increased participation in the workforce. We saw sort of the height of women's workforce participation in the 1990s where we had sort of the highest rates of women's overall labor force participation that we've seen in US history. And that created and sparked what's often referred to as sort of the Mommy Wars, debates between working mothers and stay at home mothers over who was the better mother, whether it was better for their children, for mothers to be working or to be at home. And in the wake of that, mothers who were stay at home mothers really glorified the work that they were doing and said, no, like the work we are doing at home is valuable.

The work of taking care of children, of raising children is valuable and it's understandable why they would want to feel valued for the choices that they are making, and to amplify sort of the value that is put into doing educational activities with your kids and doing enrichment activities like craft projects with your kids. And certainly there is value in that for kids' relationships with their parents and kind of enrichment in their lives. But that also served those kinds of norms of pushing mothers to define good motherhood as spending all of this time with their children. Also arguably served capitalistic and patriarchal interests in the sense that if mothers feel like they have to put their children first, it's much harder for them to advance in their careers.

And so if you have women increasingly entering the workforce, if they have to then also be providing high levels of care for their children at home, it makes it more difficult for those mothers to compete with men for those top-level positions within corporations or within companies. And so it continues to give men a leg up in the workplace if women are still seen as too devoted to their children to be the ideal workers in the workplace. Exactly. And then even within individual families too, if women are the ones who are the default parent, then that gives men more power to be the primary breadwinners and to have more power that goes with that in the home as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: So if you're a listener and you think, "Well, okay, I get it, I get it. But I like my job. I want to be successful. I want to have money. I like feeling like a good mom and working out so that my body works a certain way, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm also ridden with anxiety right now. And I know it's not healthy." Is there like a baby step that you can take to sort of, I don't even know how to phrase it, almost like have a clear view of how you came to have this model of perfection, and what you could maybe do to loosen the rules. Does that make sense?

JESSICA CALARCO: Yeah. I mean, I think I'm reluctant to say that people should just be stepping back from these norms and that we should put that burden on people because there's so much power in norms and because there's so much risk involved in not meeting those norms, in terms of chastisement from friends or family members, or criticism from employers or coworkers or sanctions at work. I'm wary of the possibility of just telling people to step back.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Or actually, sorry, little stupid comments from family members about, "Wow, your kids are certainly watching a lot of TV."

JESSICA CALARCO: Exactly. And those comments are so harmful and it's hard to just brush them off because these are people that we care about and we are socialized to care about how other people think of us. And so it's really hard to just step back from the influence of these powerful norms in society. And so I think my hope is that people would recognize that they're not the only ones in this situation.

They're not the only ones who are feeling the pressure of these larger norms and to think about how they can potentially work together, especially if they are people with relative amounts of privilege or resources in our society and how they can band together with others to say, "Can we change the system? Can we change how many hours we're expected to work?" The official policies and the culture as a whole, and doing that collectively and making those decisions on a larger scale than just the individual has more potential to shift the norms, and also to shift the official policies that keep those norms in place and make it easier for individuals to then step back themselves once the rules are laxer as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: So what should someone listening, who's a boss, or an owner, or founder who has systemic power, what's something they could do?

JESSICA CALARCO: I mean, I think one key thing that every employer I would argue should be doing right now is finding ways to reduce, recognize and more adequately distribute workloads. This is something that a group of us at my university have been working on making recommendations to the administration on really simple things that would reduce the amount of work that has to get done. For us, for example, one of the things that we recommended was eliminating letters of recommendation for internal fellowships and grants. Faculty members that, at our university, spend a great deal of time writing letters of support for graduate students or for colleagues to get little pots of money, to do research or to get an award and that just takes up so much time. Wouldn't everyone's time be better served if we just checked a box saying, "Yes, we testify that this person has our support for this application."

And so those kinds of like simple reductions in workload have the potential to allow us to keep doing the core work of institutions while at the same time, reducing the oftentimes busy work that so many of us spend a lot of our time on. And then in terms of recognizing the work that gets done, we know that especially women and workers from other systematically marginalized groups, do a great deal of unpaid work, mentoring colleagues, serving on committees, coordinating events. And to the extent that we can compensate workers who do that often unpaid labor, or kind of make it officially part of someone's job title and hire more workers to do that work instead as a way to sort of recognize the work that's being done and equitably redistribute and compensate that extra work as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: I love that. I love that. You could almost even do sort of an audit of busy work in your organization. One of the things that I took a sort of, like... it was almost an experiment and it sounds silly, but I'm just going to throw it out there as every Wednesday, I'm with our pod and I'm supervising five kids' remote learning. And so I put an out of office on saying, "I'm teaching kids today. Sorry, I can't get back to you." And people really responded to it because it does break a norm. It breaks the norm that you can't reach me because I'm admitting that I am with kids trying to be a teacher today and I can't do both.

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. And I think especially if the higher-ups within organizations are willing to take those steps themselves, that that then sets a culture that says that it's more acceptable for other employees to do so as well. There's some interesting pre-pandemic research on paternity leave, showing that in organizations where CEOs and CFOs and other top level executives, when they are willing to take paternity leave themselves, other workers within the organization are more likely, other men within the organization are more likely to do so as well. Whereas if the workers at the top, if the owners and the managers at the top of the system say, "No, I'm too important to take paternity leave. My job is too important to take that time off," and other workers, that sets the norm for the organization as a whole and other men, even below them are less likely to take paternity leave as well. And so I think it shows the importance of people with power and resources within an organization, how much of a role they play in setting those norms for other workers within the organization to then follow.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: It's a model. Well, I want to try to end this on a little bit of a hopeful note, which is, do you think that the just epic and universally disruptive nature of this pandemic will do anything to help shift some of the ideal worker/ideal parent crippling norms for working mothers?

JESSICA CALARCO: I think it has the potential to. I think the rage that I've seen among women and among parents in the wake of this pandemic, if it turns into pressure, especially pressure on legislators and pressure on business leaders, it could lead to a large scale shift, a large scale shift toward more workplace flexibility, a large scale shift toward things like universal accessible, affordable childcare from birth through schooling. To even things like better funding for public education to make sure that mothers don't have to feel like they have to be constantly volunteering at school or donating money to keep schools going and keep the quality of education high even in normal times.

I think there's all sorts of ways that we could be putting pressure and channeling this frustration and rage into demanding action from employers and from our government to really provide the safety net and the social infrastructure that our country so desperately needs right now. And that would reduce our reliance on the unpaid work and the underpaid work of women and people of color who do the work of keeping our system running on a day-to-day basis during the pandemic and pre-pandemic as well.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Yes. And also I think would just really help alleviate the self-blame and the pressure that causes so much anxiety, depression, and mental health damage.

JESSICA CALARCO: Absolutely. And I think to the extent that we can recognize those larger structural forces and see the challenges that women and especially women of color are facing right now, not as a product of their lack of coping skills or of their inability to manage challenges, but rather as the direct product of our lack of investment as a society in women's wellbeing.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: Oh gosh. Well, amen to that. Thank you so much, Jessica.

JESSICA CALARCO: Thank you. It was great to chat with you.

MORRA AARONS-MELE: That's it for today's show. Thanks to my producer, Mary Looe, and thanks to Liz Sanchez for her help producing. Thanks to the team at HBR and the studio team who make the audio happen. I'm grateful to our guests for sharing their experiences and their truths, for you, our listeners and for our advertisers. Please send me feedback. You can email anxiousachiever@gmail.com or tweet me @morraam. And if you love the show, tell your friends or subscribe and leave a review.

From HBR presents, this is Morra Aarons-Mele.

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Anxiety, Depression, and Working Moms in a Pandemic

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MORRA AARONS-MELE: I'm Morra Aarons-Mele and this is The Anxious Achiever. We look at stories from business leaders, who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up and how they hope workplaces can change.

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Pro Tips for Life & Career Success in the Midst of a Pandemic

Listen as our expert guests, Kelly Graham, MD, MPH ( @KellyGrahamMD ) and Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd ( ), detail the professional and personal challenges faced by women in medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Credits

Produced by: Leah Witt MD & Shreya Trivedi MD

Written by: Molly Heublein MD, Isabel Valdez PA-C, Leah Witt MD & Shreya Trivedi MD

Infographic & Cover Art: Edison Jyang

Hosts: Leah Witt MD & Shreya Trivedi MD, Justin Berk MD, MPH, MBA

Editor: Molly Heublein MD and Matthew Watto MD (written materials); Clair Morgan of nodderly.com

Guests: Kelly Graham, MD, MPH; Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd

Sponsor

We are excited to announce that the Curbsiders are now partnering with VCU Health Continuing Education to offer continuing education credits for physicians and other healthcare professionals. Check out curbsiders.vcuhealth.org for more information.

