PhDSciNet Interview 11: Physiological Challenges Facing Women Pursuing PhDs

Historical interview: the following preserves the research experiences and personal views expressed in the original manuscript.

From matriarchal societies to patriarchy, and then to today’s supposed “equality between men and women,” we are still discussing women’s ideal place in the family and society. In an age dominated by intellectual work, physiological differences between men and women may seem insignificant, yet they continue to provide a purported justification for prejudice and even discrimination: maternity leave, childcare, and even menstruation can become reasons to exclude women from the workplace. Women pursuing PhDs can carry solvents, repair instruments, care for mice, and work hard without complaint in the laboratory, but they must also face physiological challenges beyond their control. In this interview, we discuss those challenges.

Introducing this issue’s guests:

Doreen: PhD graduate working at a state-owned enterprise. Supervisor: female; laboratory male-to-female ratio: 1:1.

Calorie: postdoctoral researcher. Supervisor: female; laboratory male-to-female ratio: 1:1.

Cotton Candy: PhD student. Supervisor: male; laboratory male-to-female ratio: 1:1.2.

Fantuan: PhD student. Supervisor: male; laboratory male-to-female ratio: 4:1.

Everyday physiological challenges for women pursuing PhDs

Question 01: Did you keep a regular daily routine during your PhD? How did you maintain your physical energy?

Doreen: during my PhD, especially in the final year or two before graduation, I usually worked until one or two in the morning. By the time I returned to my dormitory, it was around two, and I woke at nine or ten the next day. That had become my body clock. Still, I think you need to make at least a rough exercise plan for yourself, both to maintain physical energy and to keep a good state of mind.

Calorie: I use sleep to restore my physical energy. Our white colleagues generally seem more conscious of exercise than we are. The white colleagues in our group run or cycle very regularly to keep fit.

Cotton Candy: I do not normally exercise either, but I find that long periods at a desk make my whole body uncomfortable. I generally rely on doing experiments to keep myself in a physical state that feels comfortable to me. Diet matters too: eating better makes me feel full of energy. I also often watch some light entertainment shows, which leave me feeling happier. Of course, my mood is even better when my experiments go well.

Fantuan: I spend almost all my experimental work standing and rarely sit. On an intense day, I can stand for ten hours. I think eating normally, keeping a cheerful mood every day, and sleeping well can maintain your energy at a reasonably good level.

Personally, I feel exhausted whenever I leave the laboratory. I do not want to talk; I just want to collapse somewhere. I have no energy or physical stamina left to exercise.

Calorie: in that situation, you could try doing something completely different that uses another part of your brain. For example, after coming back from experiments, you could do an arithmetic problem. Switching to a completely different area might make rest more effective; it does not necessarily have to involve physical exercise.

[A small reminder: PhD study is demanding, so make an effort to relax both physically and mentally!]

Question 02: If your period starts while you are doing experiments, how do you usually get through it?

Doreen: my period has always been a problem for me. I basically have to spend more than half a day in bed, and it greatly affects my normal life and studies.

Calorie: this might sound like a humblebrag, but I have no such problem. I am actually even more efficient during my period and feel physically and mentally comfortable.

Cotton Candy: if it is within what I can tolerate, I choose to go to the laboratory. On the occasional day when I feel particularly unwell, I stay home.

Fantuan: I do have period pain. But when I immerse myself completely in an experiment, it does not really interfere and I forget about it. Once I get home and lie down, though, I become a different person.

[Period pain is not being dramatic: nearly 15% of women suffer severely from menstrual pain. Whatever our gender, we should care about the women around us!]

Women pursuing PhDs: to have children or not?

Question 03: Have you or other women pursuing PhDs around you had children?

Doreen: no woman pursuing a PhD in my research group had a child during that time. People generally finish a PhD at around twenty-seven to thirty, which certainly overlaps with what is considered the best time for marriage and childbirth. Most women pursuing PhDs around us have still put completing their research first.

There are two reasons. One is that women pursuing PhDs already find it relatively difficult to find a partner. Several junior women in my group are single, so having children is even further away. Others have a partner but no children, as was the case for me. At the time, I still felt that completing my research was my first priority. I was not fully prepared to have a child; psychologically, I still felt like a child myself.

