Researchers Revolt Against Weekend Conferences (nature.com) 214
In response to studies that relate high rates of female attrition from biomedical research fields to the obligations of motherhood, researchers concerned about inclusivity are now debating the issue of weekend conference duties. Nature: Because published findings are often old news in the rapidly changing biomedical fields, in-person conferences offer a crucial opportunity for scientists to stay current on trends that shape projects and funding outcomes. Yet fields often expect rock-star-like travel schedules on an economy-class budget in addition to long, irregular weekday hours at the laboratory. This is why early-career scientists with children say that they must seek alternative childcare or risk being scooped or excluded from a collaboration simply because they missed a weekend conference.
International meetings are often scheduled over weekends because that's the only time venues have availability. Few cities have both suitable venues and enough hotel space to welcome 21,000 people from around the world, and even meetings for 3,000 researchers must be booked many years in advance. Because local businesses and regional associations tend to book venues during the working week, large meetings that span three to five days often need to start or end over a weekend. Women who continue to break the glass ceiling in biomedicine are now pitching this timing as an example of unnecessary conflict between work and family.
International meetings are often scheduled over weekends because that's the only time venues have availability. Few cities have both suitable venues and enough hotel space to welcome 21,000 people from around the world, and even meetings for 3,000 researchers must be booked many years in advance. Because local businesses and regional associations tend to book venues during the working week, large meetings that span three to five days often need to start or end over a weekend. Women who continue to break the glass ceiling in biomedicine are now pitching this timing as an example of unnecessary conflict between work and family.
Online conferences (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Like, no, really no.
Some people were, but frankly online conferences sucked compared to in person ones.
The value of conferences was maybe 20% talks, 80% interactions with other people. This is where you chat at a poster session or discuss the last talk with friends/colleagues/your seat neighbor/the speaker. All of that important stuff was completely 100% missing at online conferences.
And even for talks you had garbage video links with no speaker feedback. As an experienced conference speaker, you can see th
Re: (Score:2)
Don't think so... people were forced to do online conferences during the pandemic but nobody really liked it.
I've attended a pretty good number of conferences, and to be honest, the formal presentations just provide a framework for the conference and are really the least important part of the gathering. From my experience, the most productive part of the conference is the informal discussions with other attendees during coffee breaks, over drinks/dinner, and during chance encounters. Those are where actual
You can't have it all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop trying, set your priorities, and accept that something has to lose out.
Men accepted that millennia ago... it's why "behind every successful man stands a woman" exists.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You can't have it all. (Score:4, Interesting)
Because there's no reason beyond ideology to believe social construction is why males and females are on aggregate very different in terms of what drives them. That's pretty clearly evidenced cross cultures and cross domains.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In every society, you could see how after large conflicts with many men left on the battle field, women successfully grew into hitherto male roles. It's not the roles and not the women who don't fit together, it's the men pushing women out of roles of prestige and power.
In Computer Science, it was women who did most of the coding in the 1950ies and 1960ies. Only with the beginning prestige of the field in society, men becam
Re:You can't have it all. (Score:5, Interesting)
kidnapping from conquered territories is a thing too... Lets call that forced exploration.
Re:You can't have it all. (Score:4, Interesting)
In Computer Science, it was women who did most of the coding in the 1950ies and 1960ies.
Women did data entry (keypunch operators). It was mostly men who wrote the software. To see the true figures you need to break it down by job roles, not just "how many women filed into the computer centre each morning".
Coding != programming, and get off my lawn (Score:2)
Which is what "coding" meant back then. The mostly men who wrote the software were programming. I assume that the recent preference for "coding" to describe the activity of programming is because three-syllable words are considered too elitist or some such nonsense.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If what you say is true some one should tell reality the word programming is "lost" because that is not at all an odd word for me to hear.
Re: (Score:3)
That simply isn't true. A lot of early software development was done by women, with a lot of very important foundational principles being discovered or formalized by them. Here are some examples.
Grace Hopper - The first compiler/linker, FLOW-MATIC language (became COBOL)
Jean E. Sammet - COBOL
Kathleen Booth - assembly language, built multiple early computers (with Xenia Sweeting)
Audrey Bates - earliest program for lambda calculus calculations
Mary Kenneth Keller - first American to get a PhD in Computer Scien
Re:You can't have it all. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Without taking anything away from those achievements, it's silly to create this arbitrary category in order to argue members of it were particularly notable by virtue of being in that category.
