Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

Give Families Time to Plan

By Heath Brown, Associate Professor, John Jay College

I sobbed on my way to my first conference after my son was born in 2017. The Lyft driver was confused and worried. I knew it wasn’t just being away, it was being away from him and my wife for the first time.

I pulled myself together in time to get through security on my way to Chicago for a convening of the Scholars Strategy Network. Gratefully, SSN meeting planners figured out how to squeeze five days of work into 12 hours of non-stop action and I was soon on my way back home by the next evening. They’d also been incredibly well organized and I knew long before the event exactly for how long I’d be gone. Early notice is a very family-friendly conference practice.

Not every conference is so well-organized, and this is especially burdensome on parents. If you don’t know when your panel is scheduled until a month before the confeneve, the juggling of support and coordination of schedules is unnecessarily hard, an enormous burden on all attendees, particularly those with young children.

The first thing every academic conference planner should prioritize is letting speakers and presenters know incredibly quickly the date and time of when they are on the agenda. Only when parents have sufficient time can they make the complex arrangements to balance parenting and conferencing.

Also critical is how responsive conference planners are to requests from presenters for the best time to fit into the conference schedule. Weekdays are hardest for my family, for other families weekends are worse. Giving presenters the chance to pick when they present is a huge help to families and a hugely appreciated aspect of a conference, even if every request cannot be granted.

As important as logistics are simply feeling welcome and having the chance to share the experience with family. At least one reception or meal open to family members sends a powerful message that families are a part of an academic life, not something to be ignored or placed at the margin. Findings ways to incorporate family is a family-friendly way to organize a conference.

Our son is now nearly three. Taking him to a conference is something I look forward to. Better planning and a big welcome will make that a great experience for us.

Heath Brown is an associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and the CUNY Graduate Center. He has worked at the US Congressional Budget Office as a Research Fellow, at the American Bus Association as a Policy Assistant, and at the Council of Graduate Schools as Research and Policy Director.

Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

Conferences and Nursing Mothers

Elizabeth Berkowitz, MA, PhD

In February 2017, when my second daughter was three weeks old, I pulled myself out of bed, downed several cups of coffee, showered, stuffed my postpartum body into something approximating professional attire, and went to present at my field’s big professional conference (College Art Association (CAA)). Thankfully, I had my mother at home, and, equally thankfully, my daughter had (mostly) taken to bottle-feeding the day prior, so I could rest assured that, at the very least, she would be cared for and fed for the 8 hours I would be away. However, I was nursing a newborn every two-three hours, and needed to pump to keep up my supply up. That year, CAA offered a fantastic service to nursing mothers—a lactation room.

The conference was held in a hotel, and nursing mothers were granted special key access to a large room on the lower level. The room contained two comfy chairs divided by a curtained partition, as well as a mini-fridge to store milk, ice water, and cups. Without having to huddle awkwardly in a bathroom stall while noisily pumping (which I did for other professional events during her first year) or having to sit in public with a nursing cover while I pumped (another fun experience), CAA’s available and well-thought-out lactation room ensured that I was comfortable, that my daughter could be fed, and that I was still able to advance my career and give the presentation.

Since then, CAA has added babysitting services (though, due to low enrollment in 2020, they are providing $250 childcare grants instead) to ensure that attending or presenting child caregivers are able to further their professional ambitions without having to worry about childcare demands.

However, this being said, there is always room for improvement. While I remain grateful for access to the lactation room during CAA 2017, the standard time between conference panels was too short to ensure that I could pump without missing a session or arriving to a panel quite late. During the short panel breaks, I would have to run down to the hotel lower level, get out my equipment, pump, store the milk, clean the materials, and then run back upstairs to make the start of an important session. Increasing the time between sessions might necessitate eliminating at least one potential panel from any conference’s (admittedly, overstuffed) roster, but perhaps it would be a small price to pay to further ensure that the need to pump or nurse wouldn’t impede a parent’s chance at professional advancement or networking.

Alternatively, “nursing pods” might be a solution. If every conference floor had at least two nursing pods, and if each conference room or floor was equipped with a mini-fridge for storage, then nursing mothers could quickly pump adjacent to their conference room, and then store their milk and equipment in the next panel’s space.

As a working mother of two children, I feel that this dialogue about improving conference support for caregivers is a wonderful first step and I believe that organizations have made tremendous strides to ensure that caregiving is not a professional penalty. I look forward to seeing how such support and advocacy continues in the future! 

Elizabeth Berkowitz is an art historian specializing in modern art historiography and pre-World War II European avant-garde painting. She received her PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY; and also holds an MA in Modern Art from Columbia University and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University. Currently, she works as the Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and Outreach Program Manager at the Rockefeller Archive Center. In addition to a background as a museum and university educator, Elizabeth’s writings on modern art history and museum display have appeared in both popular and academic publications.

Equitable Conferencing: Caregivers Perspectives and Prospects

An Introduction

By Shilpa Viswanath, PhD and Jamie Levine Daniel, PhD

Academic conferences, an essential component of academic life, contribute a whole new element to the parenting and caregiving challenge. Academic conferences are a hotbed for professional networking, career collaborations and for advancing one’s research. Attending conferences are especially indispensable for graduate and doctoral students as well as junior faculty members, given the opportunities to further their academic careers. Yet, conferences are notoriously long-drawn, involve travel and are expensive to attend. For parents and caregivers in academia, the barriers to conferencing are further complicated with sparse or absent childcare support. This blog symposium series on ‘Equitable Conferencing’ conceptualizes conferences as an extension of the workplace, and brings together students parents/caregivers, faculty parents/caregivers and practitioner parents/caregivers in the field of public administration to share personal narratives of struggles and strains involved while attempting to conference and also be a parent or caregiver. 

Our symposium contributors, ASPA leadership, doctoral students, and faculty, approach issues of conference logistics, costs, (lack of) facilities and other barriers to conference participation (including childcare and dependent care responsibilities). Contributors also discuss frameworks to achieve an equitable conference environment, and means of financing conference childcare and dependent care support. This symposium also sheds light on new initiatives implemented by certain professional organizations in the field such as Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Law & Society Association, both, who offer conference childcare grants (between $250-$500) in the form of monetary compensation to participants with children. These grants help cover extra expenses incurred for caregiving services. Other organizations such as the American Political Science Association (APSA) provide on-site conference childcare support at subsidized rates for children between 6months to 12 years of age. 

To begin this series, Dr. Elizabeth Berkowitz highlights the needs of nursing mothers who attend conferences. In her blog post, she explores the idea of nursing pods at academic conferences which create a secure space for nursing mothers to pump and store milk, while participating in a conference. This is intended to be a productive dialogue, we welcome further online discussion and practical suggestions to address equitable conferencing. To contribute to this symposium, kindly send a 500 word blog post to  wps@jjay.cuny.edu. If you have any questions, please contact one of the blog series editors: Shilpa Viswanath, sviswanath@uwlax.edu and Jamie Levine Daniel, jlevined@iupui.edu


                                               

Dr. Shilpa Viswanath is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. And, faculty affiliate at the University of Wisconsin - Madison’s Center for South Asia. Her research and teaching engage in themes of gender and social equity; and, are rooted in her identities of being an immigrant in the United States, a faculty woman of color and a mother. She presently serves on the executive board of American Society for Public Administration’s Section for Women in Public Administration.

                                                                      

Dr. Jamie Levine Daniel is an assistant professor at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. Her research focuses on the relationship between nonprofit resource acquisition and program service delivery, with particular interest on the relationship between earned revenue and mission.