Helana Darwin 'The Dark Side of Gender Inequality within Academia'

This episode was generated using AI and may contain minor errors

[00:00:00] Helana Darwin: When I was an academian on the job market, I was advised not to tell anyone that I had kids and to keep it a dirty little secret of mine in case it got in their minds as a bias against offering me the job over someone else. And when I had a campus visit to interview in person for a professorship, I was still pumping.

[00:00:20] Helana Darwin: I was still breastfeeding my second child, and I had to hide that from.

[00:00:28] Gerry Scullion: Hello and welcome to this is h cd. My name is Jerry Scullion and I'm a designer educator, and I'm the host of This is eight CD based in the wonderful city of Dublin, Ireland. Now, our goal here is to have conversations that inspire and help move the dial board for organizations to become more human centered in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

[00:00:49] Gerry Scullion: If you're new around here, let me tell you a little bit about this is Hate city and where it all. Started life in Sydney, Australia whilst I lived there for nearly 14 years, and we've been creating content for over five years off the [00:01:00] level of sharing. To the global design community, and at this moment in time, this podcast is my main focus in my career and growing it is my number one goal.

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[00:01:46] Gerry Scullion: And you also get a shout out as thanks. And there's other plans there where you can get exclusive items too if you want to go a little bit more extravagant. Also, we launched a space, and this is eight cd.com where you can take courses now in visualization, design, research, user experience, and [00:02:00] service design.

[00:02:00] Gerry Scullion: So go check it out. Now, let me tell you about this episode that we've got in store for you today, folks. It is a cracker. Now, I recently caught up with Dr. Helena Darwin, a UX researcher based in New York City. Now Helena has a doctorate in sociology and is the author of the book Redoing. How non-binary gender contributes towards social change.

[00:02:22] Gerry Scullion: Now, as I said, we connected about a series of posts on LinkedIn that Halala made about the effect that businesses can put on people to train outside of work hours. So doing additional training outside of the, the conventional nine to five died several conversations with people that I've coached over the years about this topic.

[00:02:42] Gerry Scullion: As you'll see, it's a Pandora's box that Helena fantastically describes in great detail. We had a few technical issues on this episode, but thanks to the wonderful editors in the show, we managed to pull it all together. Let's jump straight in. Helena, brilliant to have you on the show. I'm [00:03:00] delighted to, to have you here.

[00:03:01] Gerry Scullion: Maybe for our listeners, tell us a little bit about where you're coming from. I'm

[00:03:05] Helana Darwin: a Californian from the Redwood Mountains, who's been living in New York with some confusion about it for about 11 years now. Right. So I've been in Manhattan the whole time in graduate school the whole time too. Wow. Until a few years ago.

[00:03:20] Helana Darwin: So you're

[00:03:20] Gerry Scullion: like, uh, a reverse, Casey Nata, who's, you know, the YouTuber who, uh, went from New York to California and i's come back to New York recently, so, How, How is, How has it being a Californian in New York just an.

[00:03:36] Helana Darwin: Oh man. I absolutely hated New York at first. I mean, I still feel very lukewarm about it and ambivalent and keep on waiting to relocate back to the West Coast someday.

[00:03:48] Helana Darwin: But New York has been very kind to my husband and now me in terms of our careers. So it's kind of hard to walk away from that. And we've sort of figured [00:04:00] it out. We live on a little hilltop that is pretty secluded from anyone who doesn't wanna go up a giant flight of stairs. And it's where Lynn Manuel Miranda owns an apartment.

[00:04:12] Helana Darwin: Okay. It's like a very nice little community. So we've got it all figured out. Our kid can walk himself to all his after school classes cuz they're all like two blocks away from where we.

[00:04:22] Gerry Scullion: Well, that's, it sounds quite idyllic. Um, you know, there's a, there's a famous Frank Sinatras on Ottum in New York. I don't know if you know it, but, um, it's a, it paints a beautiful picture and you definitely paint a beautiful picture of New York there as well.