It reminds me of Project Steve, created as a counter to the creationist tendency to compile long lists of supposed scientists who dissent from evolution as a theory to explain the diversity of species. Let's do Project John:
John Vincent Atanasoff - inventor of the first electronic digital computer.
John Cocke -
Re: (Score:3)
In Computer Science, it was women who did most of the coding in the 1950ies and 1960ies. Only with the beginning prestige of the field in society, men became interested in coding
That's a nice example of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Once the clerical components of programming were relegated to software (assemblers, compilers, etc.), you basically got a very different job afterwards. Comparing the workforces of what are essentially two different jobs is dodgy at best, if not outright disingenuous.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok. That explains why for instance being Jewish is inherited via the female line.
That's only for Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic and Oriental trace it through the father.
And it's only been that way since CE 1750. Prior to that, Ashkenazi rabbim *also* traced parentage
through the father.
Re: (Score:2)
You're out by a few thousand years there, except as you point out for the Kaifeng Jews.
Re: (Score:2)
women were pushed out of the field. saw the same happen in the 1990ies again in East Germany, when suddenly, only men started classes in Computer Science
Unless the women were somehow prevented from taking computer science classes, then the women were not pushed out of the field.
Re:You can't have it all. (Score:4, Interesting)
Applied Linguistics is my field, it involves a lot of stats & maths, & the majority of my colleagues have always been female. The majority of the papers I read are authored by female researchers, conference attendees are a mix but the majority female. Also, it's not only the mothers who take on child care duties these days so not only female researchers would benefit from more family friendly conference organising. For academics to raise a family & do well in their jobs is already challenging enough. Why not make it easier & more attractive to new talent?
Re: (Score:2)
Niche cases aside, the vast majority were male, or my mom would have met one female programmer during her time. She never did, and she had a decently long career during 1960 up till 1980 when she started adopting kiddos.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Bullshit. "Famously" is an anecdote, and likely only happened like someone else said, in more niche, math heavy cases. If it was commonplace, even "almost entirely" done by women, then where were they?
Re: (Score:2)
If it was just occasionally then maybe, but when there are so many it's unlikely that they were all the only woman doing programming in the organization, and all just happened to be brilliant. They are a product of there being far more working writing software, as a proportion of the workforce.
Re: (Score:3)
Why not? Because there's only 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week.
It's the same reason that calls for making this and and be mandatory in school is impossible: there are only so many instruction hours in the school day.
Re: (Score:3)
How about: you can't do 300 hours of work in a 168 hour week. Does that clarify things?
Because that phrase was invented (Score:2)
Fun fact, but ancient cultures in the west thought of women not as another sex, but as men who hadn't fully developed. e.g. their muscles didn't grow right and their penises didn't pop out. It was literally a birth defect to them. That mistaken and foolish idea persisted in vari
Re: (Score:2)
> something has to lose out.
The loser will be all of us. If women have to choose between motherhood and being a scientist, many will choose motherhood and the world will have fewer scientists and more women peddling MLM schemes on Youtube because being an "influencer" is one of those jobs where you can set your own schedule and work around the baby.
Re: (Score:2)
There's only 24 hours in a day. It's impossible for anyone to have it all, not just women.
Men can go to weekend conferences, work 80 hours/week, go on military deployment for months, etc when they sacrifice being home with their families.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What a defeatist attitude. Of course you can't have it all, but it's obviously possible to have a career and be a mother simultaneously, a majority of mothers do so successfully. There are some careers that are fairly incompatible with being a parent; serving on a submarine for example. But being a scientist can and should be a predictable 40 hour job completely compatible with parenthood.
It's not about that at all (Score:2)
Stop trying, set your priorities, and accept that something has to lose out.
Men accepted that millennia ago... it's why "behind every successful man stands a woman" exists.
If that were true about men you wouldnt see data like this https://www.pewresearch.org/sh... [pewresearch.org] . The only way you'd have a point is if women and men did an equal amount of child rearing and that is definitely not the case in most families.
