Discriminating against child care (or any care work, for that matter) in #academia is rampant. For one, I acknowledge that female colleagues bear the brunt of this discrimination and we should all strive to make our communities inclusive, care for all of their members as human beings, and create a meaningful work-life balance.
But, as much as I appreciate funders of research grants acknowledging the structural gender gap in providing flat-rate extensions for care work (looking at you my, fellow cis male colleagues, who use parental leave for travelling or writing books), we have to call them out for doing so on the cheap! You cannot create a meaningful change by playing a zero-sum game, simply redistributing existing funds from “dads” to “moms” (solely read in a binary, biological terms of sex).
As small as this group might be, there are parental care givers out there, who do not identify as moms. Who work part-time, who are single parents, who continue to take informal parental leave etc. etc.
@tillgrallert
This is an interesting topic, but I'm not sure academia can realistically do much more than redistribute existing money.
Certainly I've never heard of a situation where a gender equality actor said it had enough resources to fund all needs, so while academia can push society in general to spend more on equality that is not likely to give any immediate improvements.
So the more immediate question is rather how can academia change in a positive direction within existing constraints.
