The Woman Scientific

The recent shutdowns imposed by many governments around the world to slow the spreading of covid-19 has redifined the notion of work and life balance. At least for those lucky enough to have jobs that can be performed from a computer on the kitchen table. And before I elaborate on that, my heart goes out to all the brave workers who still have to go out and put themselves and their family at higher risk of contagion, particularly health workers, people in social care, supermarket and shop staff, bin collectors etc. This pandemic has redefined many things, including the notion of what heroes do for a living. Finding balance Getting back to the theme of this blog, I am in that lucky group of people who have not lost their job or been furloughed and still are paid a full salary because their job can be done remotely. Some of us though have had to face new challenges and had to find a new work-life balance. While before those with children had to "worry" only about the holida...

A year ago I started this blog with an article on International Women's Day. To celebrate this anniversary and to honor all women around the world, I'd like to share a video based on a piece of writing by Camilla Rainville (also known as Furious Woman) called " Be a lady they said ". I had tears in my eyes when I watched it. I hope it will move you too. Click here to watch.

As promised a few months ago, this is the second part of my blog on motherhood and it relates to the dilemma known as work-life balance. As for the first post, this was prompted by conversations with friends/colleagues of mine on our group chat. In particular, one of my friends had a gorgeous baby back in October - she was the inspiration for the first post. Now that she is getting to the end of her statutory maternity she informed us on the chat that she had painfully come to the decision to request an unpaid leave of three months to be able to stay with her baby longer and be able to wean him before returning to work. A couple of us in the group were immediately ticked off by the word painfully and asked her for explanations. She told us that her project had several deadlines and she felt guilty (note this important keyword) that her colleagues had to take them on and cover for her, since her organization had not hired a maternity cover. It sounded like she felt it was her fault ...