Re: (Score:3)
Meanwhile we live in a society where almost no one can properly support a family with just one parent working. One shouldnt be surprised to hear women complain about things like this if they are expected to be both the chief caretaker of the kids and work a career. Would you be happy with the type of work life that resulted from expected social rolls like this? I wouldnt.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop trying, set your priorities, and accept that something has to lose out.
Men accepted that millennia ago... it's why "behind every successful man stands a woman" exists.
In other words, women need to stay in the back?
Besides, this isn't about prioritizing, it's about making accommodations.
Why do conferences typically have food included? Because men realized they have to eat, so that's added to the budget no problem.
Why do they involve so much expensive travel to begin with? Because the men doing it liked to travel.
Why do the PhDs and Postdocs extend into the early thirties? Because that's when men are ready to settle down.
Of course, that timeline turns out to be a disaster
Re: (Score:2)
Where in the heck did you get that from my comment?
Sure, there were/are social expectations, and many women wanted to marry successful (or prospectively successful) men, but few (especially middle- and upper-class) Western women have been in arranged marriages in quite a few centuries.
Re: (Score:3)
Where in the heck did you get that from my comment?
It was a bit pithy, but to be fair, that's exactly what that quote actually means.
The man gets all the attention and glory, but his success is only possible due to the woman who is assisting him in relative anonymity, and she's usually relegated to domestic chores.
I don't think that's a particularly fair setup.
empty office blocks (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't there lots of empty office space? I'm sure deals on renting whole floors per week can be worked out.
Re: (Score:2)
Conferences are usually held in hotels because most of the attendees are travelling (the Latin root literally means "bring together") so they need to stay in a hotel anyway. Unless the office space is adapted into hotel space, it's not solving the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Conferences are usually held in hotels
Small conferences are. Big ones are held in conference centers (or "convention centers").
But the practical difficulties of finding empty floors of large office buildings and setting them up for a large conference is probably prohibitive. And the owners would want the stipulation "we can cancel this contract at any time if we find a tenant", which would kill the deal. (Not to mention that you'd probably have to find a new space every year, since vacancies come and go.)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd agree there's a lot of trouble for a one-time event and it's unlikely to happen. Thus it's highly unlikely this is going to get settled from the demand side. But that doesn't preclude the idea of permanently converting some office space into places to hold public meetings, space that is zoned Commercial and therefore can't just be converted into housing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Trade offs (Score:4, Insightful)
It's difficult juggling being a mother with having a career that involves travel? No shit. It's also difficult having a high paying career in IT while also trying to be a professional footballer.
Life is about tradeoffs. Either accept raising your children well requires sacrifices on your part, or marry a man who can fill your role while you're away. Women in particular have been fed a narrative of being able to do anything, akin to imagining one could simultaneously be a heavy weight lifter and a gymnast. Attempting thus invariably ends in disappointment, then resentment when reality doesn't accord with what they've been told to expect.
Re: (Score:2)
Women in particular have been fed a narrative of being able to do anything
You can do anything, but not everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point, although they are still pushed into unrealistic ambitions.
Re: (Score:3)
Why do you object to making it easier to do both tho? Pushing back on established work norms to make them more humane and require us to sacrifice less of our limited leisure time to travel helps everyone, not just working women. It's not a zero sum game.
Re: (Score:2)
If only it was as simply as selecting a suitable husband, like choosing a new car with adequate cargo space.
The reality is that most people want kids, and there is a biological clock ticking on their ability to have them. Which means they need to start in the earlier stages of their careers, when they typically earn less and need to do more hours and travel.
Even if the husband is willing, there is still a bias that expects them not to do too much childcare. In many jurisdictions they get less paid time off
Oh no! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How soft are you if you can't even manage to look after your own kids for a little while? Man up a little, don't be such a baby.
Re: (Score:2)
> Sounds like some loudmouths with megaphones have the platform again.
The ones who "don't need a man!"
Boss girl t-shirts and everything.
Fascists have convinced 'modern' women that serving a faceless corporation is freedom but serving their family is tyranny.
It flies in the face of all reason, science, history, and psychology but comports with Feminist Studies degree programs.
Which /seem/ to exist for the wealth creation purposes of the fascists. Double the labor supply and the wages fall in half - day one of Economics.
