Stirring up Debates
Sometimes, an article I write stirs up intense debates. Like so.
The title of the post relates to a debate going on over at the Science Careers Blog.
The editor there was responding to an article by Dr. Isis that was responding to an article by Vijee Venkatraman titled: “Time to Hire a Housekeeper?”
The debate boils down to this: Vijee and Jim are saying that the idea of hiring a housekeeper is a great way to leverage your time and focus on the important things. The advice in the original article is particularly focused on female scientists.
This got the bees abuzzin’ – Dr. Isis and others are offended that the advice is particularly targeted at women. Their point: why is this advice specific to women?
It is not: anyone who wants to be really successful at a science career needs to learn how to leverage time – regardless of the particular anatomical bits one was born with.
One of the commenters over on the Science Careers blog went so far as to imply that we should all be doing housework, because to hire someone with a different skin color or of a different gender is somehow demeaning and discriminatory.
Pffft.
It is a simple equation. How much has society invested in the training of a scientist? Many years and over a hundred thousand dollars. This resulted in a skillset that few people have. Not just anyone can develop cures for cancer, or develop the next generation of fusion reactor, or etc.
But just about anyone can clean a house.
And in fact, there are a ton of people without jobs at the moment.
I don’t understand why some people are so weird about the idea of hiring help – as if it were just another thumbing-of-noses at others of lesser economic status. It seems like a win-win to me – use your specialized skills to maximal benefit, and give someone else a job so they can feed their kids.
In any case,the original article did made a mistake in targeting this specifically at women. While I don’t agree with Dr. Isis that this is another sign of bias against women, it does smack a bit much of a stereotype.
I can see why they did it. A lot of women are raised to feel that it is our responsibility to “maintain the household.” This breeds a sort of “internal pressure” to take care of household responsibilities that men often aren’t raised with.
Hence, I think it is easier for men to give up that responsibility by hiring someone to help. For some women, I think a bit of guilt comes with doing that.
And that guilt might just be a sufficient activation barrier that the hiring-of-help doesn’t happen.
I believe that was the reason that the Science Careers article by Vijaysree focused on women.
Perhaps that was a tactical mistake. But the central message is correct for any scientist.
Learn to leverage your time, and focus on what you’re good at, while preserving your precious free time for the things you enjoy.