[00:04:38] Gerry Scullion: But, you know, Helena, we were chatting there beforehand. You've got a PhD in sociology and what peaked my interest was a LinkedIn comment. Or LinkedIn post, shall we say that you posted a number of weeks ago around the role of user experience and pushing back against the notion that UX, you should be expected to upscale outside of work hours.[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Gerry Scullion: Now what I think I'll do for listeners is I'll put a link to the, the thread in, uh, LinkedIn in the show notes as well so people can jump in and have a look at it cuz there's lots of other great comments in there as well. But I'm gonna read it off and, uh, I'm gonna drill into a little bit more information to get your background and your thoughts on where this came from.

[00:05:18] Gerry Scullion: Okay. So Helena wrote, I'm committed to pushing back against the notion that we, in UX, should be expected to upskill outside of work hours and that failure to do so, his career sabotage. This cultural norm and its underlying logic perpetuates inequality, specifically occupational discrimination against caregivers and in practice.

[00:05:39] Gerry Scullion: Discrimination against mothers of young children must be nice to have the time to take extra courses or attend after work events. But for many of us, those after work hours are dedicated to cooking for and feeding our families, having a few hours of connection with our children and partners. Putting multiple children to bed and then doing meal prep and [00:06:00] cleaning the whole house before collapsing into an exhausted puddle.

[00:06:03] Gerry Scullion: I can relate. The weekends are for non-urgent housework that's piled up during the, and for creating memories with our children, whom we send off to school and after school during the 40 plus hours per week and are full-time jobs. I'm enthusiastic about any opportunities to upskill during my work hours, but the expectation to do it all on my own.

[00:06:22] Gerry Scullion: Is deeply flawed and perpetuates the mommy penalty. My own time does not belong to me. It's a precious collective resource shared by my family. My employer is not my only stakeholder, so, Are you still there, Helena? Yeah, I'm here. You are there. You're just camera's gone off. But that's co completely cool.

[00:06:42] Gerry Scullion: Oh, first of all, I love this. Okay. Um, and the reason why I love it is because this is hate city. Started off way back when I lived in Australia and it originally was a breakfast, a breakfast podcast. The first couple of ec uh, episodes were breakfasts between the hours of [00:07:00] seven o'clock and nine o'. With a small group of people, for people who, who were unable to make the meetups that were happening, uh, after hours.

[00:07:10] Gerry Scullion: Cuz I wasn't able to make it cuz I just found myself, I was a, I was a dad, uh, of a young baby and I was like, Well, I can't go to these meetups anymore. I don't wanna be disconnected from my community. So I created a mini community myself, and this is where this is Htd came from. So this. Whole kind of premise of what we were talking about there, um, deeply resonates with me from a, from a purpose perspective, but I wanna get your perspective on

[00:07:34] Helana Darwin: it.

[00:07:35] Helana Darwin: Sure. Um, well first of all, thank you for the very sweet compliments about it, . Um, so I guess my, um, point of view is informed by the fact that I have a PhD in sociology with a focus on. Specifically, mm-hmm. . Yeah. So I am at an expert level of education in gender [00:08:00] inequality and how it manifests in organizational settings, such as the workplace.

[00:08:05] Helana Darwin: Yeah. And how, um, group norms perpetuate inequality and reinforce the status quo, which in this case is patriarchy and men having a competitive advantage in the workplace over women. This is also all tied into the wage gap and the fact that when, uh, heterosexual couples have kids, oftentimes the man, if anything, gets a bonus.

[00:08:35] Helana Darwin: Because of his employers feeling like, Oh, well he has a family to provide for now he's really gonna need to step up and take care of them, and we can help by giving him more responsibilities and more money. Whereas for women, the opposite happens. Hmm. That it's, um, there's an assumption. You will be, first of all, having to take off for, you know, [00:09:00] the physical trauma that is childbirth.