I don't know about the fascist angle, but yes, it's a bit of a mess. The almost doubling of the workforce has a whole lot to do with wage stagnation. The two income household will have an inflationary effect on things like housing. And it's reached the point where the two income household is virtually mandatory.
But what a load. The Womanist angle is to make women not dependent upon man in any form. They go to their career, raise their family by themselves, and there ya go. having it all. I have a suspicio
Nothing is going to change (Score:2)
It's a mess for work life balance, but how do you expect it to change exactly? Unless you get a time machine and gender transforming raygun, this isn't going to change for decades. So much inertia built into the system. You could say you're getting it moving for next generations, but I doubt the future will be similar enough to the past for it to matter. Between demographic change and AI, the future will be a strange place.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a mess for work life balance, but how do you expect it to change exactly?
I dunno by people complaining about it and organizers stopping organizing weekend conferences.
Weekend conferences are complete bullshit. They are not common in the UK (at least not in my or my SO's area), and are generally regarded as a shitty thing done by people who are inveterate workaholics who don't give a shit about anyone's work life balance.
I'm a man without kids and they are still awful, because I don't want to dedicate m
Mixing issues... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two issues here, and they need to be looked at separately.
The first issue is scheduling conferences on weekends. Is that a good thing, because the conferences have less impact on your work? Or is it a bad thing, because the conferences take away from your personal time? This issue applies to anyone, not just to women. Personal opinion: weekend conferences should not exist, precisely because they force people to sacrifice their personal lives.
The second issue is the question of disparate impact on women. This is not relevant. Parents are responsible for organizing childcare, not conference organizers. My wife attended a couple of conferences when we had a baby at home. Guess what, wow, I took care of the baby. That's what parents do.
Re: (Score:2)
There are two issues here, and they need to be looked at separately.
The first issue is scheduling conferences on weekends. Is that a good thing, because the conferences have less impact on your work? Or is it a bad thing, because the conferences take away from your personal time? This issue applies to anyone, not just to women. Personal opinion: weekend conferences should not exist, precisely because they force people to sacrifice their personal lives.
If a person demand that their workweek ends on Friday at 5:00 PM exactly, and have no interactions with work until 8:00 AM Monday morning, with exactly 1 hour off from 12 to 1 PM and a 15 minute break at 10 AM and 3 PM, there are many options for them to never have work interfere with their requirements.
I've always done what I need to do, when I need to do it. Sometimes that means getting up to go to work early, and staying late, and sometimes it involves weekend work. Sometimes on travel, I work weekend
Re: (Score:2)
That's what parents do.
Well, no, it isn't and that's the point. You do (good for you!) but are you really not aware that you are in a minority?
https://www.pewresearch.org/sh... [pewresearch.org]
The second issue is the question of disparate impact on women. This is not relevant.
It is. It's a shitty choice that has a disparate effect on one group because of other shitty choices other people make. That's another way in which weekend conferences suck.
Zoning Strikes Again! (Score:2)
If conferences have to book 3 years out then demand outstrips supply and profit is being left on the table by people who would otherwise build more conference centers.
When the market seems to shun profit it's a guarantee that there's government interference somewhere.
These are usually Zoning/Planning boards denying building permits.
So now we know they have a disparate deleterious effect on women.
This is illegal and unconstitutional.
Re: (Score:3)
If conferences have to book 3 years out then demand outstrips supply and profit is being left on the table by people who would otherwise build more conference centers.
No, profit is not being "left on the table".
Building more conference centers would mean that more of the time the space is being unused, and there would be less profit, not more.
If you're willing to take whatever week the facility happens to be unutilized, you can plan a conference with less than three years. If you want to be able to pick your date in advance, though, you want to schedule well in advance, so you get the week you want and don't discover the Moose convention has booked the space you want o
A day of rest? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm an atheist and don't have a lot of patience for organized religion. That said, I think our society was the better for having Sunday as a 'day of rest', and I think we should bring it back. I get that there will always be necessary exceptions, and that there will be some people working every day of the week.
But really, do we need the expectation of most of us being available for work every single day? Wouldn't it be better for there to be a general expectation that there's one day of the week that we can mostly share, as a society, as a day away from work? Won't business and research still get done if most people have a common day off?
