A call for an alliance between female academic leaders and early career researchers to improve the academic STEM system

The COVID 19 pandemic exposed the precarious positioning of two groups within the academic STEM system. In the first group are women in positions of academic leadership including professors, especially those with children or other care-giving responsibilities. The second group consists of early career researchers (ECRs), independent of gender. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has identified ECRs at the postdoctoral level as belonging to the “research precariat” (OECD, 2021) and Nature has reported on mental health consequences for doctoral candidates arising from “poor mentorship, the inability to access counselling services and a lack of training for non-academic careers”