[00:09:02] Helana Darwin: Yeah. And the recovery afterwards. And often in the United States, not getting enough time to physically recover, especially if you have a C-section. Yeah. Having to just go back to work with, you know, your body still leaking and bleeding and oozing, and you have to pretend like all is. Yeah. Um, but cuz you know, in the United States often it, it's generous if you even get a month off for, um, giving birth and recovering, which means you have to go back to work full time when your baby is still only a couple of weeks old.

[00:09:39] Helana Darwin: Wow. And, um, oftentimes the assumption that you are now distracted. Your value as a worker has gone down. You have, um, too many curve balls that are gonna come up with doctor's appointments for your kid and having to pick up the kid and staying home [00:10:00] with the sick kid to be given more responsibilities. . Um, and all of these things are oftentimes happening subconsciously in people's minds when they're evaluating who to offer more responsibilities and more money to mm-hmm.

[00:10:14] Helana Darwin: But it's still there. I mean, when I was in academia and on the job market, I was advised not to tell anyone that I had kids. and to, you know, keep it a dirty little secret of mine in case it got in their minds as a bias against offering me the job over someone else. And when I had a campus visit to interview in person for a professorship, I was still pumping, I was still breastfeeding my second child and I had to hide that from them.

[00:10:41] Helana Darwin: And I had a really busy, cramped schedule with back to back events with them all day, and had to find time to run back to my hotel. before going out to dinner with them to pump. So I didn't get mastitis before going back out again and like I couldn't tell them because that's how [00:11:00] severe the mommy penalty.

[00:11:02] Helana Darwin: So now that I'm in industry instead of academia, I was really looking forward to having, uh, firmer boundaries between my work hours and my personal hours. Cause in academia, if there is no time off any weekend, any summer break, any whatever you're supposed to be, publish. , you can never publish enough. I mean, it's such a cutthroat, competitive world.

[00:11:29] Helana Darwin: No amount of work is ever good enough and you should always, always, always be working. So I was really excited about selling out . Yeah. And going into industry and, uh, making actual money and also being able to enjoy my weekends and my evenings and be able to maybe develop hobbies and maybe have friend.

[00:11:53] Helana Darwin: Just having time.

[00:11:55] Gerry Scullion: What, where does self care and breathing come into all of this? Like it's Right, [00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Helana Darwin: right. It's important. And like also like have better mental health. Yeah. And then show up as a better parent for my children so that they don't inherit mental health issues. So, you know, like this was part of my impetus to even go into.

[00:12:15] Helana Darwin: And now that I'm here and I've been primarily at a company that really prides itself on being family friendly. Mm-hmm. and on being very nice and supportive and whatever, but I have been grilled and one-on-ones with managers about like, what is your individual professional development plan? How do you plan on upskilling?

[00:12:38] Helana Darwin: Show me what you plan to do. In like, what weeks of the month are you going to achieve X, Y, and Z goals that you set for yourself? I'm going to help you monitor your progress. And I was like, But I mean, that's ridiculous because some weeks are busier than others. Yeah. And if I'm already working full time in a week, I'm not gonna meet my goal.

[00:12:59] Helana Darwin: [00:13:00] So I don't think that this is really the right approach to take. And they were like, Well, I mean you're always gonna have curve balls in some weeks that are busier than others. You still need to upskill. You still need to meet your goals. So I just felt like a lot of pressure, especially from people who don't have children, to once again be working around the clock to once.

[00:13:21] Helana Darwin: Not really feel like I ever have actual time off that. Any time off that I have should be devoted towards upskilling and it just didn't sit well with me. Like not only does that go against any claims of a company being family friendly, but it also reduces me to a capitalist cog again, whose only value is in constant.

[00:13:50] Gerry Scullion: It's funny when, when I was younger, uh, and I'd work in agencies, um, and I was, you know, young, free and relatively single, even though [00:14:00] I was with my now wife who was, we were then boyfriend girlfriend. . There used to be people in there that had had kids, and I was guilty of throwing my eyes up to heaven when I'd see the five o'clock come and I there, they're going home.

