One Extra Year is going on maternity leave! 👶 A huge thank you to everyone who has made this project possible: to those who trusted us with their stories, and to everyone who read, shared, and discussed them. A very special thank you to @arianagam11 , @_giovannachaves, and the @AEACSWEP for helping us take this project one step further. oneextrayear.substack.com/p/… And, before we go, a little bit of self-promotion! 😊 You can explore our website, where we compare maternity and parental leave policies across more than 200 departments around the world: one-extra-year.com/ This is a pause, not an ending. Stay tuned. One Extra Year will be back.

Wednesday is story day! This week, we hear from the amazing @DFinocchiaro76 , from the land of parental-leave-and-benefits-dreams 🇸🇪. Or is it? Read her story to find out! Funny, heartwarming, and real - just like Daria herself. And with a very hopeful outlook: "Beyond the very early period—when mothers often carry more of the load for biological reasons—fathers matter enormously. And looking at my younger male colleagues today, I actually feel quite optimistic about where things are heading." oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

🚨We are live🚨 Check out the one extra year website: one-extra-year.com/ This is a work in progress, so please help us keep it up to date! Can’t find your department? Info missing or wrong? Email us at oneextrayear@gmail.com. Like what you see? A lot of the credit goes to @arianagam11 and @_giovannachaves, and to @AEACSWEP for the support and funding.

🚨 The due date is almost here! 🚨 The One Extra Year database, built with support from @AEACSWEP, launches this coming Monday, 10am ET! 🎉 Watch for the link to the brand-new website and get ready to explore and compare parental leave, tenure-clock extensions, teaching relief & more across econ departments around the globe. 📊

Can you believe it’s already week 23? This Wednesday's story is by the incredible @SephorahMangin, who had her daughter at the start of her PhD. Thank you for sharing your personal journey, and for your thoughts on how to improve the way we think about research output and motherhood: “To evaluate a female academic with children, you should focus on the quality of her research – instead of comparing her quantity of research to someone else. Most importantly, use your imagination. If she can do that with young children, imagine what she can do in the future!” oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

This week, we hear from the incredible Mar Reguant. After having two kids, she creatively proposed the "Ready to Come Back" program: a simple way to allow researchers to take the time they need to recover and be with babies, and then come back. The response it receives clearly shows that we have a LONG way to go. "But the response I got was that people might abuse the program to get more seminar invitations. This response captured the problem better than my proposal ever could. I was thinking about women pumping milk between meetings and saying yes because they worried about what would happen if they started saying no. Yet, they were worried about someone strategically getting an extra seminar invitation." oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

This week, we hear from the amazing @juli_caunedo. Her piece is a beautiful blend of personal story, reflection on the profession, and words of encouragement & advice for the younger generation. "Asking for accommodations through childbearing is not asking for charity or compassion. It is asking for the opportunity to bear the costs of pregnancy without giving up our passion or our ideas. As a profession, we should ask how much talent is lost when women — biologically the ones who carry pregnancies — feel cornered into choosing between family and professional advancement." oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

It’s story day! This week, we hear from the amazing @VicoVanasco, who bravely shares also the "before": “It took me four years to get pregnant, with multiple treatments and visits to the doctor along the way. It was very hard on me, both physically and mentally. Much of this was happening on the sidelines, almost in secret.” Read her story for the heartwarming happy ending! Vico’s experience is far from unique, especially as many of us are older when we feel ready, professionally, to have kids. What can we, as a profession, do to support women in this process? oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

This week, we hear from the incredible Alessandra Voena. Thank you for revisiting the gruesome memories and sharing your story, putting a face to the numbers. “Post-partum hemorrhage affects around 4% of all births in the U.S., … [and] is among the main causes of maternal mortality. Pre-eclampsia involves roughly another 5%, and … Post-partum depression hits over 12% of U.S. mothers. Some of these women are our coauthors, former students, and other scholars we write tenure letters or hiring cases about. We typically never learn what they are going through. Ignoring these data is a choice we make when designing gender-neutral policies, and it puts academics who give birth at a systematic disadvantage.” open.substack.com/pub/oneext…

In week 18, we hear from the amazing Grace Gu. She shares her, at times, harrowing story of becoming the mother of three and reminds us of the sheer superhuman strength of mothers. Reading her and all the other incredible stories, one does really wonder "Why do universities, institutions that pride themselves on evidence-based reasoning, apply the same flat policy to a birthing mother of twins and a non-birthing parent of a healthy singleton? Non-birthing parents’ contribution is irreplaceable, but pretending the loads are equivalent and then offering one year to cover all of it is a policy that does not see eye to eye with the evidence." oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

Exciting news! 🎉 One Extra Year has been featured in @dmckenzie001 ’s World Bank newsletter. Thank you to @WorldBank and @dmckenzie001 for helping amplify honest conversations about pregnancy, parenthood and academic careers. oneextrayear.substack.com/ Blog: blogs.worldbank.org/en/impac…? #WomenInAcademia

🚨We’re thrilled to share that One Extra Year has received a generous grant from @AEACSWEP! 🚨 Alongside the personal stories at the heart of the project, we’ll use this support to collect data on policies on parental leave, tenure-clock extensions, and teaching relief across econ departments in the U.S. and Europe. 📈📊📉 We’ll soon publish the resulting data in an accessible & visually engaging format to help - departments compare their policies with peer institutions - researchers understand the broader landscape - the profession identify where change is most needed We’re deeply grateful to @AEACSWEP for supporting this next phase of One Extra Year. Stay tuned!

This week, the fabulous @leightjessica shares her story. She is in a unique position of having had kids while on the tenure track and also while at a policy institution. What can the worlds learn from each other? She closes with some excellent advice, based on the reality that our careers are not really plannable: "..if you want kids, no reason to wait! Wait until you’re ready, of course, but don’t feel that you have to wait until some arbitrary professional goal is achieved or until your household is more “stable”." oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

Its story-day! This week we hear from the amazing @BarbaraBiasi who shares a heartwarming tale about how kids actually made her a better researcher and the crucial importance of role models. “I did not get there alone. Supportive colleagues, especially women, helped me in ways too numerous to count … They showed me, again and again, that motherhood and ambition did not have to cancel each other out.” open.substack.com/pub/oneext…

In week 15 of One Extra Year, the amazing @ProfLisaBKahn reflects on having her three daughters in a department that was not (yet) prepared to support its faculty during motherhood. She “spent quite a bit of time in my first pregnancy convincing my university to provide parental leave.” Thank you, Lisa, and the many other extraordinary women who started paving this road for us younger ones! oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

It’s week 14! Join us for a poetic reflection on motherhood by the amazing @dfilizunsal. “Looking back, what remains with me most is how motherhood refuses coherence. Ambition and guilt. Competence and helplessness. Perhaps that is what resilience actually becomes — not mastering these contradictions but learning to live inside them.” oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…

It’s story day! In week 12 of our series, the incredible @GalinaHale touches on two very important topics: having a kid during the PhD and how the demon of post-partum depression can hit anyone. Thank you, Galina, for sharing your personal and impressive story. open.substack.com/pub/oneext…

Week 12 of One Extra Year is out (aka we almost made it through the 1st trimester)! For more pregnancy maths, read this week’s incredible and harrowing journey by @InaSimonovska. "So, if we were only evaluated on the basis of teaching, in the worst case scenario of my first kid, I would’ve needed at least 3 extra months due to physical constraints. But, we get evaluated based on research. And for that, #1 + #2 of active brain fog purely caused by hormones during pregnancy and breastfeeding would mean 29 months." Thank you so much for sharing your very personal story! oneextrayear.substack.com/p/…