More bits and bobs

A lady scientist led me to stirrup queen's comment marathon, and I think its great! I've made a diligent effort to list on the blogs I read, but admit to not delurking from many of them. This will force me to introduce myself to a whole cast of bloggers and in the process hopefully I will get to know few more of you. I will give myself till after the 28th to start though, as I really should not be adding to my procrastination enabling tool box.

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I was at the park the other day when a friends son starting hitting the monkey. Monkey gets beat up on a regular basis by my niece, and I don't interfere because I want monkey to learn to interact with his peer group. However at the same time if he was hitting another kid, I would stop him to teach him that it is not appropriate behaviour. Why is it okay for me to interfere when he's being bad but yet not to want other moms to correct their kids? How do you find the balance between correcting behaviour and encouraging them to stand up for themselves??

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Yet another depressing report about women leaving science, this time leaving industry for a variety of reasons, including lack of life / work balance and a macho culture. I heard about this article from a yahoo story sent to me by Mr. SM. He read the article and thought, my wife has been making this point to me all year, wow she was right and they are finally listening. I love Mr. SM for being all optimistic for thinking hey they're listening and doing something about it. But thats not how I read the article. I think some companies are recognizing the challenges and embracing policies the address the concerns, but what stuck out the most to me was that major companies were not looking at the root of the problem and trying to establish HR policies that would enable highly intelligent, well-trained women to not have to choose between family and work, but were instead lobbying the US congress to enable more foreign males / females to come in. I will say more foreign trained women will also be coming, but both genders will be making significant sacrifices to come to a "better country". They will be leaving husbands/wives, children and extended support system to come to the US (and / or Canada as I am sure we are facing similar challenges) with the hopes of gaining citizenship. I have seen the emotional toll its has taken on these individuals and its not right. Here in Canada, there have been numerous studies done in the Filipino community examining the challenges faced by the women who left there homeland (and children) to care for anothers' family. I am sure these challenges and repercussions are felt regardless of skill level. Work - Life balance is a gender neutral issue, my own PI is failing amazingly at balancing after meeting a women, falling in love and having a child. Its great because he recognizes why I'm struggling but it sucks because why do we expect such crazy long hours?