Baby Steps at Harvard
Topic: The Summers Saga
So a couple of days ago, I received an interesting email from Harvard, with the heading Harvard's Family Care Survey. It would seem that Harvard is attempting to address criticism about Larry Summer's comments (right) regarding women and science. As mentioned previously, one of the biggest conflicts for many women (and many men) is between work and raising a family. Mighty Harvard, relying on it's reputation, has never felt the need to offer anything to little puny postdocs. Let's face the facts ... if Harvard mandated that all postdocs must be chained to their bench, and whipped at regular intervals, there would still be postdocs applying to Harvard labs.

But Larry's gaffe changed all that.

So now Harvard cares about puny postdocs. So much so, that there is a new Harvard sponsored Child Care scholarship. From another email I quote:

Harvard Medical School’s Child Care Scholarship Program provides assistance to HMS and HSDM employees to help offset the costs of childcare for working parents. Scholarships range from $1000.00 to $5000.00 and are awarded to eligible faculty, post docs, and staff ...

All this reminds me of my days at Columbia when the graduate student threatened to unionize. All of a sudden Columbia found a heart and started offering pay raises and scholarships, and with a wink declared we're so nice to you, why would you ever want to join some evil union?

In the end things move not through capitalistic competition, but through fluid dynamics (the higher the pressure, the more stuff you can squirt out.)

Previously:
Sigma Xi Postdoc Survey.
Women and Science stats1.
Women and Science stats2.