I remember a time when most stores and businesses were closed on Sundays. It was sometimes inconvenient, but mostly it was restful; and given that both my parents worked in retail, I now see those days as a blessing. Maybe we could bring that back? Maybe the perceived loss of 'productivity' would be made up for and them some by having a regular day on which earning a living was mostly put aside in favour of being with family and friends, and in favour of taking a fucking break?
Surely one day per week of "humans being" instead of "humans doing" would benefit us all, including the researchers in TFS.
Child-friendly conferences as a solution? (Score:2)
My mother is a physicist, specializing in magnetic phenomena in amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys. When I was a child (so, back in the USSR), she often took me to various conferences. The organizers knew that people would come with children and organized various child-friendly activities such as a ping-pong tournament, various outdoor games, lectures on the history of physics and astronomy, a competition to find particular stars in the night sky, and so on. I enjoyed these.
Time to start paying more OT and drop 996 work! (Score:2)
Time to start paying more OT and drop 996 work!
phd students need an union! (Score:2)
phd students need an union!
um, not really (Score:5, Interesting)
My credentials for the following opinion are that I have attended international scientific conferences for about 4 decades now, and have run my own international conference for 2 decades.
Conferences are typically scheduled so that the travel can span a Saturday night and therefore take advantage of lower airfares. That is the long and short of it. There are conferences that are scheduled in the middle of the week, and, usually, travel to them is much more expensive. I just attended one in Germany that was like that: Monday and Tuesday, and the tickets were, literally $1000 less for me if I arrived on Saturday rather than Sunday. So, mindful of my research dollars, I arrived Saturday and paid for an extra day in my hotel, saving most of a kilobuck. That recent example is typical for mid-week conferences, which I personally dislike.
The summary's assertion that weekends are the only times these venues are free does not jibe with my experience scheduling conferences in the least.
Furthermore, there's no one preventing conference attendees from not taking "rock star" flights, but arriving early like I just did in Germany. For my meetings, I actively encourage people to arrive a day early, because they usually come from all across the globe. When I go to a meeting, I *never* arrive the day it starts -- what happens if your flight is delayed or cancelled, as happens with non-trivial frequency?
As far as day care, my employer provides financial resources for extra expenses when attending conferences. Many meetings offer day care for a very reasonable rate as well. If you take NIH money to run your conference, you're required to provide day care options.
So, this posting sounds very much like a hit piece from someone with an axe to grind.
Re: (Score:2)
Following-up on that idea, I also dislike mid-week conferences because it means a much higher burden for my spouse, as they must now take the kids to and from school, lessons, afterschool sports, appointments, help with homework, etc, a responsibility that we normally share. Weekend conferences are much less of a family burden because there are fewer family responsibilities during the weekend. Furthermore, it is usually far easier to get help from family or friends on the weekends than during the week. S
Are they pro weekends or against weekends? (Score:2)
I can not parse from the incoherent summary if women are PRO weekend meetings or AGAINST weekend meetings - but I would certainly be against. Speaking as someone in the private sector you would not catch me dead at a conference on a weekend. It is bad enough when they start them on a Monday and expect people to travel on a weekend. People have personal lives. I let my workday intrude on my weekend as little as possible, I certainly won't make an effort to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
International meetings are often scheduled over weekends because that’s the only time venues have availability. Few cities have both suitable venues and enough hotel space to welcome 21,000 people from around the world, and even meetings for 3,000 researchers must be booked many years in advance.
I have been to many weekday conferences with over 21,000 people so the weekend is not the only time venues are available. By "few" I suppose they mean large cities as opposed to tiny towns because any major city should be able to hold 21,000 people during the week. Heck Las Vegas seems to only exist for gambling and hosting conferences. It is challenging l
The temptation is to laugh, but it's a good point. (Score:2)
Professional science shouldn't be an unapproachable citadel where only shaolin kung-fu monks can handle it. It should be your neighbor, someone on your basketball team, a girlfriend you can see more than once a month, a wife your children know as someone more important than the payroll administrator for their n
Who's weekend ? (Score:2)
Oh, it's all about women, is it? (Score:2)
And do any of the folks attending these weekend conferences get vacation time for attending? Or do they get paid in some manner for attending ABOVE being "salaried"?
