Caregiving takes many forms, for instance for children, elderly or disabled dependants, and is worldwide predominantly taken on by women who spend on average over three times as much time on care than men (Charmes 2019). Every form of care deserves serious attention, and the diverse needs of caregivers should not be pitted against one another, nor be used to deflect discussing the needs of a specific group. While we are focusing on the nuances of childcare responsibilities and conference participation of women in this piece, we call for further nuanced discussion of all forms of care responsibilities carried by women and men in academia.
Academic conferences are undisputedly one of the most important activities for scholars to collect feedback, build and maintain research networks, and gain visibility (Chai & Freeman, 2019). Not participating in academic events can take a larger toll on our career trajectory, particularly in times of strained university budgets when job market competition for early career scholars has become fiercer than ever. In many university systems, conference participation, particularly internationally, is a required criterion for promotion, while research funders ask for dissemination activities, which often come in the form of conferences, making them not an optional ‘nice-to-have’ but a necessary part of our work. Conferences are usually scheduled over multiple days, with informal activities bookending formal presentations, panels, and lectures. For scholars with childcare responsibilities, this presents stark choices: take dependants along, find alternative care arrangements or opt out entirely and stay at home.
Life inevitably requires trade-offs, and both the ability to take dependants along or find other care cover can incur costs that substantially limit the ability of caregivers to participate in academic events. This is especially difficult for people who lack a strong support network or family support, have limited financial resources, are affected by war or forced displacement, or are single parents or carers of children with additional needs. As recent analysis shows, women and researchers from low- and middle-income countries are already underrepresented as authors of publications in Regional Studies journals (Park et al., 2025). The recent development towards hybrid participation at many conferences (e.g., the International Conference of Public Policy or AAG) can only mitigate so much of the disadvantage here: while there is still some exchange of information, the coffee breaks, lunches and dinners where the most important conversations happen, cannot be replicated easily online. Moreover, caregiving responsibilities do not disappear just because participation is virtual. Parents and caregivers still need uninterrupted time to participate and often have to arrange and pay for care. It is therefore important to acknowledge that care work still needs to be delegated even when attending remotely.
When women withdraw from conferences because of caregiving responsibilities in addition to other barriers, it creates a significant obstacle to gender equity in academia. It limits their ability to participate fully in research networks and undermines their opportunities to advance and thrive in their careers. Missing these opportunities has cumulative consequences: reduced visibility, fewer collaborations, lower access to mentorship and funding opportunities, and diminished recognition within disciplinary communities, all of which shape long-term academic trajectories. For instance, evidence from German Sociology shows that women with childcare responsibilities face a 35% higher risk of exiting academia than men, and an almost 40% higher risk than women without childcare responsibilities (Habicht at al. 2026).
Therefore, more adequate support is key in keeping women with care responsibilities in academia. Few employers have measures in place to mitigate the burden of caregiving during conference participation, like caregiver bursaries or childcare support, while most still view it as the caregiver’s responsibility to carry any additional costs. This leaves many of us with no choice other than to abstain from or drastically reduce conference participation. Particularly in a heterogeneous and spatially diverse field such as Regional Studies, that thrives from being inclusive towards scholars from Global South institutions, this disproportionate effect on academics from tighter-budget institutions goes against self-proclaimed inclusion strategies. Moreover, this pattern is evident even in countries where women have achieved exceptionally high levels of participation in higher education and research, such as Argentina, where gender parity in academic participation has not translated into equivalent career outcomes or research performance, as it has for their male counterparts (Guizardi, 2026).
In this context, conference organisers function as gatekeepers. Their ability to mitigate barriers for caregivers through offering support and creating caregiver-friendly conference settings should not be underestimated (Cardel et al., 2022). Besides financial barriers, those of us who do bring their children to a conference meet a whole set of challenges. From inaccessible family rooms to being unable to attend formal dinners, many caregivers end up only half-participating while experiencing twice the stress. However, we believe taking children along can be valuable for breaking down gender stereotypes for the next generation and increasing visibility of caregiving responsibilities in academia. We therefore call on conference organisers to consider caregiving in their inclusion concepts to support the goal of making our discipline more inclusive.
