Question: I think it's really great that you're a female scientist, especially since most girls don't particularly like science, and would hate to pursue a career in it. What made you think science was the career for you? And have you faced any judgement along the way?

Katie Fala answered on 13 Nov 2019:

Thanks for your question! Honestly, I don’t feel too special or unique as a female scientist, we seem to be pretty gender-balanced in my lab and research institute overall. And as far as aptitude goes, gender doesn’t seem to particularly influence someone’s aptitude for science or engineering disciplines. In my opinion it seems to be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if a certain field is already male-dominated, it’s a bit like having your work cut out for you and you might think that you’ll have problems fitting in the culture as you’ll be in a female minority, or that there might be added pressure to perform because you’d be representing your gender there somehow. It also definitely doesn’t help that in childhood we not only signal to kids what they should be playing with based on their gender but also maybe hold them back from developing certain abilities in early childhood (I’ve had pretty vibrant discussions with relatives about this, who couldn’t understand why my 2 year old daughter might be interested in Lego rather than a nice doll pram… or look at the two toy medical sets below for another example)

What I have found challenging is being a scientist that is also a parent, and while it is true that not all women will have children, when they do much of the time the bulk of the work of child-rearing falls of the female (and let’s be honest, all of the physical pregnancy and postpartum!). I had my daughter in the second year of my degree and it was haaaaaard, straight up. Small children are pretty demanding in having their needs met (and rightly so) but it is very challenging to power through utter sleep deprivation at the best of times, especially when your job as a scientist depends on you being able to think, reason, conduct experiments with high degrees of precision and accuracy. Childcare is expensive and it is really difficult to trust someone to leave your baby with them, especially when they are small and just want to be close to you. It can be stressful to juggle various appointments, childcare, doctors visits, playgroups with full time studies or a job. But these are the realities of having a dual role as a both a parent and a person with a career, I’d like to think that we want a country that recognises and facilitates this as I think it benefits us overall at a societal level. I don’t really care about the judgement of others tbh, just those close to me and that I am fulfilling my responsibilities as a Mam and a scientist, as best I can!