Calorie: for us personally, that overlap is real. During the prime years for research, most men and women are unmarried and do not have children, so there is not a great difference between them. Once you have a child, though, you may have far less control over your time.

I know a senior student who had a child during her PhD. Every afternoon, she set an alarm to leave the laboratory at exactly 4:30 to pick up her child. She told us that after having a child, her schedule was entirely dictated by the child. Some of my current colleagues have recently had children too. They can only work after the child falls asleep, with almost no freedom to arrange their own time, and have only short periods in which to concentrate on work. Men face this problem as well: once they have a family, they also have less control over their time. Women may simply spend more time caring for children, making the challenge greater.

Cotton Candy: there are slightly more women in our laboratory, and several women around me had children during their PhDs, so to me it seems quite normal. It really depends on your personal choices and what you want for your career and family. If your supervisor permits it and you plan for it yourself, I think choosing to have a child is a personal decision. You do have to consider the difficulties that decision may create for your research and career, but if you are prepared, I think it remains your own choice.

Fantuan: I would like to add something about control over your time: this is also about personal responsibility. For example, a senior student in my group has a dog that goes to daycare. He gets up at seven in the morning and has to leave the laboratory at four in the afternoon to take the dog to and from daycare. In other words, once you have a responsibility or an obligation to do something, you cannot arrange your time entirely freely. The next question is whether you can still do your job well under those constraints. I think that is something you need to learn.

To comply or not to comply?

Question 04: Are we being pushed, without noticing it, into complying with workplace demands?

Doreen: I think that happens to some extent. There are two sides to it. On one side, we have higher aspirations for our research; the understanding I developed of myself during my PhD had already made me naturally lean toward my career.

Cotton Candy: let me briefly explain my supervisor’s situation. He is around sixty, an established tenured professor, and wants to help students as much as he can. He has therefore been accepting when several women in our group have had children during their PhDs. A younger supervisor would certainly be unhappy if a PhD student chose to have a child, because it would inevitably affect the research schedule and progress of the whole project. I also think another important reason is that the systems at Western universities are relatively well developed. For example, PhD students who are going to have children can temporarily change their status to inactive, take normal maternity leave, and receive certain forms of university assistance. These are good measures.

Then again, the women pursuing PhDs whom we have just discussed were all over thirty-three when they had children, so they certainly had plans for their lives and families. I think they made those decisions after thinking them through clearly themselves. Their supervisors, of course, also chose to support them.

Doreen: I think those PhD students in your group are relatively fortunate. Most supervisors in China today are in their forties, or even in their thirties as early-career faculty. If you choose to have a child, I think supervisors at that stage may find it difficult to cope.

Calorie: your supervisor’s situation is certainly unusual. Most are not so easygoing. The senior student I knew who had a child during her PhD faced considerable dissatisfaction from her supervisor, who kept urging her to come back quickly and finish the project. Your supervisor is older, and perhaps no longer feels the same urgency in his career, so it really is an uncommon situation.

Cotton Candy: my personal view is still that, as adults, we must think these decisions through before making them and plan our research responsibilities and family lives sensibly.

[In the interview, we found that the participants generally accepted ideas such as “women pursuing PhDs need their supervisor’s permission to have a child,” “a decision to have a child requires first understanding the risks one must bear,” and “a woman PhD student having a child does represent a loss for the supervisor.” When we adjust ourselves within an existing, taken-for-granted structure to seek the option with the least loss, who can offer us better choices?]

Question 05: What are the attitudes of the people around you?

Cotton Candy: my parents have never explicitly pressed me to marry, because I have always made many decisions myself. I think they probably believe I know what I am doing and have therefore left that entirely to me.

Calorie: quite a few people around us are pressured by their families during their PhDs. Their relatives think the twenties may be the best age to have a child; once they are older, relatives worry about an older maternal age.

Question 06: Amid the conflict between marriage and childbirth on one side and workplace demands on the other, where is a woman’s own choice about having children?

Calorie: nothing is entirely within our own control. In a constrained environment, our first reaction is sometimes resistance or disagreement. When older relatives pressure them to marry and have children, for example, many women may initially think, “This is my own business, and the world does not depend on me alone having a child.” Yet if an employer also imposes demands, saying you need to spend more time working over the next few years, we then feel that reproductive rights are our own business and such demands are wrong, unreasonable, and unlawful.