[00:14:13] Gerry Scullion: I'll have to pick up the slack. Mm-hmm. And the role of that, Um, I guess I was, I was young, I was naive. And there's, there's probably people listen to the podcast who, who see that, like they see parents, you know, having to dash off to uh, pick up their kids who are sick or whatever left from. And I'm sorry to tell him, but that's life.

[00:14:32] Gerry Scullion: Okay. This is, there are, there are other things outside of work that, um, that are more important. And, uh, they're usually the children that, that come first for all parents' lives, so, In academia, you know, the world that you're painting there at the moment, it actually is a pretty bleak picture that you're painting.

[00:14:54] Gerry Scullion: Um, in terms of the pressure that that can put on [00:15:00] particularly mothers of children who are working in the academic world, um, how do you see that resolving itself? O other than which, you know, leaving industry altogether and moving into academia or out of academia into industry. How can academia move on?

[00:15:18] Gerry Scullion: Because it sounds like it's living in the dark ages.

[00:15:21] Helana Darwin: I mean, it is. There, there are a lot of really fascinating think pieces comparing academia to futile systems and looking at the really toxic ways that the entrenched hierarchies and power differentials between people at different levels, um, manifests in basically like exploiting underlings for free labor.

[00:15:45] Helana Darwin: Um, with the constant threat of the all powerful letter of recommendation from somebody who's out of touch and super privileged, and whether they like you or not, can make or break your life and your career. [00:16:00] Um, so I mean, I, I don't know. I write, I do a lot of shit posting about academia on Twitter. If people are notice to that, that's where most of it is.

[00:16:09] Helana Darwin: Yeah. Um, and I also, I mean, on LinkedIn I try to take a slightly different approach on LinkedIn. I try to really be vocal about being there as a support for people who are transitioning out of academia and also gently sharing. My insights into how industry could maybe be better, um, without having the same snarky tone since potential employers are seeing all of that.

[00:16:39] Helana Darwin: So, uh, that's sort of like the softer tone that I take on LinkedIn and the snarkier tone is on Twitter. But yeah, I mean, like, I have a lot to say about academia, but in terms of industry, . You know, I think that there's something about the fact that user research and you know, interactive design and [00:17:00] all the different careers that are tied into the audience listening to this podcast because it's all tied to technology and technology advances at such a rapid pace.

[00:17:10] Helana Darwin: Yeah. Whether because it actually needs to or because that's how you make money. I mean, there is always upskilling that needs to be. among the people who are studying human experiences of to maintain your skills, it is always evolving. Mm. And frankly, that's what really attracts me to this field. Yeah.

[00:17:31] Helana Darwin: Like, I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm the highest tech person, but mm-hmm. , I'm really fascinated by social change. I'm really fascinated by mental. Yeah. And, um, community formation and the direction that technology is headed with all of this emphasis on virtual reality and ai and just all of these developments that are going to eventually.

[00:17:58] Helana Darwin: Be ever present in [00:18:00] people's lives. I mean, that does require the people in this field to be a step ahead of whatever is actually happening so that we can anticipate what the next area is going to be. That needs to be researched and, you know, know a thing or two about it so that when those jobs all of a sudden start flooding the market.

[00:18:22] Helana Darwin: we're among the first who are eligible to apply instead of lagging behind once it's already saturated. But that is a lot of pressure. Yeah, and again, I'm fine with staying up to date and upskilling and all that stuff if it's during the hours that I am being compensated for. I mean, I know it's not an hourly wage, but notionally, it's an, you know, Nine to five type of jobs.

[00:18:50] Helana Darwin: Yeah. So if all of that is encouraged among employees during those hours, great. Sign me up. I wanna be as sharp as I can be, [00:19:00] but I cannot sacrifice my children to my career. Like I just

[00:19:04] Gerry Scullion: cannot. Yeah. I, I, I think. It might be a little bit naive to think that like, just because they're technology companies that um, they're a little bit more, um, adaptable to, to be responsible as regards how they care for, um, mothers and care for, for parents.

