Thread by @Saskia_Stucki

I was hoping to do one of those feel-good new job announcement tweets: “I’m pleased to announce that I was offered a @GlobalFung Fellowship at @Princeton University”.
Alas, instead, I’m unpleased to announce that I was forced to reject said fellowship due to #sexdiscrimination.

Women in academia face all sorts of subtle & less subtle forms of sexism. And yet, I didn’t expect in 2023 to be discriminated against simply for having the kind of body that can become pregnant. Thank you @Princeton for reminding me what old school sex discrimination looks like.

After I accepted the @GlobalFung fellowship at @PrincetonPIIRS, I learned that I was pregnant. Upon notifying the program, I asked them to confirm – what I thought to be a formality – that they would be able to accommodate a pregnant fellow. This is when the stonewalling began.

I waited a month for them to grace me with an answer, in which they outright denied all my requests for accommodation. The only thing they offered – as per Uni policy – was 6 weeks of “disability” (sic) leave at less than half salary. No home office, no flexibility, nothing.

I wasn’t asking for European-style maternity benefits, as I’m fully aware that the US doesn’t do social welfare. All I asked for was a basic degree of decency, humanity &flexibility. But that was apparently something the @GlobalFung Program was unable or unwilling to commit to.

It is beyond me why–from all available options–the @GlobalFung program directors choose to go down the most unaccommodating & unsupportive & inhumane path. Maybe they hate pregnant women? Perhaps they think women should be like men (i.e., not get pregnant) to succeed in academia?

I’m sharing this because @Princeton’s refusal to accommodate a pregnant scholar should be a red flag to the academic community, which strives to empower women in academia. Far from it, they have effectively disabled me from taking this fellowship precisely because I’m pregnant.

Luckily, I have a choice & can refuse to put up with this BS. Solidarity with the women in the US who don’t have a choice – who have to live in a religious state that takes away their abortion rights & work in a merciless capitalist system that punishes them for being pregnant.

It is telling that for @Princeton, pregnancy seems to be a disability rather than a normal part of being a woman, i.e., having a female body. It’s as if second wave feminism never happened.