Like a Horse to Water

I apologize for the missed post last week—I was on the East Coast visiting family. Several of you sent me the link to this article, written by Mary Ann Mason: http://slate.me/16CtN3J. She is one of the foremost researchers on women in science, and her perspective is interesting, as always. The very issue she talks about—the difficulty female faculty have in juggling career and family compared with male faculty—was one of my primary motivations for starting this blog. Next week I’m going to address the ubiquitous ‘Lean In’ (which Dr. Mason also references in her article) and how I think it applies to academia. But for now, a bit of more light-hearted fare!

This month I turned 35. I’m actually glad to be a year older and (hopefully) wiser. My journey in life and in academia has been all about making mistakes and learning from them, and testing out others’ advice to see what works. I decided to share with you some advice I’ve received over the years that I found to be right-on and now share with others. The general theme here is life in academia, and balancing work and family. Please share your own ‘best advice received’ in the comments!

On work/life balance:

Family first. Then work. Then everything else.

       --my Ph.D. advisor, Charlie Hall (I would simply add: family and health first).

To the institution, you’re ultimately dispensable. But to your family, you’re indispensable.

       --my colleague, Wei Zhang

On not being afraid to take (constructive) criticism:

Your friends criticize you before you publish; your enemies criticize you afterwards.

       --Charlie Hall again

If people criticize you, that means they took the time to read your stuff. That means they care.

       --my undergraduate advisor, Steve Hamburg

On feeling like an imposter:

You probably have the sense that you don’t belong here sometimes, that you’re not worthy of the job. Don’t worry—everybody else has that feeling too.

       --my former faculty mentor, Joe Arvai

On failure and perseverance:

You get 0% of the grants you don’t apply for.

       -(I think this is a version of Wayne Gretzky’s famous quote about missing 100% of the shots you don’t take)

On choosing commitments carefully as a junior faculty member:

If somebody asks you to do something, say ‘yes’ and do a good job. But don’t raise your hand to volunteer.

       --Gil Pontius

On whom to ask for help:

If it’s an intellectual or academic matter, ask your colleagues for advice. But if it’s a policy issue, ask the appropriate staff person.

       --member of a faculty panel I attended last year (don’t remember her name!)

Speaking of which:

Treat the staff well. They are the ones who really run the University.

       --Everyone

On doing interdisciplinary work:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.

--African proverb (I’m well aware of how annoying it is to call something an ‘African proverb’ as if all 1 billion people and hundreds of ethnic groups on the continent use the same sayings. However, I love this phrase, and despite having googled the heck out of it, I can’t find which people(s) actually used it, so I’ll just have to acknowledge that somebody somewhere in Africa at some point came up with this brilliant adage).

On not taking yourself too seriously:

When someone asks me if I’m a doctor, I say, ‘yes, but not the kind that actually helps people.’

       --Steve Pacala

And, to round out our advice parade here, I’ll include two pieces of advice I’ve received many times, invariably from well-meaning people, that I do not suggest you follow. The first: ‘___ is impossible, so don’t even try to do it.’ What the people giving this advice usually mean is one of two things: either they tried it and failed, and they want to warn you away from their mistakes; or, that they don’t see any way to do it. In the former case, it’s often a good idea to ask them more about their experiences, because there may be a lot of useful information there. In the second case, you are not them—and maybe you do see a way to do it (or at least try)!

The second piece of advice I try not to follow: ‘That isn’t real ____’ (specific examples I’ve heard: ‘That isn’t real ecology.’ ‘That isn’t really participatory modeling.’ ‘That isn’t real model validation.’) This latter tends to come from folks that like to police the boundaries of disciplines or practices—again, usually with good intentions in an attempt to point me towards ‘the right’ way to do things. But where would we be if no one ever pushed the boundaries or questioned ‘the right way’ to do things?

Women and Nature: the Invisible Hands

From Sunday through Wednesday this past week, I attended the meeting of the United States Society for Ecological Economics, for which I currently serve as a board member. I was thrilled and inspired by my first encounter at this meeting with feminist economists Nancy Folbre and Julie Nelson (more on them in a minute). First, let me explain the purpose of USSEE. Our tagline is, ‘Transforming the Economy for a Just and Sustainable World’. We are an interdisciplinary academic society comprised of economists, biologists, ecologists, geographers, engineers, sociologists, etc., and we are generally concerned with promoting human well-being without irreparably degrading the integrity of the environment. We believe that we need fundamentally new ways of thinking about, measuring, and designing societal progress in order to accomplish these dual goals (supporting human well-being and protecting the environment).  

There are some obvious parallels between ecological economics and feminist economics. Scientists have long pointed out that the ways in which we measure the strength of the economy—mainly, using gross domestic product (GDP) or stock market activity—ignore completely the contributions of the natural world, without which the economy would not be able to function. What we measure tends to be what we value, so leaving out nature in the accounting scheme can create perverse outcomes, as ecological systems are sacrificed for short-term economic profit. One example is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. This event was devastating for the ecology and human well-being in the Gulf region. However, the oil spill actually slightly increased the GDP of the United States through clean-up costs, lawsuits, etc. In other words, GDP does not distinguish between economic activity that benefits people and the planet, and economic activity that results from people screwing up and needing to fix things.

In the same way, feminist economists point out that GDP and the stock market don’t measure the value of a lot of human activity that contributes greatly to human well-being and to economic productivity. Examples include caring for children, the sick, and the elderly; keeping a clean and healthy home; and volunteering. Do you notice a pattern here? All of these activities are traditionally associated with women (although men have been stepping up to do more of them in recent years). Women and nature are truly the ‘invisible hands’ that prop up the economy—unrecognized, unacknowledged, un-counted—but absolutely essential.