[00:19:23] Gerry Scullion: Uh, I, I think that, What we're seeing at the moment is we're, we're at a point in time. You obviously we've got the, the big resignation, um, post covid if we're out of post covid. Even at that point there's been a lot of behaviors that have been, um, developed and created over the last three years that we've somehow.

[00:19:44] Gerry Scullion: We're at that point where we're kind of going, we're in this limbic state where we're saying, are we, are we gonna take these? Are we going? You know, what are we gonna keep and what are we gonna lose? And I think a lot of the businesses are starting to revert back to, uh, the old behaviors. And I mean the old [00:20:00] behaviors at behaviors of the nineties where they're owning their person's time between nine to five.

[00:20:06] Gerry Scullion: And you can see them on LinkedIn, you can see, um, Facebook Zuckerberg's, um, recent posts about like weeding out the week and all this kind of stuff. It's, it's like the Hunger Games in many ways. Mm-hmm. and it, it paints really a really nasty picture about where industry is at at the moment. Where do you see this all going at the moment?

[00:20:26] Helana Darwin: Um, a few things came to mind while you were talking. One of them is during Covid. Women's march towards wage equality was set back by some estimate 30 years. Really? Yeah. Whoa.

[00:20:41] Gerry Scullion: In the US or globally? Globally. Globally.

[00:20:45] Helana Darwin: Um, because when people had to figure out what to do with the lack of childcare, one person had to figure it out.

[00:20:56] Helana Darwin: Yeah. Support the children while the other person worked, that person was [00:21:00] usually the one who was earning. Yeah. In most heterosexual couples, the person earning less is the woman. Mm-hmm. . So around the world, women had to quit their jobs or beg for accommodations that really marginalized them in terms of competitive edge in their workplace, and the man kept on working with the support of the.

[00:21:25] Helana Darwin: So around the world, I mean, estimates are that, like in terms of predicting the date at which, um, at the rate that it's been gradually accelerating, women would finally have pay equity. Mm-hmm. , it's set back by about 30 years now. And so, so that's one piece of this. And you'd think that the move to. Uh, remote work is a family friendly move and in some ways it is.

[00:21:55] Helana Darwin: However, my experience of it is that once you, [00:22:00] um, find yourself having to accommodate different time zones, yeah. Your work day expands to take up almost your entire. So I'm on the East coast, but I'm in an agency setting that is very client interactive focused. Mm-hmm. , Most of my clients happen to be on the West coast because of where a lot of the big tech hubs are.

[00:22:23] Helana Darwin: Yeah. So not only am I supposed to be logging on to work at a reasonable hour in the morning to be in communication with all of my colleagues on the East coast and to get a start on my workday while my children are at school. I also have to accommodate the timeline of people who are three hours later than me and working until 9:00 PM my time.

[00:22:46] Helana Darwin: I know, and they're often sending me urgent time sensitive correspondence that I have to drop everything and reply to. . During the hours where I am feeding my children, I am cleaning my house. I [00:23:00] am trying to give them baths. I'm trying to get them ready for bed. I'm singing to them in bed, and then I get up and have more cleaning to do.

[00:23:08] Helana Darwin: And during all this time, I know that I should be checking my email. I should be checking my slack. I have things that are happening that might be urgent. So it actually, the remote work situation results in a collapse of the boundary. The very tenuous, fragile boundary that separated work from personal time to begin with.

[00:23:33] Helana Darwin: Yeah. So that there's just no boundary. So that you're supposed to be working all the time when you're remote, and so like I personally am really excited about working in person. because then I can be a hundred percent focused and not distracted by, Oh, my house is really messy. I should take a break from working to clean it.

[00:23:56] Helana Darwin: Or, you know, juggling childcare [00:24:00] duties, like getting the door for deliveries, having to unload groceries, all that stuff during my workday, and then my day goes longer into the evening to compensate for those breaks that I took. And like, I'm looking forward to having that boundary again. I think that that actually in a lot of ways is more family friendly than the current situation.

