It’s a quandary for academia: many women’s prime childbearing years occur during graduate school.
“We know we can’t solve the problem entirely, but we’re doing what we can to help ameliorate it,” says Gail Mahood, associate dean for graduate policy and professor of geological and environmental sciences. In January, the University approved a new childbirth policy for female graduate students.
The policy mirrors those already in place for female faculty and postdocs. It sets forth minimum standards for schools and departments, and provides benefits that can assist women in remaining full-time students (existing policies regarding leaves of absence and part-time attendance remain in effect). Among major universities, only MIT has adopted a similar program. “Our primary goal is to reduce the uncertainty that women students might have, and to make it easier for them to have conversations with their advisers,” Mahood says.
Graduate students will be given an “accommodation period” of two academic quarters, which can be taken before and/or after the birth, when they can postpone course assignments, examinations and other academic requirements. Those who remain full-time students can maintain their housing and health benefits—and, for international students, their student visas. Teaching assistants and research assistants will be excused from their duties, with pay, for up to six weeks. In addition, women who give birth receive an automatic one-quarter extension of “academic milestones” such as oral exams or PhD qualifying exams.
“Nowhere do we say ‘leave of absence,’ ” Mahood notes. During the accommodation period, “the women are excused from assignments and other things, but they’re expected to be here, and to go to class and research group meetings.”
Mahood anticipates that possibly two dozen women will take advantage of the new policy annually, which will cost the University approximately $100,000 in stipend replacement. “I felt strongly when we wrote this that pregnancy should not be viewed as a disability or an illness,” she adds. “The idea is that we want to accommodate the women because there will be periods in which they cannot work long hours, and there may be some things they can’t do.”
Like working with toxic chemicals that could cause birth defects. That was a concern that drove Dick Zare, chair of the chemistry department, to implement a childbirth accommodation policy for his department last fall. Drawing substantially on the language and provisions in the University’s policy, Zare extended the period of financial support to 12 weeks.
“Stanford needs to be family friendly, and I also think it’s very important that we get more women to go into science in general, and chemistry,” Zare says. “There’s never a right moment for a woman to have a child, but we decided there needs to be a time-out—and that we would not only give pay, but also stop the clock in terms of how long it takes to get a PhD.”