Of course not. Their employers want them to attend, and therefore work, for free.
always better (Score:2)
Conferences are always a better way to find out about research -- the authors are more likely to actually explain what they found, rather than produce an opaque vomit of words in some paper. ...In any field.
Re: (Score:2)
I just realized I massively misinterpreted what they're saying the problem here is.
Re: (Score:3)
Not sure I understand either, they say this is about "inclusivity" then mention women mentioning family but if you aren't sexist and are inclusive, a man will be glad to take care of the kids during the week-end when the woman attends the conference. Anyway, not sure I understand either, maybe they are referring to same sex women couples? The world is getting to complicated for me to understand I guess, then you have families where parents are alternate genders etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Well I can see the problem here, but I think that this would be the same problem with any job that requires occasional long haul travel, neither confined to science, conferences or weekend schedules. And as you said, I'd expect it to be easier for weekend events as the other partner can take over care better, or it's easier to turn it into a family trip.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Well I can see the problem here, but I think that this would be the same problem with any job that requires occasional long haul travel, neither confined to science, conferences or weekend schedules. And as you said, I'd expect it to be easier for weekend events as the other partner can take over care better, or it's easier to turn it into a family trip.
Yes, and I have no idea how we are going to tailor work so that the woman works only 9-5, and never travels or has work other than Monday to Friday.
My work required occasional cross country travel, early mornings and late evenings, and sometimes dangerous work. And there were social events as well. Experiments almost always took longer than the standard 8 hour day.
That being said, there were women I worked with that had the same job title, but you couldn't get them to work a minute more than 40 hours p
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The world is getting to complicated for me to understand I guess, then you have families where parents are alternate genders etc.
In this case I think you're just making it complicated as this has nothing to do with same sex couples or any of the rest you bring up. Women still do far more of the child rearing in America https://www.pewresearch.org/so... [pewresearch.org] so no it's not as simple of just handing the kids to dad in many households. There are plenty of dads who this wouldnt fly for, never mind the social norm of the woman sacrificing for the family before the man does https://www.pewresearch.org/sh... [pewresearch.org] .
I mean, just a few months ago I was
Re: (Score:3)
I mean, just a few months ago I was standing behind two ladies in line at a store who were talking and one of them was telling the other about how she felt so bad having left on a business trip for a week because her husband had been "forced" to eat fast food all week while she was gone.
Then maybe husband should take a chef course, I did and even worked as a chef in French and Italian restaurants for a while, taking a break from IT. Came back to IT for the pay grade. I do most of the cooking and it doesn't impair my IT qualifications at all. Actually cooking is similar to programming to a given extent when you reach chef level and not following written recipes like a robot. I rarely look at recipes and if I do, I usually don't need to remember quantities and steps to take or look at them e
Re:This is backwards and awful. (Score:4, Informative)
You dont even need to do anything so drastic to learn how to cook, I just started cooking and eventually got reasonably good at it. It's not terribly hard to learn how to make oneself a reasonably good meal (although going your route I'm sure you'd easily do me better)
At any rate though, you're just a single anecdote meanwhile Pew is a pretty respected polling institution. In other words, you dont seem to be the norm.
Re: (Score:2)
Even a sodding sandwich makes a good meal and isn't fast food.
That dude is literally too incompetent to butter some bread and shove some stuff in the middle.
Re: (Score:2)
Then maybe husband should take a chef course,
He could but who's going to instigate the major cultural shift so that actually happens en masse?
Personally I think it's pretty shameful to be like that dude, but clearly lots of people have no shame about not being functional adults.
Actually cooking is similar to programming to a given extent when you reach chef level and not following written recipes like a robot. I rarely look at recipes and if I do, I usually don't need to remember quantities and steps to tak
Re:This is backwards and awful. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is backwards and awful. (Score:5, Interesting)
Over the last decade or so I have made it clear to my employers that I was not willing to travel over the weekend, and that I would prefer to not travel at all. I have had my employer tell me that this would likely make it more difficult for me to advance my career. Talking with my colleagues the amount of money that I am leaving on the table I have found that it is actually a pretty sizable amount. Not all of that difference is due to the fact that I value time spent with my family more than my career. I suspect that some of that is that is also due to my personality. I would rather work in a job that I am confident that I could easily replace than maximize my earnings. I am happy to spend time repairing my 1996 Honda Civic than waste money on a new vehicle that is more comfortable. I am happy to sacrifice salary for a situation that I feel is more stable and less stressful.
