FEMALES, MOTHERS, AND GEOSCIENTISTS: OUR PERSONAL GENDER CHALLENGES IN STEREOTYPES, CHILDCARE, AND COVID-19

Even before the pandemic, women geoscientists faced challenges in both their professional and personal lives. Women geoscientists typically are perceived as “weaker”. When they are equally qualified as male colleagues, women are often not considered for physically demanding or dangerous tasks. Outside the office, women made gains in sharing household duties with their partners, but they remain tasked with a larger burden of childcare. When women geoscientists become mothers, they are constrained by stereotypes and parental responsibilities that male geoscientists, even those who are fathers, do not have to consider. As geoscientists and mothers, we have juggled breastfeeding during fieldwork, conducting exploratory reconnaissance with a baby on our hip, and arranging fieldwork where children are appropriately cared for and supervised by another adult, or brought into the field with the mother scientist. It is not uncommon for a babysitter to accompany practicing women geoscientists—and their young children—to a field site, or for a female geoscientist to brave fieldwork while simultaneously caring for children without a helper. For this, these women often face ridicule and judgment by fellow scientists and students alike.

When Covid-19 forced community shutdown, women’s childcare responsibilities increased substantially, unequally more than men’s in 2-parent heterosexual families. Many of us juggled child responsibilities, virtual instruction, remote job responsibilities, or the expectation to create a hybrid learning environment while being the primary caregiver. As the economy recovered, data documented that the greatest employment gains were disproportionately made by men. While women geoscientists must persevere in advocating for equitable working conditions, some progress is being made. Supportive women geoscientist networks also make the geosciences career pathway easier to travel, which may encourage more women in the future to consider geosciences.