Time Stamps

2:04 Introduction and bio for Kelly Graham, MD, MPH

2:30 Introduction and bio for Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd

3:54 One-liner for Kelly Graham, MD, MPH

4:41 One-liner for Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd

5:12 Gender Awakening Moments

10:08 Advice to their younger selves

18:02 Case from Kashlak: Dr. Blackwell

20:10 Difficulty with lack of childcare while working

22:52 Hippocratic Oath paradox

26:02 Physician, educator, researcher, household manager & zoom homeschool teacher

28:08 Motherhood penalty-fatherhood bonus

35:10 Two Pandemics, One Response

36:25 Breadwinner-homemaker bias

39:34 Impact of pandemic on women physician productivity

39:58 Female physician burnout

55:35 Suggestions for addressing pandemic-related inequity

67:10 COVID contributions on CV

68:50 Take home points and Outro

Women in Medicine: COVID Edition Pearls

1. The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating gender inequities (e.g. caregiving responsibilities, manels, differences in publication rates, and burnout)

2. The keys for success in these challenging times are: institutional support, flexibility in your schedule, and gender equity at home.

3. In responding to work challenges during the pandemic, institutions should listen to employees about challenges that they have faced and brainstorm around the key pain points such as child care for essential front-line workers.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a double double shift for women and exacerbating gender inequity.

The silence is deafening: caring for our families while caring for our patients

Dr. Graham: Caring for children at home while also working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic is exceedingly difficult. There is little national dialogue around this challenge- there has been silence regarding the practicalities of being an essential worker while having unreliable and difficult-to-find childcare.

The Hippocratic Oath neglects any call to protect the families of health care providers (we need a rewrite with the perspectives of women physicians!). In order to do our best, we need support in caring for our own families.
"If we had been there writing it, we would have said something about the fact that we need to take care of each other and our families so that we can go and do this high-risk work."
Physician, educator, researcher, household manager & zoom homeschool teacher

Dr. Santhosh: Let go of mom-guilt! Women overwhelmingly bear the burden of caregiving for relatives/children/partners with illnesses, and carry many additional roles beyond clinician, researcher, teacher. In addition, women are often household managers, childcare coordinators, and now home-school teachers ( Caregiving in the US ). This creates a significant mental load (emotional labor).

Emotional labor = invisible cognitive decisions that women mentally juggle at all times such as the microtasks of maintaining a home and family. (Dr. Graham's example- it's the fact that she knows exactly when her children's socks need to be replaced).

Dr. Graham: Name the labor! Writing down mental load tasks and sharing these with your partner can help name your workload and perhaps you can work toward a re-distribution. Look into by Eve Rodsky to use on your next date night.

Partners: Women disproportionately shoulder the burden of organizing the household. Motherhood penalty, fatherhood bonus: Women often suffer a loss of pay after childbirth, while men often experience a "halo effect" and a subsequent pay raise ( , EconLife 2018 )

Patients: Women are disproportionately in the clinician-educator roles in academic medicine ( Science 2014 ). The clinical burden of the pandemic is falling on this exact group and women are being asked to care for more patients, and in some locations taking pay cuts and losing jobs.

Panels: In the COVID-19 crisis, the ("expert" panels of mostly senior, often Caucasian, and all-male faculty members) has had a resurgence, as leaders may be relying on old models of expertise. The cure? Think of all who would be qualified to speak and would create a diverse group, then ask who would appreciate the opportunity to participate. Manels prominently highlight men as experts, and neglect the significant work women are often doing "behind the scenes".

The Exacerbation of Inequity During COVID-19

Two pandemics, one response ( ): The additional pandemics of structural racism and gender bias are centuries old. The COVID-19 crisis highlights these inequities- minorities suffer more from the economic and health consequences of this pandemic ( Price-Haywood et al. NEJM 2020 ). Women bear much more of the caregiving responsibility (and economic consequences) of changing work and school schedules ( ).

Breadwinner- homemaker bias: Most of the structures that we operate in our society come with an implicit bias that there is someone managing the home full-time while someone is at work full-time (this framework is outdated, inequitable and not even economically sustainable in most cities). You won't be able to unsee this bias once you've seen it: it's why the school day ends at 2:50pm and the national conversation centers on people returning to work without a conversation about schools or daycare reopening ( ). Because of this bias, the childcare structure in the US was never designed to give women a successful launch into the workplace, and this pandemic is uncovering the very thin margins of this structure.

Publication bias during the pandemic: Because of lack of childcare, even senior women scientists have had difficulty prioritizing academic productivity. This has resulted in fewer women first author publications during the pandemic than male first authors ( Andersen et al 2020 ). The research productivity of early-career women has been affected in particular.

Female physician burnout: Women are more likely to experience burnout and suicidality ( Schernhammer et al 2004 , Templeton et al 2019 ).. This is a particular risk for women with intersectional identities, at risk of experiencing the minority tax. We are enough! Take time for self care.

Minority Tax: physicians and scientists burdened by bias (e.g. people of color and women) are being pulled into institutional initiatives to run town halls, write policies around inclusivity, and come up with solutions to the very problems that disproportionately impact them ( Nature 2020 ). Assuming women and people of color should be the face of an institution's efforts further exacerbates burnout. Call to action: institutions should take a proactive instead of reactionary approach, and consider the tax on people being asked to serve in these initiatives. Don't assume when making decisions for other people and ask people what works for them.

Are there any silver linings to the change in work during the pandemic?

Quarantine has changed us - and it's not all bad (Vox 2020)

Dr. Graham: The pandemic has encouraged telehealth and video conferencing-these are essential for working parents because they reduce commute and allow flexibility for childcare. More broadly, Dr. Graham sees a few keys to success in medicine:

1. Flexibility: Control over your schedule is paramount

2. Institutional trust: value of your productivity rather than face time bias

3. Gender equity in the home: (particularly if you are in a heterosexual relationship-data shows homosexual relationships have more equity in home duties).

Dr. Santhosh: Another silver lining- be more clear and firm with boundaries: "no, I can't make that meeting on Friday, that is the day I am responsible to care for my children". During the pandemic, there is a shared acknowledgment that we are all in this together.

When the second wave comes, how can institutions (and society) do better?

Institutions should take a time-out and reflect with employees about what the challenges were, in order to problem solve together. This dialogue would help employees feel seen and treat the shame that can come from feeling invisible.

Hospitals could increase availability of emergency child care. For example, physicians are pooling resources to create nanny shares- perhaps this is something that employers/health systems could help with.

Health systems could consider how can we make our MAs/clinical staff work in a telehealth environment

Take homes:

Women bear the disproportionate caregiving burden, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated this inequality.

At a structural/institutional level, we should ask what people can or want to participate in rather than making assumptions.

Do what you love, follow your heart and make your decisions result in a career that brings you joy

The keys for success in medicine during these challenging times are: institutional support, flexibility in your schedule, and gender equity at home.

Links*

1. Dr. Santhosh's recently published McSweeney's piece: " THANKS FOR ASSUMING I'M NOT THE FACULTY AND THAT MY FACULTY IS MALE": TEXTS FROM FOUR WOMEN ICU PHYSICIANS ACROSS THE COUNTRY CARING FOR COVID PATIENTS "

2. Leah's pick of the week: Paint by Sticker book

3. Shreya's pick of the week: Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith A Different Kind of Leader podcast

4. Justin's pick of the week:

5. Kelly's pick of the week: When Grief and Crises Intersect: Perspectives of a Black Physician in the Time of Two Pandemics (Journal of Hospital Medicine) by Dr. Kimberly Manning, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast.

*The Curbsiders participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon. Simply put, if you click on our Amazon.com links and buy something we earn a (very) small commission, yet you don't pay any extra.

Goal

Discuss how the new challenges of COVID and working from home mean that women are often doing extra double duty

Learning objectives

After listening to this episode listeners will...

1. Discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the workload and productivity of women in medicine

2. Anticipate the long-term implications that this pandemic will have on gender inequity

3. Recognize areas where medicine may improve to promote gender equity when the second wave hits

Disclosures

Kelly Graham, MD, MPH and Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd report no relevant financial disclosures. The Curbsiders report no relevant financial disclosures.

Citation

Graham K, Santhosh L, Trivedi S, Berk J, Witt L, Valdez I, Heublein M, Watto MF. "#225 Women in Medicine: COVID Edition". The Curbsiders Internal Medicine Podcast. https://thecurbsiders.com/episode-list . Original air date: July 16, 2020.

