Industry Becomes More Hospitable To The Scientist As New Mother

The challenge of successfully combining the demands of family and career may be easing for women scientists in industry. With increasing numbers of women opting to work in private- sector research laboratories--and in the wake of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993--many firms have revamped maternity-leave policies to better accommodate new parenthood and the transition back to work. The recently enacted federal law ensures workers in companies with 50 or more employees 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave with continuing health benefits to enable them to care for a new child or an ill family member--or for themselves, should they be the ones to fall sick. Genetics Institute, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.: 8 weeks' paid maternity lveave; then some combination of vacation and unpaid leave 3 days' paternity leave Adoption assistance program "Parents in a Pinch" emergency day care Child-care reimbursement for overnight company travel Genzyme Corp., Cambridge, Mass.: 8 weeks' paid leave 4 addition weeks' unpaid or vacation time, plus 12 more weeks unpaid Scios Nova Corp., Mountain View, Calif.: 90 days' leave at full salary on doctor's recommendation 1-2 months' additional leave, without pay Systemix Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.: 6-10 paid weeks with a doctor's note 6 additional weeks at 75 percent salary Syntex Corp., Palo Alto, Calif. Up to 5 months' paid leave Adoption aid up to $5,000 Up to 182 sick-child days per year "Awareness of the problem is increasing," says Arlene Johnson, vice president of the Families and Work Institute in New York, referring to the difficulties of combining career and family. The institute is a nonprofit research-and-consulting organization that assists companies in helping their employees balance family and work. "Employers are more motivated than ever before, and are really interested in making the workplace better." Despite such progress in recent years as more flexible leave policies and day-care assistance, however, many women scientists who are also new mothers still find themselves caught between the duties of home and lab. The reasons are both biological and sociological. "We can argue that this is the '90s, and men share responsibility for children, but it does tend to fall to the woman, in terms of being the primary caregiver," comments Barbara Covel, senior director of human resources at Genetics Institute Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., a biotechnology firm where 42, or 25 percent, of the 170 Ph.D., M.D., and D.V.M. scientists are women. Supporting Covel's observation is a study by Anne Preston, an associate professor of management and policy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. In her report, "A Study of Occupational Departure of Employees in the Natural Sciences and Engineering" (New York, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 1993), Covel finds that women do two-thirds of the child and household care, even when spouses are at the same income and educational levels. The sociological symbiosis between mother and child is persistently tighter than that between a father and child, according to the report. Women Choose Industry A primary reason companies are adopting maternity-leave policies is that growing numbers of women scientists are seeking work in industry. According to the National Research Council, between 1979 and 1989, while the number of female science and engineering Ph.D.'s in academia doubled, it quadrupled in business. This trend, industry observers note, is reflected strongly in the life sciences. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that a third of women scientists working outside academia are in some aspect of the life sciences. And in many biotech companies, women scientists equal or outnumber men. The industrial influx supports a growing perception among researchers that companies are becoming hospitable to scientists, especially women, according to Catherine Didion, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Association for Women in Science (AWIS). "Scientists are realizing that academia doesn't have the employment opportunities of the past," Didion observes. Industry is responding to needs of new mothers not only because there are more of them, but also because most women-- regardless of current parental status--consider the issue of balancing parenting and career goals of great importance, according to a study by Johnson at the Families and Work Institute. "A major issue for women is motherhood--whether a woman actually is a mother or not," Johnson says. Even young women worry about how they will someday manage career and motherhood, she explains. Most company policies count maternity as a form of disability and offer full or partial pay for a portion, or sometimes all, of the 12-week period stipulated by the new federal law. "Under the purview of the Family and Medical Leave Act, a birth mother or adoptive mother has 12 weeks [of leave]," reports Debra Canner, director of human resources at Genzyme Corp. in Cambridge, Mass. "Within those 12 weeks, the first eight weeks for birth or adoptive mothers are paid [at Genzyme], because it is considered part of disability. The next four weeks are unpaid, or people can use vacation time against it." In addition to the eight weeks at full pay and four weeks' unpaid leave or vacation, Genzyme allows 12 more weeks of unpaid child-rearing leave if a new parent wishes. Under the policy at Scios Nova Corp., a pharmaceutical firm in Mountain