Lack of postdoc support and the leaky pipeline of women in science

At a recent Evolution meeting, there was a networking lunch for women that I attended. At my table we discussed ways scientific societies can help achieve gender equity and I've continued to reflect on this topic and provide some of those reflections below: 

It was not until I reached the stage of postdoc that the idea of this career stage as critical for female retention became worrisome. Admittedly, I've attended talks on the subject throughout grad school and it was always presented as a puzzle. Perhaps women become pre-occupied with family? Or lose interest in science? Now, looking at the general lack of support for postdocs, both men and women, it has become less of a puzzle and more of an obvious roadblock that still has lots of room for change. 

In order to advance one's career, we need publications, we need awards/recognition and we need to network usually though annual meetings. In thinking about the role of scientific societies, I have taken notice of (1) the general lack of support given to postdocs to attend these meetings, (2) the lack of postdoc awards given at these meetings and (3) the establishment of small grants to grad students that could be extended to postdocs (and an overall general lack of small grants open to postdocs). I see potential for some of the perks typically offered to graduate students to be extended to postdocs and help more with professional development at this crucial stage. Finally, although I focus here on the role of scientific societies in pushing for this change, I think institutions and departments should also think about all the benefits extended to grad students that can be extended to postdocs (even partially) as a way to increase opportunities for advancement for postdocs.

1) Funding to meetings - This year, I found myself for the first time in my academic career really struggling to find support to attend a meeting at all. This is probably not surprising since postdocs typically are more expensive [though this varies] and are sticking around longer. Therefore, it may be difficult for PIs struggling to fund the lab to offer support for postdocs to go to meetings - especially given the frequency of meetings that are internationally hosted. This is where I found myself and thus I applied for funding from the only place that it exists for postdocs - the societies that host these meetings. For the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE), they send 10 postdocs to meetings every year, which may seem small compared to the number that attend, but is better than zero. Although I applied for this travel award, I was not selected and ultimately chose to withdraw my abstract. Instead, I chose to use discretionary funds from my own award money (luckily I have this, that is not true for everyone) to attend the Evolution meetings, mainly because it seemed to be less expensive for travel, I was more likely to get a speaking opportunity, and I knew locals I could stay with to reduce housing costs.

Nonetheless, it troubled me that there was a general lack of formal sources through which I could attain funding for travel to a scientific meeting. As a grad student, both the department and university were all too eager to offer funds for student travel, whereas for postdocs, it seems the entire burden falls on the PI to offer travel support. My suggestion would be for societies to take on this burden modeling after SMBE and offer to send a select few postdocs to meetings. Additionally, if institutions and/or departments had a small pot of money to defray costs for meeting travel for postdocs, that would help a lot.

2) Awards at meetings - Despite no general travel awards for postdocs, the Evolution meetings (joint meeting between SSE: Society for Study of Evolution, ASN: American Society of Naturalists and SSB: Society of Systematic Biologists) provide a total of only five postdocs with award based travel money to the meeting through selective awards offered each year - the ASN young investigator award (4 selected annually) and SSE's Dobzhansky Prize (1 selected annually). However, both awards limit applicants to those within 3-4 years of getting their PhD. Considering many folks spend up to 6 years in the postdoc stage, those closest to getting an academic position are likely left in the cold for this money.

Apart from the awards that allow postdocs travel money and highlighted speaking positions, the poster awards at meetings are typically reserved for graduate students only. Though, an exception is again SMBE which has poster awards for postdocs. Though admittedly, there are fewer postdocs giving posters at the Evolution meetings since nearly everyone is given the opportunity to speak. Speaking positions at meetings are much more important at the postdoc stage and it can be quite difficult to be chosen as a speaker at the SMBE meetings. This brings up another possible award category - best postdoc talk. Though typically scientific societies give these to grad students. As a note, most of these student awards consist of a year's subscription to the journal, so the cost to societies to add these postdoc awards would be minimal, but the prestige would be great for career advancement of deserving postdocs. I think the biggest cost would be in time for judging as it is difficult to commit judges for these awards, but some pre-screening prior to the meeting could reduce the overall number of postdocs (and grad students) considered and thus the total number of judges needed. 

3) Small size grants - recently, SSE has started giving out small (~3k) grants to students awarded at the meetings, and this would be a great thing to extend to postdocs and to be offered by other societies. Specifically, as we prepare to start our own labs, it would be nice to receive just a bit of money to get that pilot data ready for our chalk talks and first grant applications. I think overall, the number of small pots of money open to grad students (e.g. Sigma Xi, DDIGs, etc.) is larger when compared to the same for postdocs. 

One might argue that postdocs generally make more money than graduate students, and thus shouldn't complain about lack of funds for conference travel and research. However, consider that the pay gap between grad students and postdocs is about 38% or 16k/yr (perspective, the gender pay gap is 22%). Further, when you consider an average of 2k for a scientific meeting (assuming postdocs are more likely to pay out of pocket with fewer alternatives) and that postdocs are more likely to pay for health care out of pocket or at least for their partners and/or dependents (~3-5k/yr), this pay gap doesn't seem so wide as to cater solely to graduate students thus excluding such an important group of young scientists from attending meetings or being considered for awards at those meetings.

I hope this post can be a jumping off point for where change can be focused. I know many are aware of the gender equity problem facing academia and the leaky pipeline that is typically associated with the postdoc stage, but I personally haven't seen any of these specific issues addressed before and thought it deserved some discussion. It's possible that these issues have been raised before by other postdocs, but that we only focus on the problems that are apparent to our particular stage (myself included) and not the broader picture of how we as an institution can be more inclusive. Finally, if you feel I have failed to recognized an important source of postdoc travel money, postdoc awards or small grants for postdocs, please add it to the comments so that we can help spread the word to others.