The difference is that I understand that these attitudes preclude me from a wide array of highly competitive fields. No matter how intelligent and conscientious I might be I am unlikely to ever succeed in the sort of corporate/academic political climate that rewards people that are willing to be married to their jobs. I am going to spend a couple of weeks every summer taking youth groups on an outdoor adventure no matter how much the business needs me. At 4:30 PM I am wrapping up my day, and only the most extreme of fires is going to get me to care about work. Put enough pressure on me, and I will simply find another job. With the experience and skills that I have, and the salary that I need, it has never taken me more than two days to find another job, even now that I am over 50. My employers have invariably been very happy with me, because I am willing and eager to teach people. I have any number of friends that I have mentored and who now make more money than I do. I still get calls from several with difficult questions to this day, and on a couple of occasions I have worked for someone that previously had been someone I had helped. They knew that I do good work, and that politically I am safe. I don't want their job. I just want to be able to do my job and to go home. They know that I am going to treat people with respect, and that I am happy to help people improve, even if it means that they get opportunities that I am not interested in taking for myself.
Perhaps we would have better society if we rigged politics so that no one could get ahead by be willing to sacrifice family time, but I am skeptical. The reality is that only so many people can be high powered corporate execs, partners at prestigious law firms, tenured academics at institutions of higher learning, and a wealth of other jobs that are highly competitive. If willingness to put in long hours is not the sacrifice that gets certain people ahead, what else is society going to use to choose who gets the most coveted positions? Does it just become a popularity contest, where the most beautiful people get the best jobs? Does it become even more a lottery where it doesn't matter how hard you work, just how lucky you are?
Personally, I think that idea is silly. It is 2023. If a woman (or man) wants to achieve the highest levels of professional success they should be well aware that this will take certain sacrifices. The idea that you can "have it all," is a fallacy. Every decision comes with built in opportunity costs. If you can't be successful as an academic without going to conferences over the weekend, then you are going to have to find a way go to conferences over a weekend. Shifting the conferences so that they happen during the week might appear to help on the surface, but it doesn't change the fact that you are still competing with people that are willing to give up their weekends to help further their career. The weekend conferences are really just a symptom. The underlying problem is that becoming an academic is a very competitive field that tends to be dominated by people that are willing to pay whatever price it takes to succeed. These people are going to find other ways to use their flexibility against you. After all, they are willing to sacrifice things that you simply aren't willing to sacrifice.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah exactly, they would pretend to be inclusive but admit acting as non-inclusive persons accepting non-inclusive way to do things and even acting in a non-inclusive manner, this doesn't make any sense. Either they are inclusive or not. In they they are inclusive and act accordingly then, the problem they mention doesn't exist. If only the husband is non-inclusive then convert him to inclusiveness or leave him for a man who is I guess. A non-inclusive man should be unacceptable to an inclusive woman.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Men have actively been part of raising their children for many decades now.
Some men actively participate in raising their children. Many do not, and in many cultures, most do not. Furthermore, the families where men participate equally in raising children are not that common. Of course, studies [pewresearch.org] show that men tend to have a favorable view of their participation in raising children and doing housework. That's part of the problem, that many men don't think there's a problem.
Re: (Score:3)
Men have actively been part of raising their children for many decades now.
Some men actively participate in raising their children. Many do not, and in many cultures, most do not.
So take up the problem with these other cultures.
Anyhow, What is your definition of some men? Must it be at 100 percent, lest we blame all men?
https://aspe.hhs.gov/reports/c... [hhs.gov] This report does not conform to your narrative, Take it up with them.
The heros of modern society, the single mother, will tend to skew your males are not involved perspective and it's pretty popular among the ladies https://singlemotherguide.com/... [singlemotherguide.com] Not having a male in the picture is the new norm. Sounds like progress since a
Re: Privileged women (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
So basically you are saying "if I have to suffer, so does everyone else." I hope that we can all strive to improve work conditions for ourselves and others, not drag everyone down to the person experiencing the most suffering.
