• Learn to maximize your personal control over these common challenges.
• Learn about the issues you may face related to balancing academic work and family as a graduate woman in STEM.

“My relationship with my partner has become strained since I started working on my dissertation. I get home from the lab late at night and have to go in on most weekends.” 

“I am worried that my partner won’t be able to leave her job and follow me if I get a post-doc in a different city. I don’t know how much more our relationship can handle all of this.”

“I am a single parent with a 3-year-old. The daycare closes every night at 7 p.m., so sometimes I have to ask others to take over in the lab. My advisor recently mentioned to me that he was starting to doubt my commitment. Apparently putting my child in daycare 12 hours a day is not showing enough commitment.”

Can You Relate to These Women’s Experiences?

If you feel like you might have to choose between a career in science and a personal life, you are not alone. As you know, graduate school can be all-consuming, and the long work hours don’t end once you receive your PhD.  Finding a balance between career and personal responsibilities can be a challenge for all graduate students. In the CareerWISE Coach, we are especially attuned to the gender issues related to finding a balance between academic work and personal life.

Women report significantly less satisfaction than men with their department’s support for their efforts to better balance various commitments. Family responsibilities, and the assumption that women will have families, are known to impact women’s careers more than men’s careers (Etzkowitz et al., 2000; Kachaf, et al., 2015).

• Female doctoral student parents report spending more time on childcare and household responsibilities than male doctoral student parents (Mason & Goulden, 2006).
• Female doctoral students who finish their degrees late are more likely than early-finishers to report that child-care responsibilities showed them down (36% compared to 10%) (Maher, Ford, & Thompson, 2004).
• Many faculty expect women to wait until after they graduate to have children. Perhaps as a consequence, students who become pregnant are often afraid to share this news with their advisors.
• Even women without children might face a common stereotype that they are less committed to a career in science because it is assumed they will one day make family responsibilities a priority.
• If married, women in the science and engineering fields are more likely than men to be married to someone in the same field with an equally demanding career. As a result, women are less likely to have a partner who is available to help with non-work related responsibilities.
• Women’s career mobility declines once they marry, more so than for men.
• Due to gender stereotypes, women are presumed to not meet the “ideal worker” standard, which requires unlimited availability and commitment.
• Many girls and women decide against pursuing a career in STEM due to the perception that this career path does not provide sufficient flexibility for women with families.
• Women graduate students turn away from career aspirations in academic research for partner and family reasons. 
• For women across academic disciplines (but not as much for men), a successful academic career often means having to make difficult choices about family.

But I don’t have a family now

If you are single right now and without children (and are not planning to have children), you might be wondering how these stats relate to you. Issues with imbalance go beyond partners and children. You may be worrying about how to carve out time to visit your parents or make enough time to care for a sick relative, travel to a friend’s celebration, or even take care of your home and personal errands.

The reality is that gender stereotypes are ubiquitous regardless of whether they fit, now or in the future. Women generally experience more difficulty with balancing work and personal life for two reasons:  One, women continue to be viewed as disproportionately responsible for dependent care and domestic tasks. Two, women frequently feel the need to overwork to prove themselves in their settings.

Your experience will depend on many different factors in your environment, plus your unique perceptions and coping styles. The information and skill-building content found within the CareerWISE Coach is designed to help you maximize your personal control over balance issues and other common graduate school challenges.

Self-test

Which of the following best illustrates an issue related to balance for women in STEM programs

A female student neglects social activities outside of school in favor of spending more time conducting research, in order to “stay ahead.”?

• A. A female student neglects social activities outside of school in favor of spending more time conducting research, in order to “stay ahead.”
• B. A female student feels like she has to spend extra time preparing for an upcoming examination in one of her classes.
• C. A female student is concerned about what her advisor thinks about her proposal, and she is concerned that she hasn’t been devoting enough effort to it.
• D. Test
• E. Test 2

A is the correct answer,

Answers B and C reflect students’ feelings about how they are doing in their respective tasks, and while they do have to do with time, they don’t necessarily address expectations of work/life balance specific to women. Answer A speaks to the imbalance that can occur for female students, in feeling that they have to be more productive than their male counterparts in order to be considered for the same opportunities. Unfortunately, this is somewhat common, and it often causes female graduate students to neglect their lives outside of school.

Long hours and work-life imbalance are correlated with serious physical and mental health issues (Virtanen & Kivimäki, 2018; Vogel et al., 2012):

• Extended workdays (more than 50 hours/week) are associated with cardiovascular disease. 
• As the workday increases from 8 up to 16 hours, there is an exponential increase in accidents.
• Deteriorating performance on psycho-physiological tests and injuries are associated with longwork periods.
• Graduate students are more than six times as likely as the general population to experience depression and anxiety (Evans, et al., 2018). Learn more in the Mental Health and Wellness module.
• What you can do about it 

While it often seems impossible to find adequate balance, health and career experts offer the following suggestions:

Remember that you are only one person. Delegate or outsource as many non-academic responsibilities as possible.

Let go of perfectionism. The key to avoid burning out is to let go of perfectionism in graduate school. Differentiate between what is important (e.g., learning, productivity, networks) and what is less so (course grades). Find more information in Set Priorities.