What I mean is that the pressure we bear is not simply the pressure others put on us. It may also involve ideas and choices arising from our own resistance and rebelliousness that are not entirely rational. Not everyone can choose independently and take responsibility for that choice. Some women in this situation may have no room to think about what freedom in marriage and reproduction actually means to them. That environment may create this kind of conflict for some women.

Doreen: to me, personal choice means selecting the more important concern among conflicting ones. In my case, if I had had a child during my PhD, my supervisor would certainly have been unhappy. But I also did not particularly want to have a child during my PhD. For me, then, the conflict was not especially intense, and I naturally chose not to have a child and instead to complete my doctorate normally. It is not that nobody cares about personal choice; you have to consider your own concerns alongside those of your supervisor and decide which conflict feels more pressing.

Cotton Candy: I think many women place themselves within society’s mainstream values. I do not know why, but they resist somewhat on the one hand while still choosing to comply on the other. I find that a very contradictory phenomenon.

Calorie: it really is difficult. You may think it is a personal choice, but pressure from those around you cannot leave you entirely unaffected. Classmates and friends who have moved a step ahead also create invisible pressure. There may be a great difference between your surroundings and your own beliefs.

About my choice

[For women pursuing PhDs who face heavy physical and psychological pressure as well as career risks, to have a child or not really is a question.]

Question 07: Why did I choose not to have a child during my PhD?

Doreen: first, during my PhD I still felt psychologically like a child and did not think I was capable of raising one. Second, in the period just after graduation, I also considered possible effects of exposure to chemicals during my PhD. My husband had similar thoughts at the time, so I did not feel much pressure and naturally chose not to have a child.

Medical content check: autism is a neurodevelopmental condition involving multiple genetic, biological, and environmental factors. Personal stories do not establish that emotional fluctuations during pregnancy cause autism and cannot justify blaming the mother; the original interview retains the speaker’s uncertainty about that hearsay.

Fantuan: I have read some stories, though I do not know whether they are scientifically sound, suggesting that strong emotional fluctuations during pregnancy might affect a child’s later personality. A child might become autistic, although those stories may simply be individual cases.

Doreen: I think the pressure during a PhD is considerable, but it may become even greater once you start working. You may miss what you consider the best time to have a child.

Question 08: Do science and engineering PhD students worry that pregnancy during experimental work might affect their child?

Doreen: I think that concern certainly exists. My sister-in-law and my sister did not study chemistry, but even they wondered whether their furniture might be unsuitable or whether formaldehyde could be a problem. That concern is even more understandable for people like us, who directly encounter chemicals.

Cotton Candy: I have the same concerns, but if you have to come into contact with those substances or solvents, I think you must take protective measures, check their toxicity, and understand them thoroughly. The senior students in our laboratory continued working there until the final month or two of pregnancy, and their children were quite healthy.

Calorie: a classmate of mine worked at a chemical company. When she reported her pregnancy at around four months, the company no longer allowed her to do experiments.

Doreen: state-owned enterprises provide protections for women. Our safety training always mentions that pregnant women must not undertake work involving potentially harmful factors, such as prolonged standing, exposure to toxic chemicals, or even certain radiation sources. The company proactively asks you to avoid that kind of work.

Question 09: In that situation, might the company say that, because you temporarily cannot perform frontline work, it will change your position and pay?

Doreen: I have not encountered that so far. But someone certainly needs to take over your duties during maternity leave. Sometimes, when you return, someone else may already have taken your position and you may have to move to another one. That is possible too.

In these interviews, we found that the women pursuing PhDs did not complain much about their circumstances. They were all trying hard to work within the world’s rules and find the best arrangement available. But are those rules really reasonable, or have we lived within them for so long that we no longer notice their unfairness?

Finally, we want to say that faint, occasional sighs will not be heard. Different voices, more questioning, and active demands are what can bring greater fairness and protection to women and to everyone. We hope universities and society will provide a warmer environment that allows women to make genuinely free choices.

PhD participants: Doreen, Calorie, Cotton Candy, Fantuan

Editor: Honey Peach Oolong

Interview: Fantuan

Audio recording: Huangyuan Wandou (黄圆豌豆)

Additional sources checked

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Autism spectrum disorder

US National Institute of Mental Health: Autism spectrum disorder