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#225 Women in Medicine: COVID Edition - The Curbsiders

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Pro Tips for Life & Career Success in the Midst of a Pandemic Listen as our expert guests, Kelly Graham, MD, MPH (@KellyGrahamMD) and Lekshmi Santhosh, MD MAEd (@LekshmiMD), detail the professional and personal challenges faced by women in medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Episodes | Subscribe | Spotify | Swag!

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Unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women so disproportionately that many analysts are referring to the economic crisis as a " she-cession."

Since the pandemic began in February, women have been leaving the labor force in significantly greater numbers than men, according to several recent studies based on U.S. Census data. Working mothers are especially vulnerable; they're nearly three times more likely than men not to be working because of child care demands.

The numbers signal a disturbing downward trend in gender equality in the workplace, and many researchers are concerned about the long-term implications of women's employment.

"All women, but particularly working mothers, come under stress during normal times, and this pandemic has really put them under stress," said Janice Bellace, Wharton emeritus professor of legal studies and business ethics. "If they're not working, what does that mean, particularly now that we're starting a school year where there's virtual schooling? Well, that means they really are exiting the labor force."

Bellace spoke on the topic during a segment of the Wharton Business Daily radio show on SiriusXM (listen to the podcast at the top of this page). She said 30 years of academic research has shown that leaving the labor force to take care of children lowers a women's career earnings, retirement savings and chances for promotion.
Not Like 2008
This period is unlike the 2008 recession, sometimes called a "man-cession" because it heavily affected sectors that traditionally employ more men, including construction and financial services. Women are suffering more in this pandemic because they work in larger numbers than men in hospitality, retail and other types of service jobs that seldom offer health insurance or paid leave, often cannot be done remotely and which have been hard hit by lockdowns.

In addition, unemployment is even higher among minority women because they make up a majority of workers in the service sector, according to census data. Last week, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president Raphael Bostic said minorities and the poor will be left out of the economic recovery if the government doesn't take action, and the wealth gap will worsen.

"We already had the disparities, and the virus has driven a wedge into those gaps. In terms of health quality, in terms of jobs and attainment, in terms of savings and wealth," Bostic said.
A Juggling Act
Plenty of working moms are telecommuting during the pandemic, but they are also struggling because their kids are home all day, too.

"Overall, the pandemic appears to have produced a unique immediate juggling act for working mothers of school-age children," U.S. Census Bureau economist Misty Heggeness wrote in her aptly titled paper, " Why is Mommy so Stressed? "

Bellace joins a growing chorus of experts who said the situation requires policies that help support working mothers, so they aren't forced to choose between child care and work.

"I think, as soon as possible, there have to be some temporary and extraordinary measures to provide child care," she said. "Women who work have figured out what to do in the summertime when the schools are closed. They patch things together. Churches and various associations have summer camps. Maybe we need something like that now, where communities come together and can provide some stop-gap measure of child care so that women don't have to exit the labor force."

"I think, as soon as possible, there have to be some temporary and extraordinary measures to provide child care."

Bellace said many people don't realize that the number of women in the U.S. labor force has actually slipped in the last 15 years, largely because of child care concerns.

"And let's be blunt. Especially for single mothers, if one is in the lower-paid categories, child care is very expensive. People often think, 'It's better to stop working [because] my whole income is going to child care,'" she said. "As a country, we have not addressed what you do, particularly for children under 5, but even under 8. We don't have a national or statewide policy on that, and those strains are beginning to show."

Her recommendations are echoed by other experts, including the authors of a study published in the August edition of Socius who called for "strategic policy intervention" to address gender inequality during the pandemic and beyond.

"The pandemic will likely exacerbate inequalities between women and men in occupational attainment, lifetime earnings, and economic independence," they wrote. "As cases continue to climb, governments must weigh the gendered consequences of COVID-19 to develop policies to support women's, particularly mothers', employment."

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How the Pandemic Is Affecting Working Mothers - Knowledge@Wharton

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Unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women so disproportionately that many analysts are referring to the economic crisis as a " she-cession." Since the pandemic began in February, women have been leaving the labor force in significantly greater numbers than men, according to several recent studies based on U.S.

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Even before the pandemic, many female scientists felt unsupported in their fields. Now, some are hitting a breaking point.

Alisa Stephens, a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania. Scientists of color not only routinely encounter biases in the workplace, but also have had to cope with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on their communities. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges.

Dr. Stephens is a biostatistician at the University of Pennsylvania, and the technical and detail-oriented nature of her work requires long uninterrupted stretches of thought. Finding the time and mental space for that work with two young children at home proved to be an impossibility.

"That first month was really hard," she recalled of the lockdown. Her infant daughter's day care was closed, and her 5-year-old was at home instead of at school. With their nanny unable to come to the house, Dr. Stephens tended to her children all day and worked late into the evening. In the fall, when her daughter was set to begin kindergarten, the schools did not reopen.

Things eased once the family could safely bring in a nanny, but there was still little time for the deep thought Dr. Stephens had relied on each morning for her work. Over time, she has adjusted her expectations of herself.

"Maybe I'm at 80 percent as opposed to 100 percent, but I can get things done at 80 percent to some extent," she said. "It's not great, it's not my best, but it's enough for now."

Dr. Stephens is in good company. Several studies have found that women have published fewer papers, led fewer clinical trials and received less recognition for their expertise during the pandemic.

Add to that the emotional upheaval and stress of the pandemic, the protests over structural racism, worry about children's mental health and education, and the lack of time to think or work, and an already unsustainable situation becomes unbearable.

"The confluence of all of these factors creates this perfect storm. People are at their breaking point," said Michelle Cardel, an obesity researcher at the University of Florida. "My big fear is that we are going to have a secondary epidemic of loss, particularly of early career women in STEM."

Female scientists were struggling even before the pandemic. It was not unusual for them to hear that women were not as smart as men, or that a woman who was successful must have received a handout along the way, said Daniela Witten, a biostatistician at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some things are changing, she said, but only with great effort, and at a glacial pace.

The career ladder is particularly steep for mothers. Even during maternity leave, they are expected to keep up with lab work, teaching requirements, publications and mentoring of graduate students. When they return to work, most do not have affordable child care.

Women in academia often have little recourse when confronted with discrimination. Their institutions sometimes lack the human resources structures common in the business world.

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Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University. "The older I get, the more of a window I have onto how this profession really works," she said. Credit... Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

The path is even rockier for scientists of color, like Dr. Stephens, who encounter other biases in the workplace - in everyday reactions, professional reviews or promotions - and now have to cope with the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Latino communities.

Dr. Stephens said a close friend, also a Black scientist, had five family members who contracted Covid-19.

The year has been a "pause" for everyone, Dr. Stephens added, and universities should find a way to help scientists when the pandemic ends - perhaps by adding an extra year to the time allotted to them to earn tenure.

Others said while extra time for tenure may help, it will be far from enough.

"It's sort of like if you're drowning, and the university tells you, 'Don't worry if it takes you an extra year to get back to shore,'" Dr. Witten said. "It's like, 'Hey, that's not helpful. I need a flotation device.'"

Compounding the frustration are the outdated notions about how to help women in science. But social media has allowed women to share some of those concerns and find allies to organize and call out injustice when they see it, said Jessica Hamerman, an immunologist at the Benaroya Research Institute in Seattle. "People are just much less likely to sit quietly, and listen to biased statements that affect them."

In November, for example, a controversial study on female scientists was published in the influential journal Nature Communications, suggesting that having female mentors would hinder the career of young scientists and recommending that the young women instead seek out men to help them.

The response was intense and unforgiving.

Hundreds of scientists, male and female, renounced the paper's flawed methods and conclusions, saying it reinforced outdated stereotypes and neglected to take structural biases in academia into account.

"The advice from the paper was basically similar to advice your grandmother may have given you 50 years ago: Get yourself a man who will take care of you, and all will be fine," Dr. Cardel said.

Nearly 7,600 scientists signed a petition calling on the journal to retract the paper - which it did on Dec. 21.

The study arrived at a time when many female scientists were already worried about the pandemic's effect on their careers, and already on edge and angry with a system that offered them little support.

"It's been an incredibly difficult time to be a woman in science," said Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. "We're already on the ground, we're already on our knees - and then the paper just comes and kicks us to say: 'We have the solution, let's move the graduate students to a senior man.'"

Some people on Twitter suggested that the Nature Communications paper had been retracted because a "feminist mob" had demanded it, but in fact the paper was "a dumpster fire of data," Dr. Vosshall said.

The study was based on flawed assumptions and statistical analysis, according to several statisticians. (The authors of the paper declined to comment.)

Dr. Vosshall said she felt compelled to push back because the paper was "dangerous." Department chairs and deans of medical schools would have used the research to steer graduate students toward male mentors and roll back any progress toward making science more equitable, she said: "The older I get, the more of a window I have onto how this profession really works."