[00:24:22] Helana Darwin: It's,

[00:24:22] Gerry Scullion: it's almost trigger inducing when you're talking about the pressure there, when you're referring to like getting text messages at night, um, when you're putting your kids to bed and having that pressure because I like, and putting my kids to bed, like putting two grenades to sleep. Um, and anything that gets in the way of that, it's just, it could potentially blow up and ruin my entire night and then the next day as well.

[00:24:46] Gerry Scullion: So it's a really, It's a really kind of, uh, unusual period of the day for us in our house. So I can, I can't only imagine what it's like, um, having that ongoing, like I had it for a period of time, from six o'clock in Australia to 10 [00:25:00] o'clock at night when we were running workshops in my previous role and.

[00:25:05] Gerry Scullion: It's just, it, you burn out so quickly. Like I, I burnt out really badly, uh, during that period and it's, it's, there's no long term kind of benefits from it. It's very short term thinking and it's very detrimental to your mental health. Absolutely. What kinda supports do businesses offer, especially in the US cuz I know that's where you main, your main focus is on.

[00:25:30] Gerry Scullion: What kinda supports do the businesses provide to people who are working in those spaces? Like in academia or in industry? Do they provide any bursaries for mental health, um, psychology therapists, or anything like that?

[00:25:47] Helana Darwin: Um, well, Some of them do, but that's just putting a bandaid on a GU wound problem. Yeah.

[00:25:54] Helana Darwin: I mean, that's just acknowledging that there's a problem and [00:26:00] expecting workers to figure out ways to cope so that the actual structure of the workplace doesn't have to deal with it or change. So, you know, I can go to talk therapy all I want. It doesn't change the fact that I'm working nights and weekends.

[00:26:18] Helana Darwin: Yeah, to keep up with the really. Tight timeline of a client facing industry.

[00:26:27] Gerry Scullion: What advice do you give to the business leaders, some of who may be listening to this podcast and you know, they, they're probably kind of alarmed that this is the perspective that, you know, turning to work moms go through. Is this something you believe that they can tackle or is this something that maybe goes further and closer towards policy level at government?

[00:26:48] Helana Darwin: I don't think that this is a complicated thing to solve in terms of how remote work is affecting caregivers. I think you just need to be more mindful about pairing people who are in the [00:27:00] same time zones together. So a stakeholder on the west coast should not be assigned. A researcher and a designer on the East Coast teams should all be within the same time zone to be able to protect the, you know, relative like nine till six block.

[00:27:15] Helana Darwin: That is sort of a soft. In a society where people have children and have other things, they have to.

[00:27:23] Gerry Scullion: Okay, that's, that's awesome. Helena. If people wanna reach out and continue the conversation with you, what's the best way for people to do

[00:27:29] Helana Darwin: that? Um, yeah, if people want to stay in touch, I post a lot on LinkedIn and also on Twitter under Helena Darwin, the trick is, you have to spell my first name right, Which is H E L A N A.

[00:27:42] Helana Darwin: I am not hell. And you can remember Darwin because Yes, I am related to Charles Darwin, which is super. and you can also go to my website, especially if you wanna direct people to resources for advice sessions on getting that first user researcher job.

[00:27:59] Gerry Scullion: [00:28:00] Awesome. Awesome. Listen, thanks so much for your time today.

[00:28:02] Gerry Scullion: Uh, Halal.

[00:28:03] Helana Darwin: Thank you so much for your patience with the ridiculous amount of technical difficulties we had today. This has been really great.

[00:28:12] Gerry Scullion: That's all good.

[00:28:16] Gerry Scullion: There you go folks. I hope you enjoyed that episode and if you enjoyed it and want to listen to more, why not visit? This is hate cd.com where you can learn more about what we are up to and also explore our course while you're there. Thanks again for listening.

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