Always keep your long-term goals in mind. This will help keep you motivated and able to decide on priorities at any given time.

Seek support from your partner. A partner who is supportive of your career and willing to share family responsibilities is equally, if not more, important than a supportive mentor.

Search out role models. Women in STEM who are mothers and dual-career couples who have been successful in STEM and at family formation can be valuable role models and mentors. 

Take advantage of family-friendly policies. Review the institutional policies and practices that may promote your career when interviewing and considering whether to accept a position in a particular laboratory or institution. Learn more in the Family Friendly Policies module.

Focus on the joys. Enjoy time with family and friends who bring richness to your life.

Unplug. Realize there are times when you have to shut off your laptop or phone and be in the moment.

Exercise and Meditate. Exercise and meditation are effective stress reducers. 

Limit time-wasting activities and people. Try to avoid or limit the many tempting distractions that are not productive or supportive.

While finding balance is likely a challenge you will experience during your doctoral journey, the good news is that balance is possible! The first steps are to recognize the challenge and create accountability structures where they may be lacking.

Bernstein, B. L., & Russo, N. F. (2007).  Career paths and family in the academy:  Progress and challenges.  In M. A. Paludi & P. E. Neidermeyer (Eds.) Work, life, and family imbalance:  How to level the playing field.  [pp. 89-119] Westport, CN:  Praeger Press.

Brus, C.P. (2006), Seeking balance in graduate school: A realistic expectation or a dangerous dilemma? New Directions for Student Services, 115, 31-45. https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.214

Dabney, K. P., & Tai, R. H. (2013). Female physicist doctoral experiences. Physical Review Special Topics-Physics Education Research, 9(1), 010115.  https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevstper.9.010115 

Espinoza, R. (2010). The good daughter dilemma: Latinas managing family and school demands. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 9(4), 317–330. https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192710380919

Evans, T. M., Bira, L., Gastelum, J. B., Weiss, L. T., & Vanderford, N. L. (2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology, 36(3), 282–284. https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4089

Goulden, M., Mason, M. A., & Frasch, K. (2011). Keeping women in the science pipeline. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 638(1), 141-162.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716211416925 

Kachchaf, R., Ko, L., Hodari, A., & Ong, M. (2015). Career-life balance for women of color: experiences in science and engineering academia. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 8(3), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039068

Kivimäki, M., & Kawachi, I. (2015). Work stress as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Current Cardiology Reports, 17(9), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-015-0630-8 

Maher, M. A., Ford, M. E., & Thompson, C. M. (2004). Degree progress of women doctoral students: Factors that constrain, facilitate, and differentiate. The Review of Higher Education, 27(3), 385-408.   https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2004.0003 

Mason, M., & Goulden, M. (2002). Do babies matter? The effect of family formation on the lifelong careers of academic men and women. Academe, 88(6), 21-27. https://doi.org/10.2307/40252436 

Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2019). Toward understanding factors salient to doctoral students’ persistence: The development and preliminary validation of the Doctoral Academic-Family Integration Inventory. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 14(1), 237-258.  https://doi.org/10.28945/4248

Tan-Wilson, A., & Stamp, N. (2015). College students’ views of work-life balance in STEM research careers: Addressing negative preconceptions. CBE Life Sciences Education, 14(3), es5–. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.14-11-0210  

Thoman, S. E., Stephens, A. K., & Robnett, R. D. (2021). “Squeezing the life out of each day”: Emerging adult women’s work-family expectations in STEM. Emerging Adulthood. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696821990910 

Virtanen, M., & Kivimäki, M. (2018). Long working hours and risk of cardiovascular disease. Current Cardiology Reports, 20(11), 1-7.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11886-018-1049-9 

Vogel, M., Braungardt, T., Meyer, W. et al. (2012). The effects of shift work on physical and mental health. Journal of Neural Transmission,119, 1121–1132.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-012-0800-4 

Ward, K., & Wolf-Wendel, L. (2012). Academic motherhood: How faculty manage work and family. Rutgers University Press. 

Wilkins-Yel, K. G., Bekki, J.M., Arnold, A.C., Bernstein, B. L., Coley, C.E., Natarajan, M. W., & Randall, A.K. (2021). Understanding the impact of personal challenges and advisor support on STEM persistence among graduate women of color. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Advance online publication.. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe000023

Getting Married During Graduate School
The decision to get married in graduate school

Special Characteristics of Your Advisor and Struggling with Life Balance Issues
Advisor’s experiences encourage well-informed career decisions

Looking Back on Raising Kids While Working
Explains the role children play in career choices

Words of Wisdom: Dr. Rosser
The importance of remaining passionate and remembering that the PhD opens doors

I Get By with a Little Help from My Mother in Law
The importance of a supportive extended family in helping to balance school and children

Sources of Support
The importance of a supportive network of colleagues

Changing the System vs. Focusing on Cultural Barriers for Women
Suggestions for how to increase women’s participation in science with an emphasis on policy change

The Upside to Children Prior to a Tenure Track Position
Explains the choice to have children in graduate school

Words of Wisdom: Dr. Lin
How to seek support and not be shy in asking for help

Two Different Worlds: School Without Kids and Working with Kids
Being married in graduate school and having children as a faculty member