She has applied some of her wisdom to invoke change at Rockefeller University, one of the oldest research institutions in the country.

A couple of years ago, Rockefeller University invited the news anchor Rachel Maddow to present a prestigious prize. On her way into the auditorium, Ms. Maddow pointed to a wall adorned with pictures of Lasker Award and Nobel Prize winners - all male - affiliated with the university. At least four women at the university had also won prestigious prizes, but their photographs were not on display.

"What's up with the dude wall?" Ms. Maddow asked. And Dr. Vosshall, who had walked past the wall a thousand times, suddenly saw it differently. She realized it sent the wrong message, overtly or not, to all the high school, undergraduate and graduate students who routinely walked past it.

"Once you notice a dude wall, you see them everywhere," she said. "They're in every auditorium, every hallway, every departmental office, every conference room."

Rockefeller University eventually agreed to replace the display with one that is more representative of the institution's history. The pictures were taken down on Nov. 11, Dr. Vosshall announced on Twitter, and will be replaced by a more inclusive set.

Departments at Yale University and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston have also reconsidered their dude walls, Dr. Vosshall said. "There are some traditions that should not be perpetuated."

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Could the Pandemic Prompt an 'Epidemic of Loss' of Women in the Sciences?

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Even before the pandemic, many female scientists felt unsupported in their fields. Now, some are hitting a breaking point. Like many women during the pandemic, Alisa Stephens found working from home to be a series of wearying challenges.

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ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.

Stressed, exhausted, overwhelmed, guilty. These are some of the words that working moms in four countries use to describe themselves when talking to our guest today, Caitlyn Collins. She's a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of Making Motherhood Work.

For that book she interviewed 135 women who have children and jobs outside the home and asked them about their lives. Samantha, a lawyer in Washington, D.C. expressed a common sentiment among American mothers: "Before I had children the message was, you can do everything. I can't do everything. If I keep all the balls in the air I'm broken."

In Europe where parental benefits are much better, we think employed mothers are happier and Collins research supports that. But she also found that some were still frustrated by expectations that they be both ideal workers and perfect moms.

She wants to find solutions for these women, but not the self-help kind. As a sociologist, she's more interested in how policy and cultural change can help. Caitlyn, thanks so much for coming on the show.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Thanks for having me.

ALISON BEARD: So, it seems like working motherhood is a balancing act, sometimes a very stressful one, everywhere. But in looking at the four countries that you did - Germany, Italy, Sweden and the U.S. - what are some of the biggest differences that you saw?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Well, part of what struck me in doing these interviews with moms across these countries is that American moms stood apart for not only their stress and their worry, but they were the only women that I interviewed who didn't expect to have external supports from their employers, from their partners or from the federal government.

The women that I interviewed in Sweden and Germany and Italy, all expected to be supported from these other sources. I knew that these European countries had work family policy supports that were much more robust than we have here in the U.S., but the fact that it was American moms uniquely who blamed themselves for their own stress and thought it was their own job to resolve it, that struck me as really surprising, but also to be honest with you, really heartbreaking.

And women often in the U.S. would start crying during the interviews and I didn't expect this ahead of time. And the question that moms here tended to tear up unexpectedly over was when I asked them part way through our interviews, help me understand what it means to you, to be a good mother to your children.

And this often elicited eyes welling up with tears and women breaking down with us needing to stop and pause because these American moms so often felt like they were failing their children. That there was a really wide gap between their hopes for what it meant for them to be a good mom and what they were actually able to enact on a day to day basis.

What women want and expect for themselves depends a lot on their cultural context. And American moms heartbreakingly to me, they expect nothing in the way of support from their partners, from their employers, and certainly from the federal government. And even when I asked women, "do you think that the government could do anything to help support your work and family life better to make things less stressful?"

And women would look at me really blankly like this had never occurred to them before. And one mom stopped and paused for a while, looked up at the ceiling and said, "well, it would be really great if I could be home when my kids get home at the end of their school day, but that would be like turning around the Titanic."

ALISON BEARD: You make the point that societal and cultural values play such a big role in how we feel about how we're supposed to perform in the office and at home. How much of that emotion was driven by the mothers' own expectations for themselves versus society's expectations for them?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Well, as a sociologist I would argue you can't separate the two. The expectations that we hold for ourselves about anything in life - what it means to be a good partner, a good worker, a good parent, a good friend, a good daughter - all of these are really intimately linked to cultural ideals about what it means to be good at those roles.

So, in the U.S. we have this idea that what it means to be a good worker is to devote all of your time and all of your energy to the workplace with the hopes of demonstrating to your employers that you are fully committed and in allegiance with the goals of the workplace. And this tends to benefit men and disadvantage women in the workplace.

And again, without policy supports that help ameliorate the conflict that people who have non-work responsibilities such as family - without those policy supports what we find is an acute amount of work/family conflict and I think that that does breed the guilt and exhaustion and stress I was mentioning when American moms would break down during our conversations.

ALISON BEARD: So, many European countries are held up as sort of better places to be a working mom and Sweden is one in particular. And since you went there and interviewed women there, does it feel that way on the ground that it's just the best place you could possibly have children and have a job at the same time?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Yes, Alison. To be honest with you, yes. And everyone I know who has visited Sweden from an American perspective has said, "when can I move?" The issue at hand of course is that things look really ideal there, but it's not like we can just import the policies they have to the U.S. and expect things to kind of be this nirvana for working moms here.

So, part of what really struck me when I landed in Stockholm, just in general day to day life when you're riding the Metro, buying groceries, there are men everywhere with babies alone. No women in sight. And there's a joke amongst Swedes that Americans tend to get off the airplane, look around them in shock at all of the men pushing strollers or feeding babies, and ask, "why is it that so many men work as nannies here?"

And of course they aren't nannies. They're fathers. And to me the fact that Americans would assume that these are paid caregivers says everything we need to know about our cultural ideals about who should be taking care of kids. And in a Swedish context, the assumption is that men and women share both in breadwinning and caregiving equally. That is a cultural ideal that's supported through their federal policies and we lack that sort of cultural consensus here in the U.S.

ALISON BEARD: Has Sweden always been that way or did policies drive that cultural attitude?

CAITLYN COLLINS: So, their sort of feminist movement and awakening as it related to women in the labor force and all of this happened slightly before ours did here in the U.S. And so they're ahead of us as it relates to thinking through what it means to support families and what it means to try to encourage gender equality.

So for several decades now the country's labor policy and family policy has been deeply intertwined with gender equality policy. And so, I think what you're saying is absolutely right that these policies in some ways sort of led the charge toward cultural change that was more egalitarian. So, for example, their paid parental leave - it was the first country in the entire world, 1974 that passed paid parental leave - and the idea being that men and women would split this equally.

And what Sweden ended up doing was incentivizing men to take advantage of this parental leave by offering it at high wage replacement, which research shows is absolutely crucial for take up. So, it's one thing to have policies on the books and this is the case in many American work places, to offer work family benefits or polices is one thing, but to actually have workers feel comfortable and confident that they can take them without negative repercussions in the workplace is an entirely different matter.

And in the Swedish context by offering these policies and incentivizing men to take them, what we ended up seeing was enormous increases in uptake up parental leave amongst men. And today it has worked its way into cultural attitudes such that men and women would tell me that both parents have a right to spend time with their children.

And this discourse of rights is actually built into Swedish welfare policy. That children have a right to equal access to both of their parents and that both parents have a right to spend time with their children.

ALISON BEARD: And that's separating it from the idea of benefits too. It's some extra thing that I get. No, it's something that I deserve to have.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Exactly. And when there's a communal sense that the ability to spend time with your children is a right rather than a privilege, it really changes the cultural conversation.

And I think that's what we're missing here in the U.S. to be honest with you Alison. The idea that parents don't think that necessarily they should have the right to spend time with their children after they give birth, but we are seeing some really promising up swells of support for more work family policy support, particularly things like paid parental leave, not just FMLA. And also, universal Pre-K. I think we are developing a cultural consensus that it is in all of our collective best interest to raise children well.

And we know that having parents at home with kids when they're able, especially for the first six months to a year, is beneficial not only for parents, but for kids. And a wealth of research interestingly also shows that when paid parental leave is offered at moderate length, we see either neutral or positive impacts for businesses as it relates to profitability, turnover, worker morale and worker productivity.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. You did make the point though that there's one hurdle, in that you can change the policies, an organization can offer great benefits, a government can change its laws, but then people need to catch up. And what you saw in Germany between the East and West Germany was a good example of that, right? That the culture hadn't caught up to the policy.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Yes. So, Germany is a fascinating case and I really wanted to interview moms there in the two regions. So, I conducted interviews in Berlin, in former East Germany and in several cities across western Germany, because the country has this very interesting historical legacy as a result of the split between East Germany and West Germany for 40 years.

