
How Work-Family Justice Can Bring Balance to Scientist Moms
It’s time to change cultural views and expectations around science and motherhood
Jennifer Provencher is the head of the Wildlife Health Unit for the Canadian Wildlife Service in Environment and Climate Change Canada. She completed her BSc and BEd at the University of British Columbia, her MSc at the University of Victoria, and she holds a PhD in Environmental and Chemical Toxicology from Carleton University. She also held a Weston Postdoctoral Fellowship in Northern Studies and a Liber Ero Fellowship at Acadia University. Her work focuses on how anthropogenic activities affect the health of seabirds and other wildlife, including parasites, disease, contaminants and plastic pollution with a focus on the Canadian Arctic and the Circum-Arctic region. She had her daughter during her PhD, and actually went into labor at an evening event at the ArcticNet Annual Science Meeting, missing several sessions where she was supposed to present the following day. Fortunately, she has great colleagues who were able to step in, and she now balances the annual Arctic science meeting and her daughter's birthday celebrations each year.
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