Are caring responsibilities hampering your ability to get to meetings, network and build collaborations? What solutions are there?
In her article, Dr Joanna Griffith discusses the challenges of combining kids with conferences. She examines the reasons why academic women often find it more difficult to combine travel for work with their parenting responsibilities than their male counterparts do, and questions whether conferences providing childcare is a viable solution.
‘Carers returning from maternity leave or other career breaks often need to rebuild their networks, refresh their knowledge and reinvigorate their enthusiasm for their career. Conference attendance is a vital part of a professional career. But caring responsibilities can make it difficult or, at the least, financially very expensive to attend meetings.’
A note on the Author – Joanna Griffith BAnimSc BVSc(Hons) PhD
Joanna enjoys the great variety that a veterinary career can bring – she currently works in small animal, exotic and zoo practice. She has taught and continues to teach students from primary school, TAFE students, undergraduate veterinary students through to post graduate veterinarians. She helped found and administers the Veterinary Clinical Pharmacology Network http://vcpn.cve.edu.au/, a forum for practitioners, academics, students and industry-based professionals interested in pharmacology and toxicology. Her teaching encompasses animal studies, veterinary nursing, veterinary pathology, pharmacology and anaesthesiology. She has completed a PhD at the University of Sydney in koala disease and pharmacology, and has a particular love of evidence based medicine. Most recently she has been working as a professional writer for Capstone editing.
Image source: Sarah Rhodes and Capstone Editing