Paula Silvén hopes that motherhood and pregnancy discrimination will no longer hinder women’s careers in academia.
International Women’s Day is fast approaching and rather than sit around waiting for roses, this is the time to act (at least with a keyboard) and write about a subject that is all too often swept under the rug: discrimination based on pregnancy and gender in the academic world. But surely there can’t be any discrimination related to pregnancy and gender in the civilised world of academia!?
In Finland, more than 50% of researchers are women, but the higher we climb up the academic career ladder, the more dramatically the share of women drops. Fewer than 40% of professors are women [1]. At what point do the gender scissors snap, causing the career development of men and women in academia to diverge? Supported by studies [2,3,4,5], I dare to claim that becoming a mother is one factor affecting this phenomenon.
Already based on conversations in the break room, we know that this is not just a matter of pregnancy discrimination but rather a much larger structural problem. As women bear the primary responsibility for the care of children, they find themselves in a less favourable position in terms of their careers.
I was on parental leave from last June until the end of the year. Leave is, however, a relative concept, since, due to the structures prevalent in the academic world, I still found myself working on article editing and funding applications. I would work when the baby was sleeping, even though that was precisely the time I should have been resting myself. This is by no means the fault of my colleagues who were working on the same projects, since it was my personal decision to work during my parental leave.
The core of the problem is the question as to why I was afraid to say no to work and to simply be all-in on the parental leave. Why did I feel like if I didn’t work, I wouldn’t advance?
When precarity is the ‘normal state’ of the sector, it makes it more difficult to detect pregnancy discrimination.
Universities are one of the most insecure work environments, as it’s estimated that more than 70% of employees have a fixed-term employment contract [6]. For early career researchers in particular, this often means that we feel we have to continuously do more work than is good for our mental health. [7] And if you have a family, the burden grows even further. There is another trap hiding within this structure: When precarity is the ‘normal state’ for the sector, it makes it more difficult to detect pregnancy discrimination.
I have discussed the feelings that motherhood and academic work raise many times with my colleagues. These discussions nearly always lead to the sharing of different experiences of direct or indirect discrimination. Here are a few examples:
My friend got a doctoral research position while she was pregnant. The last date to begin the work was during her parental leave, but she was not given any leeway with regards to the date. Therefore, she lost a paying faculty job because she had a baby.
Another acquaintance began her dissertation work in a new ambitious doctoral pilot and received three years of guaranteed funding. She became pregnant in the middle of the pilot and asked whether she could get an extension in the funding for this reason. She couldn’t. The pilot moved relentlessly forward and neither her pregnancy or parental leave had any impact on the amount of the funding. The message was to get a result or get out!
One of my friends was working in university administration, and a few years ago, she took parental leave from her job. Her supervisor called her several times during the leave to ask whether she was definitely returning to work or whether she was intending to have another baby immediately.
One researcher had worked for two years in a project in which she had focused on a specific theme. She had gathered materials for the theme and analysed them. When she returned from her parental leave, she found out that an article had been written on the materials she gathered but that she wasn’t asked to be part of the group that wrote the article.
In the academic world, everyone knows that the article process can easily take several years. So there was no justification for leaving her out of the writing process just because of her parental leave. Based on the Vancouver recommendations in the guidelines for Agreeing on Authorship drafted by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK [8], the recommendation is for the researcher to be offered the possibility to be included in the authorship if they have been involved in gathering the relevant materials. Motherhood cannot be a reason to shut women out of these processes. If you, as a project manager or similar, are now feeling a twinge of guilt, that is a good indication that you have likely been a party to discrimination.
Many research professionals feel that it is challenging to point out these discriminatory practices, since the academic spheres in Finland are very small. To paraphrase the thoughts of Sarah Ahmed [9]: “The person who points out the problem often becomes the problem”.
Everyone’s input is necessary to change discriminatory structures.
If we, as women, collectively decide to break the silence and talk openly about our discriminatory experiences, it would be much more difficult to label us all as problems. Research Professionals is committed to doing the hard work to achieve a more equal academic world. Each one of us can do our part and keep these issues in the spotlight. Discriminatory practices won’t change if we stay silent.
However, the addressing of inequitable structures cannot rest only on the shoulders of women. Everyone’s input is necessary to change discriminatory structures.
If, for example, you notice in a project meeting that a colleague, who is pregnant or on parental leave, is being shut out of some aspect of the process in which they should be included, say something about it! If enough of us systematically question discriminatory practices, it will generate momentum for change.
We women must be able to combine academic work and motherhood without continuously feeling that we are not enough either at home or at work. We have a right to be mothers while also pursuing an international research career. This should be obvious, not something that we are still needing to fight for in 2026.
Keep your roses – instead, we want everything we are justly owed.
Paula Silvén
Doctoral researcher, Vice President of the Union of Research Professionals, Mother to Oliver, age 8 months
Photo: Anriika Kauppi
Sources:
[1] European Commission, DirectorateGeneral for Research and Innovation. (2025). She Figures 2024: Gender in research and innovation: Statistics and indicators. Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2777/6847557
[2] Di Bartolo, B., & Torres, I. L. (2024). Motherhood penalty and the gender gap in STEM and medicine. European Heart Journal, 45(31), 2800–2802. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehae262
[3] Make Mothers Matter. (2024). State of Motherhood in Europe 2024. https://makemothersmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MMM-State-of-Motherhood-in-Europe-2024.pdf
[4] Müller, J., & Palmén, R. (2025). Pathways to gender equality in academia: National factors shaping women’s early career progression across Europe. Science and Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scaf035
[5] Lassen, A. S., & Ivandić, R. (2024). Parenthood and academic career trajectories. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 114, 238–242. https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20241118
[6] Kallio, T. J., & Kallio, K.-M. (2023). Tutkimus- ja opetushenkilökunnan määräaikaiset työsuhteet suomalaisissa yliopistoissa (Fixed-term employments among academic personnel at Finnish universities). Administrative Studies, 42(3), 341–359. https://doi.org/10.37450/ht.111713
[7] Union of Research Professionals. (2024). Survey of early career researchers conducted by the Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers in 2024. https://tieteentekijat.fi/assets/uploads/2024/09/FUURT_Surveyforearlycareerresearchers_2024_valmis.pdf
[8] Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK. (2018). Agreeing on Authorship: Recommendations of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (2nd edition). https://tenk.fi/en/advice-and-materials
[9] Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.