Just as a thought experiment to reinforce this point, imagine what would happen if women (and some men) collectively walked off the job—just quit doing all of the un-paid activities that support healthy homes and communities around the world. To put it bluntly, an entire generation would be wiped out. The workers of tomorrow, who would be producing the ideas and labor to fuel the future economy, would not exist. Human society as we know it would collapse.

Similarly, what would happen if nature ‘walked off the job’—stopped assimilating our wastes, stopped producing oxygen and clean water, stopped providing a relatively stable climate? It’s pretty clear human society wouldn’t last very long. 

In the spirit of, ‘we don’t value what we can’t measure’, some economists are addressing the fact that the economy takes women and nature for granted by advocating that we measure progress using the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), rather than using GDP. The GPI counts the value of non-paid work in the home and community, and subtracts the value of economic activity that damages the environment or is not correlated with human well-being. As it turns out, when you measure well-being using GPI, people in the United States have not been getting any better off since about 1975. Yet, we’ve been generating a lot more economic activity. It begs the question: what is all that economic activity for, if not to make us happier and healthier?

What solutions would you propose? How can we recognize and value the contributions of women and the environment to our economies and societies? By the way—if this topic sparks your interest, follow USSEE on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn!

It definitely takes a village

Last Christmas, I had an eye-opening conversation with my mother-in-law (and, yes, it was the good kind of eye-opening J). Let me tell you a little bit about my mother-in-law. She grew up in Southeastern Nigeria during the Biafran war, arguably one of the most brutal conflicts of the past half-century. She lost her older brother and mother during and shortly after the war, respectively. After meeting my father-in-law and getting married at 19, she bore the first of six sons a year later. Although my husband’s family would have been considered ‘middle class’, as his parents were college-educated and had professional careers, in Nigeria this still meant that they lived without running water and with intermittent electricity much of the time (can you imagine dealing with a baby in diapers without running water?). She raised her six boys during a military dictatorship and structural adjustment programs that drove many Nigerian middle-class families into poverty and left my husband’s family unable to afford three meals a day. In other words, my mother-in-law is one tough cookie. Compared to her, my life has been a walk in the park…on a warm, breezy day, with lemonade and cake. Compared to her, pretty much my entire life could be labeled with the hashtag #firstworldproblems. Oh, and by the way—while she was raising six boys, this sweet lady went back to school to get her teaching certificate, and started a career outside the home.

And yet, here is the gist of the conversation I had with my mother-in-law last Christmas. She was asking about my job and how M (my husband) and I handle childcare arrangements. After listening to my explanation, she shook her head and said, “You know, I think things were easier back in Nigeria. Because we had help.”

Yes. You head that right. My mother-in-law, who raised six children during a dictatorship and economic crisis, thinks that, at least in some ways, women living in America today have it harder. That really, really gives me pause.

Here’s the thing: when my husband was growing up, there were three ‘aunties’ in the house who helped care for him and his brothers, and who also helped with the cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, and everything else involved with the running of the household. These ‘aunties’ were only a few years older than my husband, and in return for helping, my in-laws helped educate them. This is a common arrangement in West Africa and many other parts of the world, and when it works well, it can be mutually beneficial. This is why Africans (and, later, Hilary Clinton) say that ‘it takes a village’ to raise a child. We seldom think about the corollary: no one person can raise a child on their own.

But that’s what we expect nuclear families to do in the United States these days. We expect that two people will, on their own, deal with providing for their children financially and also perform all of the exhausting and demanding work involved with raising children and running a household. And, let’s be honest, we really expect that mothers will do all of these things. I’m amazed at how mothers (whether stay at home, or working outside the home) beat themselves up over not being able to do all of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and child-rearing themselves, or exhaust themselves attempting to do so. Frankly, I’m not immune to this type of guilt. 

One thing that helps is that I’ve been privileged to have seen how things are done in the rest of the world, because it allows me to say that this type of arrangement (mom does everything, or mom and dad do everything) is uniquely American and uniquely insane. Many people from all points on the political/ideological spectrum have lamented the dissolution of community in the United States over the last fifty years or so, and I think that one of the consequences of this disintegration is the extreme stress and pressure put on working parents to do everything themselves, without the help of their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunties, or neighbors. This has certainly been a struggle for my family and I—due to the specialized nature of my job and my husband’s job, we have limited choices about where to live at each stage of our career advancement. This has meant that, just as we settle into a place and start to make close friendships and build our support network, we’ve had to move on. I hope that this will not always be the case for us, but I know that a lot of academic and professional families find themselves in this situation.

I am very thankful for the help I have – and the last years have taught me the importance of asking for help from one’s community. My husband and I are fortunate to live near my parents and my youngest sister, and they help with childcare and other tasks on a regular basis. Without them, I truly don’t know if I would be able to have the career that I have and simultaneously be a mom. 

I would argue that raising a child by oneself is, if not impossible, insane. I understand that not all feel this way, and I am in no way impugning those who, for various reasons, have had to do things by themselves. Understandably, not everyone is able to locate themselves near family members, but for new and expecting mothers, I would encourage a push to find at least one community of helpers. It could be family, it could be a place of worship, it could be other mom colleagues, neighbors, whatever—you can’t raise a child on your own­—even if your spouse/partner is an involved parent. 

Mine is only one story. How do you create community and find help where you live?