And when former East Germany at the time was - or the GDR - was a socialist welfare state, maternal employment was quasi-compulsory and they had universal childcare. So, it was completely expected that women had a child, stayed home for six or eight weeks and then went back to work fulltime, putting their kids in one of the state-run childcare facilities. And so, it was expected that mothers worked outside the home as well as did the vast majority of child rearing and housework at home.

In comparison, in western Germany, it was long in the case that mothers were expected to stay home for the first few years of a child's life before they entered daycare. And this was backed up again with their public policies. So, they offered up to three years of parental leave which was effectively maternity leave, because only moms took all this time off of work. And then daycare was only available starting at the age of three.

So, when you have a policy that says you've got up to three years at home and you can't put your kid in a childcare facility until age three, this is a pretty clear signal about what women quote unquote should be doing with their time in the first few years of their children's lives. And after reunification, this very traditional, what we call conservative welfare state model was imposed on former East Germany, where these cultural ideals had been much more gender egalitarian.

And what I found was that women in former East Germany told me that they didn't feel guilty at all for working outside the house and enrolling their children in daycare. I heard a lot of women in western Germany tell me they felt acute guilt for taking less than three years of leave and returning to work. Three years is a long time to be out of the professional workplace. Especially for white collar workers, highly educated workers.

And in fact, Germany, there's a word that working mothers in western Germany taught me that I'd never heard before to help explain this cultural stigma. Women would say to me, we have a word here in Germany. I don't think it exists in English. But when I return to work after a year instead of taking the quote unquote generous three years of leave available to me, I was called a "Rabenmutter." And a Rabenmutter in English would translate to raven mother. And a raven mother is a mom who selfishly flies away from the nest, abandoning her children to pursue a career.

And women in western Germany would tell me that stay at home moms especially and sometimes folks of older generations would call them Rabenmutter and say, "you're being selfish by returning to your job. Your job is to stay home in the next with your young ones and take care of them until it's the 'right age' for them to enter childcare." And so women felt enormous cultural stigma for returning to work and they felt like they were failing not only at home, but also in the workplace.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And if you have more than one child you're then expected to stay home for another three years?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Yes. Imagine that. So, it was often the case that women had more than one child. And again, the cultural expectation is that you stay home for three years with each of them. Six years out of the professional workplace is eons.

I interviewed moms who would say things to me like, "I stayed home and now that I'm back, I can tell my job success has been a sacrifice for my child. I'll be lucky if they let me sit in the cellar. I'm an old woman now. I'm more or less obsolete. The fact that they let me keep my job itself is wonderful because it was too long out of the workforce."

ALISON BEARD: So, how long does it take for culture to catch up to policy?

CAITLYN COLLINS: What a great question. I don't think there's an easy answer to this. In the past few years, starting in 2007, Germany looking at their skilled labor shortages and fertility rates that troubled lawmakers, the country as a whole decided to implement a series of policies that align much more closely with a Scandinavian welfare model that supports this dual earner/carer model of family life.

And to boost women's labor force participation, especially women who had children, and again, to increase fertility rates, Germany has implemented a series of policies that look much more Scandinavian. That three years of paid parental leave I mentioned - they've reduced it to one year. And a policy shift like that is really dramatic and it takes a while for culture to catch up.

ALISON BEARD: It's interesting though because it's sort of a chicken and egg thing.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Yes, very much so.

ALISON BEARD: You need the culture to change a bit before the policy can be changed.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Absolutely. And I think here in the U.S. we can see examples of this with all sorts - I was talking with my students about this in class yesterday, examples of when policies, social policies lead the way toward positive social change, or sometimes it's culture that's really leading the charge and policies take a long time to catch up.

ALISON BEARD: Given how slow it is to change laws, should organizations be taking a bigger stance than they already are in terms of providing parental benefits?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Well, I think that offering organizational level benefits is of course fantastic. It's better than nothing for workers. Putting the onus on workplaces itself is really problematic because first of all a lot of workplaces can't afford to offer paid benefits to their workers such as unlimited paid vacation and paid parental leave and things like this.

Usually only employers who are looking not only to recruit, but then also retain highly talented workers, tend to offer these benefits. And what that ends up creating is a workforce that's very widely stratified between workers who are usually highly educated, higher income, they can use their resources and their capital to leverage better benefits for themselves and these workplaces, compared to folks who are working at the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum who don't have those resources and capital to leverage.

So, if we saw a place like McDonald's starting to offer paid parental leave, that would be a sea change and that would offer benefits to employees who need them the most. Folks who are low income. And so, yes, I think it's great for organizations to be offering these policies. I think again, any support is better than none.

But I think the onus should be on the federal government to fund this through a national tax program rather than relying on individual employers to make the decision that's in the best interest, not only of their workers, but also for them as the business itself.

ALISON BEARD: I'm glad you made the point about different classes of workers because your interview subjects were mostly middle class, urban, professionals. So, their experiences is obviously very different than people working blue collar, or service industry jobs, yet even they, people with income at their disposal, presumably who work for employers who are more progressive. Even they were, I think your phrase was "drowning in stress," right?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Absolutely. And so, you're exactly right. I interviewed middle class working mothers for this study and we can think about these middle class moms as being sort of the proverbial "canaries in a coal mine."

If even these women who have adequate resources and capital and social networks to leverage in order to try and resolve their work/family conflict, if even they are drowning in stress, imagine what life is like for women at the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum who can't afford the same sorts of benefits as middle and upper class women can.

ALISON BEARD: And I think the idea that the messages that we often receive is that it's on us to negotiate for better benefits, to look for a better employer, to figure out coping strategies. So, it is hard to get beyond this individualistic notion that it's on us.

CAITLYN COLLINS: And I want to drive home the point that I don't at all think that it's surprising or unusual that women feel this way. I think it's 100 percent logical that American women would think it's on them to resolve their own work family conflict. Because it's the message that we constantly give families. Families in the U.S. are considered a private responsibility.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And as we work toward improving that situation, it opens a big opportunity for organizations to lead the way. So, what are some companies that you think are doing a great job in both supporting their own employees and agitating for broader change?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Well, I think, I can list a lot of companies that I think have policies that look great. I have heard far less about organizations that are agitating for a social change on a national level. So often the push for policy change is at the organizational level as you pointed out Alison.

And I think we can look to companies like for example, Deloitte. Many tech companies as well such as Netflix. The tech industry was one of the first sort of fields in which we started to see what looked sort of like a race to offer the most generous policies for their workers.

And again, I think we can understand this because we're in an era now where people want to live less harried, frantic, stressed, overwhelmed, work and family lives. People want greater balance between their work and family responsibilities these days and I think tech companies realize that offering things like unlimited vacation or lengthy paid parental leave, are highly desirable and could pull workers from other fields that they might pursue into tech and to keep them there.

So, yes, I think it's really fantastic that we see companies offering policies like these. What's really important to highlight is a need for these companies to offer these work family benefits to all their workers and not just their salaried ones.

Several companies in Silicon Valley came under fire through large public outcry when they offered these policies and made the front page of newspapers across the country, as a result of what looked like very generous work family benefits. But again, they offered these to folks who occupy the C-Suite and not to the janitors who are cleaning up the C-Suite after them.

ALISON BEARD: Do you have any advice for managers about how to make things better for the working moms on their teams? Or, the working dads for that matter?

CAITLYN COLLINS: Yes. Role model what it would mean to live a more sane work and family life. When you have policies on the books, managers are in the best position to again, role model taking advantage of and using these policies without remorse and regret. They occupy positions of power and can demonstrate to folks who are their subordinates that it is OK to use these policies. We encourage you to use these policies and there will not be consequences and stigma for you, for using them.

And it's again, incentivizing in some ways workers to take advantage of the policies that's going to matter. Because it doesn't matter how many wonderful policies you have in writing if people feel scared to take advantage of them.

So, a big problem in, for example, tech, the tech industry is an easy example to use since they make news headlines all the time as a result of this, but many of them are now offering quote unquote, unlimited paid vacation days. What we know, the research shows is that when you offer unlimited paid vacation days people actually end up taking less than they do when they're given a certain number. And so, some of these tech companies are now actually incentivizing workers to actually take advantage and use the days available to them. Which suggests again that this ideal worker model, that you show this 100 percent commitment to your workplace suggests that people will not take advantage of policies that help reconcile their work and family commitments, because they don't want to be seen as a bad worker.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So, you dedicated this book to your mom who was a corporate executive when you were young and then scaled back to being a consultant. How did her experience inform your work? You know she might have been stressed and very busy, but you turned out really well.