View, Calif., a new mother can take 90 days at full salary on a doctor's recommendation, followed by up to another two months without pay. Genetics Institute, which provides eight weeks of paid maternity leave plus some combination of vacation and unpaid leave, also allows three days of paid paternity leave that a father may take at any time during the child's first three months of life. Six weeks of maternity leave, the most common amount provided by companies nowadays, is an improvement over the situation that prevailed not very many years ago, stresses Geraldine Henwood, chief executive officer of Bio-Pharm Clinical Services Inc. in Blue Bell, Pa. Henwood founded the company-- which assists pharmaceutical and biotech companies in preparing potential products for clinical trials--in 1985, following many years as a researcher at a major pharmaceutical company. Today, Bio-Pharm's maternity policy offers full pay for six weeks, but with additional flexibility built into the picture. "Childbirth is not the same experience for every woman, nor even at different times for the same woman," Henwood points out. Policies at Bio-Pharm and many other companies allow for such common complications as toxemia (requiring rest before the birth), postpartum infection, and recovery from a cesarean section, which typically tacks an extra two weeks onto a worker's absence. One company with a long history of family-oriented policies is Syntex Corp. in Palo Alto, Calif. This pharmaceutical company offered on-site day care as far back as 1947 in Mexico City, where it was founded to commercialize progesterone compounds in the roots of vines growing in the jungle. When oral contraceptives were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, the once-small company rapidly achieved multinational status and retained its day-care and liberal leave policies. Today the firm's unusually generous package includes on-site day care, childbirth leave of up to five months with full pay, and, in some circumstances, up to 182 sick-child days per year. While different companies may offer more or less generous maternity policies, a woman's personal experience in returning to work depends largely upon the attitude of her immediate supervisor, according to many women. For example, management may not be accommodating to scheduling problems involving day care, or be willing to postpone lab meetings when a child is sick. "A company can offer any formal program, but nothing replaces the support of local management," comments Genetics Institute's Covel. "The rest is window-dressing, rhetoric, if there's no support." This area is one where societal attitudes and beliefs play pivotal roles, according to Didion at AWIS. "We tend to look at science as being objective, but it has assumptions and biases from cultural expectations," Didion says. "How much leverage and support these policies are given- -for time-sharing, child care, maternity leave--is predicated on one's immediate supervisor's approval. "We thought in the past we could legislate such changes," she adds, "but that's not the case. There have to be behavioral changes." Whatever the attitudes of management, many new scientist- mothers also place pressure on themselves to return to work as quickly as possible following maternity leave. Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, director of clinical affairs at Genzyme, for example, took eight weeks off at full pay and an additional four weeks at 80 percent salary following the birth of her daughter, Mackenzie, in February. But it wasn't as if she'd vanished during that time. "I mostly kept in touch by phone," Fitzpatrick says. "My two clinical research associates were in charge, and they maintained contact with me. They visited me, and we'd touch base, set priorities. I also went into work two or three times, which may have been more social than work-related, and they sent me mail once a week." Similarly, Michelle Palmer, a principal scientist for small- molecule drug discovery at Genetics Institute, visited the lab often during her eight weeks of maternity leave after daughter Katherine was born last year. "It was self-imposed," Palmer says. "I wanted to stay up to date, and I have a large group working for me that wasn't totally independent. They needed some input, and I live close by." One reason women often return to work sooner than maternity- leave policy allows is a cultural perception that motherhood somehow makes a woman a less-serious scientist. But at many companies, women scientists are beginning to make up larger percentages of professional staffs, and more of them are proving that accommodating new parenthood is not the functional equivalent, for employers, of providing additional vacation time. In fact, Johnson and Didion both say that the discipline and priority-setting skills that come with an expanding family have very positive effects on professional dedication. "We find that part-time working mothers are many times more productive than full-time workers, because they want to get things done," notes Covel. "Working moms are a great way to staff very important jobs. They are very serious, both from a financial standpoint and professionally; they are intellectually driven." Didion sums up best the changing view of the scientist-mother: "A person can have a fulfilling life outside the laboratory and still be a damned good scientist." Ricki Lewis, a freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y., writes textbooks and has three young daughters.

Industry Becomes More Hospitable To The Scientist As New Mother

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