Researching Gender, Health, and Equity with Publishing Powerhouse Ivy Bourgeault

Doing Social Research: The Podcast
Doing Social Research: The Podcast
Researching Gender, Health, and Equity with Publishing Powerhouse Ivy Bourgeault
Loading
/

In this episode Phyllis dives deep into the world of social research with the extraordinary Dr. Ivy Bourgeault. 🌟 Highlights include learning how Ivy has published more papers in a year than most do in a career! Appreciating the value of a gender lens in health research and why diversity is so important on our research teams. Get tips on managing a successful research career while maintaining personal well-being and fostering future leaders. And listen to Phyllis’ apparently favorite subject she seems to bring to all of her guests: the role of AI in academia and why human creativity and critical thinking remain irreplaceable.

Join us for an inspiring conversation that not only demystifies the research process but also celebrates the brilliant minds pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Whether you’re a student, an emerging researcher, or just curious about the world of social sciences, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration. 🌍✨

Listen now and don’t forget to rate us 5 stars! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

(Also, can you tell which parts of that were written by AI? I feel like you can. *shrug emoji* )

Errata

Huge apologies to Ivy and our listeners for the quality of sound on this episode. This was the third episode I recorded and I was still getting the sound figured out. Willow and I tried out best to doctor it up as much as possible using various sound editing software but a buzz and other inconsistencies remain. harrumph!

Also, apparently, the story of Archimedes’ bath leading him to run through the streets in the buff while shouting Eureka! was not for discovering the principle of buoyancy. According to the director of McGill’s Office for Science and Society, Dr. Joe Schwarcz, Archimedes did develop the principle of buoyancy but his escapade in his just-washed birthday suit was actually inspired by his discovery of how to determine the purity of gold.

Works Cited, Ideas Mentioned & Names Dropped

  • Bourgeault, Ivy Lynn. 2006. Push!: The Struggle for Midwifery in Ontario. Vol. 25. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP.
  • Lundine, Jamie, Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, Jocalyn Clark, Shirin Heidari, and Dina Balabanova. 2018. “The Gendered System of Academic Publishing.” The Lancet 391(10132):1754–56. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30950-4.
  • Popper, Karl. 1959 (1934). The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Logik der Forschung). London: Hutchison of London
  • Noam Chomsky & his thoughts on AI can be viewed on YouTube: Chomsky on ChatGPT, Education, Russia and the Unvaccinated.
  • Ivy’s friend Raymond G. De Vries is an emeritus professor of Learning Health Science, Sociology, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan

Learn more about…

What is science?

Submitting articles for publication

How publications are generally ranked among our peers

A checklist for good writing

Transcript*

*unedited and produced by the “transcribe” function in MS Word.

Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to doing Social Research where I talk with some of my favorite people who do Social Research to dig into the cool projects they’re working on, along with the struggles and successes they’ve had in their careers.
Speaker
No.
Speaker 1
My goal is to help demystify research for students, help other researchers hear stories of others wins and losses, and provide a platform for all the brilliant work of folks doing research in the humanities and social sciences. On your host, Phyllis Rippee at professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa and creator of the website doingsocialresearch.com. I’ve been teaching research methods for over 15 years and have carried out my own sociological research using both qualitative methods and advanced statistics. Today, we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk with researcher extraordinaire Dr. Ivy Bourgeault. About her work on gender work and health care and how she came to be so, well, extraordinary as a researcher, she has already published more papers in 2024 than I have in my entire career. 20 and last year was no different with her name on 22 papers. Ivy is a professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa, where she is at the university research Chair and gender diversity, and the. Sessions. She leads the Canadian Health Workforce Network, the empowering women leaders in health Initiative and Co leads the team primary care training for transformation project. Doctor Boudreaux has garnered an international reputation for her research on the health workforce, particularly from a gender lens. She has been a consultant to various provincial ministries of Health and Canada to Health Canada, the Pan American Health Organization, the OECD and to the World Health Organization, and she has served on the boards of the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative, the Institute of Health.
Speaker
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Services and Policy Research at the Canadian Institutes of Health. Research and the International Journal Human Resources for Health. She was inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in September 2016 and received the 20/16/2017 University of Ottawa Award for Excellence in Research. I said when I was writing that and reading it, I definitely felt like Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World. When they meet Alice Cooper and they’re like we’re not worthy. Worthy. Um, but also I. Just love seeing you and hanging out and chatting with you because you are just a lovely person. So welcome to my podcast.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for the invitation.
Speaker
I.
Speaker 1
I’m so excited and I have so many things to ask like all about how could I become a I don’t think I could. I think anyway, but how others could become the a research superstar like you. But I often like to start with asking, just like what? What kind of research are you doing these?
Speaker
This.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a really good question because partly I’m on sabbatical right now. So I’m trying to sort of finish off all of the writing from other research projects, but one thing that I’m really excited to do and it picks up on strands of other research that we have done, like in keeping with my chair. Um in gender diversity in the professions is to look at the experience of those who identify as women in academia and doing research on research.
Speaker 1
Yahoo.
Speaker 2
So there’s a call for proposals that’s looking at that and I think it would be really important to take a longitudinal perspective. On what it’s like to be women in academia from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives, and how the academic infrastructure you know is felt differently or lived differently by those who identify as women than those who. Identify as men.
Speaker 1
Oh my God. Seriously, this is like all of my questions for you.
Speaker
Hello.
Speaker 1
Did you say that it like the call for papers is? First, you’re doing the.
Speaker 2
There’s.
Speaker 1
What are you thinking?
Speaker 2
Yeah. So there’s a there’s a call for proposals that’s out to look at research on research oht.
Speaker 1
Oh, so where’s the call for proposals?
Speaker 2
And so this is it’s coming out from social sciences and manages Research Council of Canada or Shirk. But I think that it’s an initiative that’s a partnership between Shark and Cir. and possibly also and. Cirque. Because all types of research should be examined, and I think sociologists are uniquely placed to look at that. One of my colleagues, Raymond degrees, describes sociology as the signs that looks at science more broadly, and that’s what I feel is really wonderful about the discipline of sociology. And I think it provides us with a lot of tools to look at science as an endeavor in a similar way that we would look at the structure of the health system or the structure of the education system or the social system. There’s an academic system and I think that we can and should use sociological tools and lenses to examine that, and particularly from a gender lens.
Speaker 1
Totally. I love it. I love it and I always, I often think so. I went to not to talk too much about me, but I went to a very sort of quantitative. Search sort of oriented graduate program and I was admitting to one of my kids the other day that I didn’t really learn the word epistemology until like after I had moved to Canada.
Speaker
So.
Speaker 1
And I think it’s because it was like very focused on like sociology as a science. And I think in science too, it’s like there’s no such thing. It’s like fish in water don’t understand water because it’s like, well, science is just everything and yet exists. Self examination is like the most important thing, and so absolutely tell me a little bit more about why you think this is important. Like what is it like? Why? Why? Why should sociologists be the one to be looking at?
Speaker
This.
Speaker 2