Conference organisers should move from treating caregiver support as an optional benefit towards establishing a minimum standard of care-inclusive participation. Effective measures for caregivers caring for children of all ages include, but are not limited to, the following examples:
Infrastructure
- Nursing rooms that provide privacy for breastfeeding, pumping or other needs. If this is a shared quiet room, the option to reserve the room for a short time should be given and the room needs to be accessible without leaving the venue.
- Family rooms, where it is acceptable for children to be noisy and play. This would also provide opportunities for non-attending caregivers to meet.
- Healthy snacks and fresh fruit for children, so families can easily meet children’s nutritional needs throughout the conference without having to leave the venue.
Scheduling & Program
- Family friendly conference times, such as no conferences on the weekends or late evening presentations.
- Flexibility of presentation slots for carers if childcare cannot be arranged around them or only shorter attendance can be realized, ideally in form of a formal request during registration.
- More opportunities for networking and informal discussions during the day rather than in the evenings.
- Making remote attendance possible and more meaningful, for instance through remote networking opportunities during the conference.
- Family friendly dinners and receptions, or family networking alternatives if this cannot be implemented.
Financial support & Childcare
- Caregiving grants or subsidies for after-hours childcare at home for carers traveling alone or participating online.
- Partner bursaries to bring additional caregivers to conferences, as this can be more effective than external childcare, which is not necessarily accepted by all children.
- Partnering with local childcare organisations or community institutions to offer on-site childcare or family support during the conference.
Representation
- Representation or consultation of caregiving women in conference planning processes.
Organisers should collect information on demand for childcare and financial support, monitor the use of available measures and evaluate whether caregivers are able to participate fully in formal sessions, networking activities and all associated social events. This would allow conferences to move beyond symbolic inclusion and assess whether their policies create genuinely equitable conditions for participation.
In closing, we want to emphasise also the positives that taking children to conferences can bring: for those planning to have children, observing other academics with children of all ages shows what can be possible, and can lead to interesting conversations about how to manage a career around a family. Kids can be a great icebreaker to start a conversation with someone you may have not interacted with before. Conferences can also bring together families of friends and colleagues that we may only be able to meet a few times a year, and within a care-inclusive conference setting, attending under care responsibilities might even become a source of joy rather than a burden.
We believe that being more welcoming to caregivers and children can contribute to a positive culture shift overall, and to a more open and inclusive community of scholars. Enabling caregiving academics to still participate in conferences and increasing the visibility of care work might not only be beneficial on an individual level but to our scholarly community as a whole.
For researchers with caregiving responsibilities, travelling with a child is often not a personal choice but the only way to participate in a conference. Family inclusion should therefore be regarded not as an optional extra, but as an integral part of academic equality. Ultimately, care-inclusive conferences do more than support researchers with caring responsibilities: they contribute to an academy that is more open, welcoming, and connected to the wider society of which it is part.
References
Cardel, M. I., Loop, M. S., Brown, A. W., et al. (2022). Implementation of a family support grant to subsidise caregiving needs and support attendance at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual professional scientific conference. Current Developments in Nutrition, 6(6), nzac076. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzac076
Chai, S., & Freeman, R. B. (2019). Temporary colocation and collaborative discovery: Who confers at conferences. Strategic Management Journal, 40(13), 2138-2164.
Charmes, J. (2019). The unpaid care work and the labour market: An analysis of time use data based on the latest World Compilation of Time-use Surveys. International Labour Office. https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@gender/documents/publication/wcms_732791.pdf
Guizardi, M. (2026). A Science of One’s Own. In: Guizardi, M. (eds) How to Suppress the Careers of Female Social Scientists – Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-16352-3_1
Habicht, I. M., Lutter, M., & Schröder, M. (2026). Why women leave academia: A longitudinal study of the leaky pipeline in German sociology. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01634-0
Park, G., Franklin, R., Hardy, S., Iammarino, S., & Poon, J. P. H. (2025). Mind the gap: gender, geography and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on publication in Regional Studies Association (RSA) journals. Regional Studies, 59(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2025.2485131
Authors
Kerstin J. Schaefer (Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University)
Carolin Ioramashvili (Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex)
Nayara Macedo De Medeiros Albrecht (Political Science, University of Amsterdam)
Maria Florencia Blanco Esmoris (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET))
A cooperation intiated from the RSA’s Women’s Network