An Elsevier Foundation New Scholars Grant Sponsored the European Molecular Biology Meeting
During the August 2009 EMBO meeting, the Elsevier Foundation team interviewed Dr. Gerlind Wallon, Deputy Director of EMBO (in photo), and child care coordinator Helga Duczek of He.du, (Education in Experiencing Nature).
Women hold less than 15 percent of the full professorships in Europe, even though more than half of European science students are female. Where does this gender gap come from? Research confirms that young women scientists take on the majority of child care responsibilities during their peak professional years, often resulting in decreased productivity and competitiveness.
In 2008, the European Molecular Biology (EMBO) Conference received an $18,500 grant from the Elsevier Foundation New Scholars program to provide full-time child care at the first annual EMBO conference in Amsterdam. This grant not only enabled young life scientists with children to take full professional advantage of scientific presentations, networking and collaboration opportunities, but served as a family-friendly model among scientific societies in Europe.
The Elsevier Foundation addresses this issue through its New Scholars program, which seeks to combat the leaky academic pipeline by addressing issues of work-life balance that can prevent young scientists from building strong careers in science. The program strives to find programs that can serve as sustainable, scalable and reproducible models across organizations, whether focusing on mentorship, work-life balance, lactation policies or travel and child care.
Dr. Gerlind Wallon, Deputy Executive Director of EMBO, said: "This is something that has to sink into the scientific community, that it is actually important to send a message that family and children – and women in general – are welcome in the scientific world."
At the August 2009 EMBO meeting in Amsterdam, licensed child-care providers spoke a range of languages, including English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. They led the children in activities and took them to the NEMO, Amsterdam's science museum. Afterwards, participant Jean-Baptiste Manneville of Paris wrote: "Childcare should definitely be available during the coming EMBO meetings. It allowed my wife and I to register and enjoy an excellent meeting (for the first time) and our kids had a great time."