CAITLYN COLLINS: I think she was stressed and busy. My mom - I had a working mom, a single working mom for much of my childhood that did it all, or at least she strived to do it all. She had a very successful career in corporate sales and marketing. And what that often meant was sacrificing time at home.

And so, we had a, an absolute army of caregivers, babysitters, nannies, sports teams, clubs, neighbors, taking care of us until she could get home at the end of the day. She typically worked seven to seven in the office.

And I remember really being in awe of my mom growing up. Seeing her leave in these impeccably tailored suits and high heels, commanding these rooms full of men in suits, but she was stressed and she was frantic. And she tells me today anyway, that she constantly felt guilty and inadequate.

We ate a lot of pizza and McDonalds and she's told me that she felt acutely guilty for having served us those meals and I laughed when she admitted that to me as an adult because I remember thinking that I had the best mom ever. That I got the McDonalds and pizza all the time. I thought she was just rewarding us and she was like no. It's because I didn't have time to get to the grocery store. And I was like, well I just thought that made you an extra cool mom.

But again, growing up with this rally rock star mom who ended up sacrificing her career aspirations to dial back to a part time job, so she was effectively a stay-at-home mom - she did consult, but it had no benefits whatsoever and it paid infinitely less than her corporate sales and marketing job did. And watching my mom struggle through all this, I just grew up thinking to myself, there has got to be a better way.

ALISON BEARD: Well, thank you so much. It's been really informative. And it's obviously a subject dear to my own heart.

CAITLYN COLLINS: Well, I'm so glad that we had the conversation and I'm of course always feeling lucky myself that I get to engage with folks like you about it.

ALISON BEARD: That's Caitlyn Collins. She's an assistant sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of the book Making Motherhood Work.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager.

Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I'm Alison Beard.

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Why U.S. Working Moms Are So Stressed - And What To Do About It

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Caitlyn Collins, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted interviews with mothers in four countries - the United States, Italy, Germany, and Sweden - who have jobs outside the home to better understand the pressures they felt.

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Moms Are Not OK: COVID-19 and Maternal Mental Health

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Moms Are Not OK: COVID-19 and Maternal Mental Health

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Program for Pregnancy and Postpartum Health, Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, Women and Children's Health Research Institute, Alberta Diabetes Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Women and Children's Health Research Institute, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Introduction: Depression and anxiety affect one in seven women during the perinatal period, and are associated with increased risk of preterm delivery, reduced mother-infant bonding, and delays in cognitive/emotional development of the infant. With this survey we aimed to rapidly assess the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent physical distancing/isolation measures on the mental health and physical activity of pregnant and postpartum women.

Methods: Between April 14 and May 8, 2020, we recruited women who were pregnant or within the first year after delivery to participate in an online survey. This included questionnaires on self-reported levels of depression/depressive symptoms (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Survey; EPDS), anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; STAI-State), and physical activity. Current and pre-pandemic values were assessed for each.

Results: Of 900 eligible women, 520 (58%) were pregnant and 380 (42%) were in the first year after delivery. Sixty-four percent of women reported reduced physical activity with the onset of isolation measures, while 15% increased, and 21% had no change to their physical activity. An EPDS score >13 (indicative of depression) was self-identified in 15% of respondents pre-pandemic and in 40.7% currently (mean ± SD; 7.5 ± 4.9 vs. 11.2 ± 6.3, respectively; p < 0.01, moderate effect). Moderate to high anxiety (STAI-state score >40) was identified in 29% of women before the pandemic (mean STAI = 34.5 ± 11.4) vs. 72% of women currently (mean STAI = 48.1 ± 13.6; p < 0.01, large effect). However, women engaging in at least 150 min of moderate intensity physical activity (meeting current guidelines) during the pandemic had significantly lower scores for both anxiety and depression than those who did not ( p < 0.01, large and small effect, respectively).

Discussion: This rapid response survey identifies a substantial increase in the likelihood of maternal depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. This highlights the strong need for heightened assessment and treatment of maternal mental health. However, these data also suggest that physical activity, which has previously been shown to reduce depression and depressive symptoms in pregnancy, may be associated with better mental health during the pandemic.

Introduction

Since COVID-19 was first recognized in late 2019, the virus has rapidly spread throughout the world. In an effort to mitigate the devastating effects of this virus, varying levels of "stay at home" orders have been implemented in most countries around the world. This has resulted in the closure of schools, daycares, workplaces, and non-essential services. The impact of the physical (and social) isolation on mental health is anticipated to be high, and may disproportionately affect high risk populations.

Depression and anxiety affect one in seven women during the perinatal period, and are associated with increased risk of preterm delivery, reduced mother-infant bonding, and delays in cognitive/emotional development of the infant, which may persist into childhood ( 1- 4). Prevention and treatment is critical yet it is estimated that 50% of women who are depressed remain undiagnosed during and following pregnancy ( 5). A cross-sectional study of 100 pregnant women from Italy found a moderate-to-severe psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted the need for intervention to improve the mental health of this population ( 6). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic is anticipated to decrease access to diagnosis and psychological or pharmacological treatment; this is likely exacerbating poor mental health ( 7). Even in the absence of clinical depression or anxiety, identifying therapies to reduce sub-clinical symptoms is important.

Obstetrical guidelines around the world recommend that all pregnant women without contraindication be physically active throughout pregnancy ( 8- 11). This derives many health benefits including a 67% reduction in the odds of prenatal depression (odds ratio 0.33, 95% CI 0.21-0.53, I ² = 0%) ( 12), as well as postpartum depressive symptoms (standardized mean difference −0.34, 95% CI −0.50 to −0.19, I ² = 0%) ( 13). With this survey, we aimed to assess the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent physical distancing/isolation measures on the mental health and physical activity of pregnant and postpartum women.

Materials and Methods

This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and was approved by the Ethics Committee at the University of Alberta (University of Alberta ethics protocol PRO00099671). Between April 14-May 8, 2020, we recruited women who were pregnant or within the first year after delivery to participate in an online survey. The survey was posted online via social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram) and shared publicly to facilitate snowball sampling. Participants were informed of the purpose, risks, and benefits of the survey, were told they could withdraw from the survey at any time, for any reason, and provided electronic informed consent. Women answered questions on demographics including their year of birth, level of education, and personal health history. They responded to questions regarding symptoms, testing, and diagnosis of COVID-19, and current physical distancing/isolation measures including current work status. Participants completed validated standard questionnaires of self-reported levels of depression/depressive symptoms (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Survey; EPDS) and anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; STAI-State). Self-reported physical activity was also collected. All measured were assessed for both current and pre-pandemic values.

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is a self-reported screening questionnaire consisting of 10 questions which was initially used in the postnatal period; however, it is also commonly used during pregnancy ( 14). Clinical diagnosis of depression can only be determined by a trained health professional; however, a score of >13 on the EPDS is associated with a likely diagnosis of depression. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is a commonly used self-report questionnaire to screen for the presence and severity of state (i.e., right now) and trait (how prone a person is to anxiety) anxiety (used with permission) ( 15). The STAI consists of 40 questions with equal numbers assessing both the state and trait subscales. A score of 40 or higher has been identified as the threshold to identify clinically significant symptoms of anxiety ( 16).

Physical activity was self-reported in two ways. First, participants provided an overall assessment of their achievement of 150 min of moderate intensity physical activity each week (i.e., current recommendations for pregnant and postpartum women). Secondly, participants reported on physical activity during the week. Volume of physical activity was determined as per previously published methods ( 12, 17). The intensity of each activity was assigned a metabolic equivalents (METs) score using the Compendium, and multiplied by the frequency and duration of the activities ( 18).

All data were checked for accuracy, and invalid data were removed. Pre-pandemic versus current mental health and physical activity metrics were compared using paired t-tests or Kruskal-Wallis-H tests as appropriate according to the normality of their distribution. Effect size was determined using Cohen's d. Women were stratified based on physical activity pattern during the pandemic to assess its influence on mental health using ANOVA. Post-hoc comparisons were assessed using Dunns Method. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05 and analyzed using SigmaStat (Systat Software Inc., USA).

Results

Of 900 eligible women, 520 (58%) were pregnant and 380 (42%) were in the first year after delivery. One invalid record was removed. Participant's median age was 33 years (range 17-49 years; n = 862), 75.5% lived in cities ( n = 651), and 69% ( n = 595) lived in a single family home with an average of one child (range 0-5) living with them in the household. Most women were from North America ( n = 779), were Caucasian ( n = 736, Table 1), and had some postsecondary education ( n = 520). At the time of the survey, 2.8% and 6.7% of women had a pre-existing clinical diagnosis of depression and anxiety, respectively ( Table 1). Forty seven women had experienced symptoms of COVID-19, 13 of whom were tested and all had negative results. Ninety-three percent of women were currently engaged in physical distancing measures with 83% of women in self-isolation or isolation at home. Sixty-four percent of women reported reduced physical activity with the onset of isolation measures, while 15% increased and 21% had no change to their physical activity. The number of women meeting current prenatal physical activity recommendations prior to and during the pandemic are shown in Table 2.

