500 Women Scientists is launching a campaign to bring more visibility to the challenges mothers in science face when starting or building their families. As part of this campaign, we are crowdsourcing experiences to shine a light on the challenges many moms face in scientific institutions and creating a repository of resources for sci-parents. For example, have you experienced challenges around getting enough parental leave, pumping at work, or dealing with infertility? What strategies have you used to balance work and family demands? What supports have you encountered at your institution? If you could design your institution's work-life support program, what would it look like? We want to hear about your challenges and possible solutions so we can create a community of social support, highlight effective programs, policies, and strategies to showcase, and incorporate diverse narratives into advocacy for more supportive institutions.  

We will launch this campaign by creating a webpage with stories and resources on the 500 Women Scientists website and by publishing a series of articles that shine a light on these issues. Your story will be posted on this webpage only if you give us permission to do so. We will post identifying information only with your permission. The information we collect will be used to showcase the similarities and differences in our journeys as we navigate starting a family as well as highlight opportunities for institutional change. Finally, we may reach out to you to ask for your contribution to future blog posts or resource page but you can also opt out of future engagement. We will securely store this data until the campaign is over and/or we stop taking requests. We respect your trust and will protect your privacy, and therefore will never sell or share this data with any third parties. By filling out this form you agree that we will process your data in line with our privacy policy (www.500womenscientists.org/data-privacy-policy). If you have any questions or want to change your mind, contact us at request@500womenscientists.org.

At the beginning of the form, you will be asked which section you would like to fill out. After completing the section, the form will ask you if you would like to contribute to another section or finish the form. You have the option to remain anonymous and you should only contribute what you are comfortable sharing. You can fill out as many sections of the form as you wish and can always return at a later date to edit your submission or fill out the form again. Your email address is required so you will receive a confirmation of your submission and a link to edit your responses.

The four challenge areas we are focusing on in this survey are (1) infertility, (2) parental leave, (3) infant feeding and (4) childcare. If you have a story or would like to answer the quantitative questions in this form, please indicate the section you would like to advance to below.