No, he's saying that jobs have requirements. If one of the requirements is attending conferences and conferences are booked on weekends, and you don't want to do that then don't sign up for the job. He isn't being oppressed by working upgrade tasks on nights or weekends, that's the job so that the hundreds of other people who use those systems aren't inconvenienced by downtime during the work day because he decided he was only going to work weekday office hours.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, if there is something we don't like about the workplace it is impossible to change and we should just give up. That's why we all still work 60 hours, 6 days a week, cotton is grown by slaves, bosses are allowed to be at manual laborers, and my 8 year old is learning to write with his left hand because he lost his right in a die cutter working down at the iron plant.
Re: (Score:2)
ER docs don't have to work weeks AND weekends - whether they're men or women.
they should be forced to give you compdays off to (Score:2)
they should be forced to give you comp days off (that they can't take away) to make up for the weekend work. Or pay OT for the weekend work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> positively unconcerned about the family struggle of those who enjoy what they don't have
They are unconcerned about the people ensuring that the species avoids extinction beyond the current generation?
I can't think of anything more narcissistic.
Re: (Score:2)
Attributing the worst intentions to total strangers and not addressing the central point of what you're replying to is at least a close second, surely?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Do you know how many short, unattractive and sexually unfulfilled people who don't have families and live for their work are, to be polite, positively unconcerned about the family struggle of those who enjoy what they don't have (brought to you by those who'll RT "The Future Is Female" because it gets likes) or when the conference is on?
So Incels?
Having met a number of short and unattractive men who were still sexually fulfilled I think the extreme misogyny is the actual problem.
Nobody goes to bat when it's revealed a disproportionate amount of promotions go to the notably tall (regardless of gender).
Nobody considers getting cosmetic surgery to make themselves
less attractive for career reasons.
Those are both problems, but women are literally half the human race. The fact that their concerns are basically an afterthought in a ton of professions is a big concern.
Maybe if the doorknob for the executive suite was positioned so high that only a 6ft+ person could easily open your example would work a bit better.
Nobody treats the sexually unfullfilled as.. I mean, for fuck's sake they're called "incel" and treated as somewhere between a boogieman keyboard warrior and the safest imaginable punchline in a time of social approval of feminism.
I used to be sexually unfulfilled but I definitel
Re: (Score:2)
To prevent inconveniencing anyone wishing for a short version of what I considered the whole thing to be I picked "This is a selective anti-discrimination effort".
To prevent confusion on why I judged what was described as a selective anti-discrimination effort I stuck that in comment.
You somehow arrived at "Oh, someone wants my advice about incel culture" and I don't want to talk about that. You maniac.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think that a lot of men like losing their weekends attending and running these conferences, either. This seems like a diversity angle to get rid of something that's a bad practice in general.
Re: Women (Score:2)
I don't know. I like conferences on the week end. usually I skip monday and tuesday the week after.
Re: (Score:2)
They should be grateful for the privilege of being allowed to participate in this men's world. If you can't tell I'm rolling my eyes.
Men should demand better working conditions too. It actually says a lot that we accept things as they are, instead of trying to improve them.
Re: (Score:2)
Also as a childless man, weekend conferences are really fucking obnoxious.
It's work. Keep it to the week. I have an actual life which I would quite like to live.
Re: (Score:2)
Women: "we demand you include us in (x)" Also women: "we don't like (x), so we demand you change (x) to suit us."
That is a real problem. The present narrative is that the workplace change to accommodate every demand of women, and women do not have to change anything.
And that is quite related to the issue of women feeling ignored by men in the workplace. The problem is that this is unfixable by men.
The problem such as it is, professional men are intrinsically tied to their careers. It is the focus of their lives, and ties into their self worth. So when the Poundmetoo business came along, and a man could be termina
Re: (Score:2)
..And excluding that, babysitters. Hell, I'm fine with compensation for work trips (flight/travel costs, hotels), so if someone has to use a paid service and has a receipt, it would be asshattery if the workplace didn't cover that cost too!
No place that I've ever worked at, or I've ever even heard of, considers paying for a babysitters when you go to a conference a legitimate travel expense.
Re: this seems overblown (Score:2)
Yeah, my employer soesnt either. But maybe they should!