Table 1. Participant characteristics.

Table 2. Self-reported physical activity pre-pandemic and following the implementation of governmental recommendations for self-isolation/physical distancing associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

An EPDS score >13 (indicative of depression) was self-identified in 15% respondents pre-pandemic and in 40.7% currently (mean ± SD; 7.5 ± 4.9 vs. 11.2 ± 6.3, respectively; p < 0.01, Cohen's d 0.66; moderate effect). Moderate to high anxiety (STAI-state score >40) was identified in 29% of women before the pandemic (mean STAI = 34.5 ± 11.4) vs. 72% of women currently (mean STAI = 48.1 ± 13.6; p < 0.01, Cohen's d 1.08; large effect). However, women engaging in at least 150 min of moderate intensity physical activity (meeting current guidelines) during the pandemic had significantly lower scores for both anxiety (large effect) and depression (small effect) than those who did not ( p < 0.01, see Table 3).

Table 3. Current self-reported adherence to physical activity guidelines of at least 150 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity each week following the implementation of governmental recommendations for self-isolation/physical distancing associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discussion

The findings of this survey illustrated a significant increase in self-reported levels of depression and anxiety, and substantial reductions in physical activity in pregnant women from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Depression and anxiety are well-established to have both acute (e.g., preterm delivery, attenuated fetal/neonatal growth) and long-term consequences (e.g., increased risk of future anxiety and depression, cognitive delays for the offspring) for the psychological and physical health of both mother and baby ( 2- 4). Although, clinical diagnosis and treatment via psychological or pharmacological treatment remain front line therapies, the COVID-19 pandemic may reduce access and/or attendance to health care visits which could increase the risk of maternal/fetal health complications. The findings of this survey suggest that remaining physically active could be a helpful tool for pregnant and postpartum women. Specifically, engaging in at least 150 min of moderate intensity physical activity each week was associated with lower scores on screening tools for depression or anxiety. Thus, physical activity is an accessible measure to blunt the mental health crisis currently being experienced by pregnant and postpartum women.

Although estimates vary, depression and/or anxiety affect ~14% of pregnant and postpartum women ( 1). The consequences of undiagnosed and untreated depression are serious; nearly 20% of women with postpartum depression have considered hurting themselves and in the UK, the leading cause of maternal death in the year following delivery is suicide ( 19). Treatment of depression and anxiety is critical to support the health of both mother and child. However, many women are reluctant to take antidepressants even when prescribed ( 20, 21). In non-pregnant populations exercise has been found to be as effective in treating mild-to-moderate depression as anti-depressants and psychotherapy ( 22). Although this has not been evaluated in pregnant or postpartum women, recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials have shown pre- and post-natal exercise reduces the odds of depression and depressive symptoms. The findings from the current study also suggest that pregnant or postpartum women who were able to engage in regular physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic may have improved mental health compared to those who were not. We must also consider that certain barriers to physical activity may be increased in conjunction with COVID-19, such as the closure of indoor recreation centers and outdoor parks/greenspace. However, activities such as gardening, going for walks, household chores, and online fitness classes are feasible alternatives to promote wellness through movement and should be promoted as reasonable methods for increasing the physical activity of moms.

Due to the rapid development of COVID-19, pre-pandemic data were obtained through recall and were cross-sectional in nature, thereby precluding the ability to make causal inferences. As these data are correlative the underlying reason for the observed relationships cannot be determined and only associations could be identified. Indeed, a number of external factors may influence both likelihood of depression/anxiety and physical activity participation. These include fear of the virus, financial stresses, increased domestic workload, lack of motivation to exercise and social isolation, among many others. However, previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses from randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that rates of depression and depressive symptoms are reduced in pregnant and postpartum women randomized to an exercise intervention (compared to no exercise) ( 12, 13) supporting the observed relationship in the current study. Our approach utilized established and validated measures of self-reported screening tools for anxiety, depression, and physical activity to assess the psychological health of pregnant and postpartum women. These data were collected via online survey with social media as the primary avenue for promotion. As such, random sampling did not occur which may have introduced sampling bias into the survey. The number of individuals who saw the survey and chose not to participate could not be determined; however, it is plausible that women who had a pre-existing interest in physical activity and/or mental health would be more likely to respond to the survey. Furthermore, previous research has suggested that the quality of response may be reduced in online surveys ( 23, 24). Careless responding occurs when a participant fails to read or interpret the survey appropriately leading to incorrect responses. These types of responses can directly influence the results, thus the findings of this survey should be interpreted with consideration of these limitations. Our population was primarily from Canada (with a freely accessible health care system), Caucasian, were married, living in a single-family home, and had some post-secondary education. While we did not capture a more diverse population, the high rates of anxiety and depression are concerning as this group would not typically be considered at elevated risk of mental health disorders. Thus, these data likely under-estimate the true mental health crisis for pregnant and postpartum women as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the change in prevalence and symptom severity of anxiety and depression from pre-pandemic to current times may be subject to recall bias, the unexpectedly high rates of current mental health issues warrant an urgent call to action.

Conclusion

This rapid response survey identifies a substantial increase in self-reported maternal depression and anxiety from pre- to during-pandemic. These data highlight the strong need for heightened assessment and treatment of maternal mental health. However, these data also suggest that remaining active during the pandemic is associated with a reduced likelihood of anxiety and depression. These data highlight a potential intervention for all pregnant and postpartum women to improve or maintain mental health during this extremely stressful period where access to diagnosis and treatment is more challenging.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee at the University of Alberta (University of Alberta ethics protocol PRO00099671). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

MD: had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data, the accuracy of the data analysis, statistical analysis, and study supervision. MD and RK: study concept and design. All authors: acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, and critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content.

Funding

This research has been funded by generous supporters of the Lois Hole Hospital for Women through the Women and Children's Health Research Institute (redcap development, VLM Postdoctoral Fellowship). MD was funded by a Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada (HSFC)/Health Canada Improving Heart Health for Women Award and National and Alberta HSFC New Investigator Award. Study data were collected and managed using REDCap electronic data capture tools hosted and supported by the Women and Children's Health Research Institute at the University of Alberta. The funder had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Shana Rimmer for developing the redcap survey.

References

10. UK Chief Medical Officers. Physical Activity for Pregnant Women. London, UK: Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists (2017).
Google Scholar
11. Birsner ML, Gyamfi-Bannerman C. Physical activity and exercise during pregnancy and the postpartum period: ACOG committee opinion, number 804. Obstetr Gynecol. (2020) 135:e178-88. doi: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000003772
CrossRef Full Text

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Moms Are Not OK: COVID-19 and Maternal Mental Health

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Introduction: Depression and anxiety affect one in seven women during the perinatal period, and are associated with increased risk of preterm delivery, reduced mother-infant bonding, and delays in cognitive/emotional development of the infant.

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Our Mission

International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship is a scholar-activist, interdisciplinary, non-profit organization designed to promote empowered mothering via research on and advocacy for (and with) mothers. This work is rooted in a belief that mothers who are supported by their families, communities, businesses, and governments thrive and help their child(ren) thrive.

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IAMAS - International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship

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Our Mission International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship is a scholar-activist, interdisciplinary, non-profit organization designed to promote empowered mothering via research on and advocacy for (and with) mothers. This work is rooted in a belief that mothers who are supported by their families, communities, businesses, and governments thrive and help their child(ren) thrive.

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We are a non-profit organization with a mission to empower academic mamas by awarding grants supporting the pursuit of an academic career while raising children.

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This story features audio. Click to unmute.

The pandemic exposed "balance" for the lie that it is. Now, a generation is teetering on the edge.

This Is a Primal Scream

It's not just the working from home, the record unemployment or the remote schooling. This is a mental health crisis, too.

Source: 4,637,000 The number of payroll jobs lost by women in the U.S. since the pandemic began. Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of Jan. 2021

The percentage of women ages 25-44 who said child care was the reason for that unemployment.

Three Mothers, On the Brink

Eleven months, multiple breakdowns, one harrowing realization: They've got to get back up and do it all again tomorrow.

The percentage of Black mothers who said the pandemic has had a major impact on their ability to pay for necessities like housing, utilities and food.

The drop in labor force participation among unpartnered mothers, the largest among all groups of parents.

This Isn't Burnout, It's Betrayal

A psychiatrist suggests ways moms can fight back when the system is stacked against them.

