Stanford Pregnancy Policy

EDUCATION

Stanford University's chemistry department has implemented a childbirth accommodation policy that provides pregnant graduate students with 12 weeks of paid leave "to accommodate late-stage pregnancy, childbirth, and the care of a newborn." The policy also allows students to maintain full-time student status and facilitates their return to classwork, research, and teaching duties.

The department's program is "one of the most progressive childbirth accommodation policies for graduate students that I have seen from any chemistry department in this country," notes Geraldine L. Richmond, a University of Oregon chemistry professor and chair of the Committee on the Advancement of Women Chemists (C&EN, Feb. 28, page 65).

Richard N. Zare, chair of Stanford's chemistry department, says his rationale in introducing the new policy is simple: "To increase the number of women pursuing Ph.D. degrees and to retain them in the academic pipeline, it is important to acknowledge that a woman's prime childbearing years are the same years she is likely to be a graduate student, postdoc, or beginning faculty member," he says. "We have childbirth accommodation policies in place for postdocs and faculty but none for female graduate students."

A university-wide pregnancy accommodation policy for graduate students does not yet exist at Stanford, Zare says, but one is in the works.

Richmond points out that pregnant graduate students, in particular, need the support that Stanford's chemistry department policy provides. "When a woman is at the most vulnerable time in her personal career, she has to go ask for time off or ask for an exceptional situation for herself," Richmond says.

Whether the new policy at Stanford will prompt other chemistry departments or other universities to adopt similar programs remains to be seen. Richmond notes that when a few major universities stepped up and established policies for delaying the tenure clock for pregnant women faculty, other universities quickly followed suit. "If you have a major department that's so highly regarded, like Stanford, there will be notice of this," she says.