77% The percentage of parents with kids ages 8-12 who said the uncertainty around the school year is causing them stress.

69% The number of mothers who said they've experienced adverse health effects due to worry and stress during the pandemic, compared to 51% of fathers.

Will Biden's Stimulus Plan Help?

How the president's proposed stimulus package might affect women and families.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

How to Help Working Parents Right Now

From flexible schedules to paid leave, what the government, employers and the rest of us can do.

Let's Hear It for Sabbaticals, Subsidies and Nanny Reimbursement

How some employers and governments are supporting working parents.

By Claire Cain Miller and Dani Blum

66% The number of mothers with partners who say they are chiefly responsible for child care, compared to 24% of fathers.

2x The amount that working mothers are likely to worry, as compared to working fathers, that their performance is being judged negatively because of their caregiving responsibilities.

Know Your Workplace Rights

We asked experts to cut through the red tape and legal jargon. Here's how to protect yourself.

Are you a working parent who needs support?

Mental health resources

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

Parents seeking emotional support can contact the National Parent Helpline at 855-427-2736.

If you are a recent mother looking for support, there are free online support groups offered by Postpartum Support International, with specific programs for Black moms, NICU parents, Spanish-speaking moms, queer parents and more.

Legal advice

The Center for WorkLife Law offers a free help line for parental legal rights. Call 415-851-3308 or email COVID19Helpline@worklifelaw.org.

The National Women's Law Center provides complimentary consultations with attorneys in their legal network. Call 202-319-3053 or request assistance at their website.

A Better Balance, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, operates a confidential help line to assist callers with understanding their workplace rights. Call 833-633-3222.

Food and housing assistance

United Way operates a 24-hour help line that connects callers to local food programs, housing assistance, health care resources and mental health support. Dial 211 from your phone.

Mutual Aid Hub offers a nationwide listing of food pantries and community refrigerators and freezers.

Credits

Editors Jessica Grose, Jessica Bennett, Melonyce McAfee, Farah Miller

Research Sharon Attia, Dani Blum

Design and production Deanna Donegan, Adriana Ramic

Photo editor Tiffanie Graham

Audio editor Rob Dozier

Print design Mary Jane Callister, Shannon Robertson, Elana Schlenker, Felicia Vasquez

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This story features audio. Click to unmute. The pandemic exposed "balance" for the lie that it is. Now, a generation is teetering on the edge. It's not just the working from home, the record unemployment or the remote schooling. This is a mental health crisis, too.

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For those requesting to join: please ensure you have answered all group questions and agreed to the rules in the pre-screening questions.*** Ph.D. Mamas provide support to those who identify as...

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Academic mamas* has 11,317 members. "I started this group when I noticed that my balancing act was not fully captured in my moms-only groups or academics-only groups. Keep in mind that some members...

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Tenure-Track Moms has 3,477 members. MISSION: To support and encourage pre-tenure (and tenured) women with children in achieving a healthy work-life-balance between career success and family life....

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Addressing Issues of Equity During and After COVID-19: Recommendations for Higher Education Institutions and General Information

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Addressing Issues of Equity During and After COVID-19: Recommendations for Higher Education Institutions and General Information

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CohenMiller, A. (Ed.) (2020). Addressing issues of equity during and after COVID-19: Recommendations for higher education institutions and general information. Available at: https://bit.ly/3jLclX7

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Addressing Issues of Equity During and After COVID-19: Recommendations for Higher Education Institutions and General Information

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Stanford University:

COVID-19 related Supplemental Policies

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Pursuant to the announcement sent to Stanford faculty members on February 11, 2021, junior tenure-line faculty members who will not have received tenure by September 1, 2021 are automatically eligible to take a Post-Pandemic Research Quarter during the 2021-22 academic year or subsequent years pre-tenure. The intention of this policy is to provide junior faculty members extra time to get their research back on track toward tenure as the academic community emerges from the pandemic. During this research quarter, the faculty member will be exempt from teaching or service obligations to the department and will thus be able to focus exclusively on their research. The Post-Pandemic Research Quarter is expected to be taken prior to the process of assembling the faculty member's tenure file. To avoid disruption to necessary course offerings, departments should work with the faculty member taking a Post-Pandemic Research Quarter to find mutually agreeable timing.

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Pursuant to the announcement sent to Stanford faculty members on February 11, 2021, junior tenure-line faculty members who will not have received tenure by September 1, 2021 are automatically eligible to take a Post-Pandemic Research Quarter during the 2021-22 academic year or subsequent years pre-tenure.

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By Katie Langin Feb. 9, 2021

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In March 2020, Reshma Jagsi-a radiation oncologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor-wrote an opinion piece predicting female scientists would feel a disproportionate impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. Skeptical journal editors declined to publish it. Since then, though, many commentators have echoed her message. And now the evidence has become clear: The pandemic has exacerbated existing disparities and created additional challenges for women, especially those with children, struggling to maintain their research productivity.

In some fields, studies show, the proportion of female authors on preprints, submitted manuscripts, and published papers dropped during the first few months of the pandemic. Mothers also suffered a 33% larger drop in research hours compared with fathers, according to a global survey of 20,000 Ph.D. holders published as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper last month. The survey, conducted from May to July 2020, also found that mothers took on more household and child care duties than fathers.

But the news isn't all dire: One funding agency recognized and corrected for a gender disparity early on in the pandemic. In February 2020, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) offered funding for COVID-19 research. The agency wanted to address the fast-growing issue quickly, so researchers were given an unusually short time to submit proposals-just 8 days. This was before lockdowns were imposed in Canada, but the gender disparity in the responses highlight underlying challenges female academics face: Only 29% of the resulting proposals were led by women, a drop of roughly seven percentage points compared with previous comparable funding opportunities.

"As soon as we got the numbers we went, 'Oh my goodness, we did something wrong,'" says Cara Tannenbaum, scientific director of the Institute of Gender and Health at CIHR. When the agency offered a second round of COVID-19 funding 2 months later, it extended the deadline to 19 days and reduced the paperwork requirements. The number of proposals by women jumped to 39%, as Tannenbaum and her co-authors describe in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Holly Witteman, a health researcher at Laval University, saw the benefit of the policy shift. "I looked at the 8-day deadline and I just thought, 'There's no way,'" says Witteman, who has two children and a chronic health condition. "I can't just cram in extra work by staying up late to write another grant." The extended deadline during the second round afforded her enough time to put together a proposal, which was ultimately funded.

Motherhood penalty

In the months after the pandemic started, most researchers worked fewer hours per day than usual. But parents-especially mothers-lost the most work time, according to a new study. Mothers also spent more time on child care and housework than fathers.

Still, she worries about the repercussions of the gender disparity in the first round, which had a much higher success rate (44% versus 9%). "When you have funding, you get to do studies, and then you get to publish them, and then when you apply for more funding ... you're in a much better position; it's this cumulative advantage snowball that just keeps rolling."

COVID-19 put many existing inequalities in "stark relief," says Robin Nelson, an anthropologist at Santa Clara University whose work hours were slashed by more than half last year when her two children were home from school. "Some people are just simply working against more obstacles than other people." To level the playing field, she adds, "We are going to have to finally start questioning business as usual in the way that we administer grants, ... time to tenure, all of these policies."

Robinson Fulweiler, an ecologist at Boston University, says universities and funding agencies should give scientists the option of submitting COVID-19 impact statements going forward, describing how the pandemic impeded their work. Employers should also take steps to ensure all researchers have access to affordable day care, she says. Fulweiler and other scientist-mothers detail those recommendations and many others in an opinion piece in press at PLOS Biology. (It appeared as a preprint in September 2020.) "Now is the time to act," she and her co-authors write. "Rather than rebuilding what we once knew, let us be the architects of a new world."

Nelson agrees. "I hope that COVID has ... given us some space to actually think critically about what we expect of faculty and whether we can make space for faculty to have full lives that might involve disabilities, chronic illness, care taking of any sorts-just anything outside of work," she says. "Academe has really privileged people who can get other people to do all of that labor for them. And so we need to really start thinking about what does a sustainable academic environment with healthy faculty look like and how can we make space for that without thinking that we're compromising rigor."
*Update, 10 February, 11:00 a.m.: This story has been updated to note that Holly Witteman has a chronic health condition.

doi:10.1126/science.caredit.abh0110

Katie Langin is the associate editor for Science Careers.

More from Careers

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Pandemic hit academic mothers especially hard, new data confirm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In March 2020, Reshma Jagsi-a radiation oncologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor-wrote an opinion piece predicting female scientists would feel a disproportionate impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. Skeptical journal editors declined to publish it. Since then, though, many commentators have echoed her message.