Science. Well, I think everybody should be looking at science from a critical lens. There’s the doing of the science, and then there’s the examining how that’s being done. By whom? For whom? How? Where, what, and why? You know all of the the W questions and I think that because a sociologist, we are trained. To have a critical lens to problematize taken for granted assumptions and society. I know that that doesn’t make you a very pleasant partner. To be with sometimes. Or mom, but it it’s very hard to kind of turn off that, you know, that set of eyeglasses. Right. Once you have put have put them on and so it’s really. It’s really taking that critical lens and saying I wonder why it is that way. And um, what I find really emancipatory about that is that it could be something. And it’s sort of working towards a much more equitable, I say that quite specifically not equal, not everybody has to be the same and in fact equitable is very important and that we would have a more equitable approach. And what I am fascinated by and and I see gender beyond just sort of the binary, absolutely. It’s really about that we bring. To a scientific endeavor, our lived experiences and our lived experiences help frame how it is that we ask questions. What we even ask questions about, right? I mean, even thinking about would men, I mean, men have studied midwifery, but from a different perspective than women studying midwifery in the same thing. You know anything around reproductive rights and anything around, you know, things that you say quintessentially. That’s a woman’s experience versus a man’s. Periods I and again, you know those who identify as women and and and and as men. And I think it really sociology brings those tools to help you unpack critically examine. And I think what more important area to examine than the whole academic enterprise and the creation of knowledge, because that’s a pretty privileged position, is to create knowledge that is, you know, that is acknowledged by others to be, quote, UN quote the truth. And so I don’t believe that there is one singular. The truth um and and, but that’s sort of epistemological perspective has been quite difficult to occupy in a post pandemic antiscience. Environment.
Speaker 1
Ohm. My God, I’m making faces of like, yes. Oh my God, cause it’s so tricky, like as someone again. I was trained and I’m very like sociology as a science, but I also completely. Chair every like I. I share all of your perspectives on that. There are multiple truths, and intersectional feminists have pointed out, or standpoint theorists that like the position from which we come is going to influence how we view the world. What would you say? Here’s my new favorite question on the podcast is well, I like instead of saying I hate the phrase devil’s advocate, so I’m going. I’m going to ask you a hard hitting question. It’s going to just punch you in the gut because it won’t actually, but like isn’t science objective though?
Speaker 2
That’s a very good question. And no, it isn’t because seeing and agree that we are going to do that from a herd immunity perspective, but still have the rights to be able to question how did this all come about? Have some level of discomfort with the hegemony of, you know, Pharmaceutical industry in terms of who owns vaccines, etcetera, patents etcetera, all of that. So you can still you know. You know, walking shoe gum at the same.
Speaker 1
Time I was just gonna. It’s almost like people who are like I really appreciate the term scientism versus science, that there’s sort of like this ideological faith in science is so much less interesting to me than like to me, real science is where we are falsifying and full Karl Popper, where falsifying our hypothesis, which means we are trying to find out not where we’re right, but we’re wrong. And it’s when we’re constantly trying to find out where we’re right. Then that’s just ideology. And it’s just so much less interesting. I think what you’re pointing to is. With this ability of research, if we construe it more broadly than just sort of, here are the scientists and this is what they’re doing and they’re the only people who have the answers, then we start to get so many more interesting and. Diverse at home, flexing and facts.
Speaker 2
Absolutely, absolutely. So I I think it’s. The importance of the periphery. It’s taking the position of the periphery and do you know from a scientific? Um enterprise women have held a position of the periphery, right? I mean, it is structured traditionally as a masculine profession and as a masculine endeavor. So women fit into that mold and men fit into this kind of traditional mold, and those who are of different gender identities again are of the periphery. And I think both men and women who are cisgender also learn a lot from those who are in different gendered circumstances, and it causes you to think. Like about what those experiences are life, you know, for example, you know the movie will and Harper, you know, and the experiences of of a man who identifies as a woman and decides to transition. And all of the insights that are garnered about what that means for women as he identifies as women, it’s very interesting to see someone who previously identified as a man coming to these realizations that some women do and some women don’t, right? But it’s. Just those quote UN quote peripheral positions, those non dominant positions allow you to really question the dominant dogma or accepted truths. And and I think sociology aligns with that to a certain extent. I mean, not exclusively, but I think it’s really taking those perspectives right. You know, coming from a rural area and like growing up on a farm, you know? Um what? You know what are some of the assumptions that we have about, you know, about where you live and the resources and services that are available to you from a very urban perspective versus a rural perspective? So that’s just sort of another example of looking at social structures and societal structures from the periphery. And I think sociology enables you to have those tools, whether you have those lived experiences. Or not.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I love it. I love it and it’s just, say for those listening I have. You’re the. Third person that I’ve interviewed, but none of the recordings have been released yet. Um and so, but the first person that I interviewed, Chloe Kim, is a former master Southern mine who is transgender. And like there’s a lot of overlap in what you’re talking about, what she was she was talking about about just the sort of transformational potential of being able question just as you said, the things that we take for granted and it’s a. Really to me, I think there’s some people who find it scary and they want to like, you know, stop these ideas. And but it’s like it is so exciting to me, this idea of, you know, there is a kind of destabilizing of like, things could be different and people like. Well, no, I know how things are and it can be kind of scary to change it.
Speaker 2
But like well, and especially if you have a privileged position in that structure, right? And those on the periphery have a vested interest in destabilizing it. But that’s how we improve and we get better and it doesn’t mean it’s always progressive, like there’s always retrenchment. I mean, we’ve experienced retrenchment of you know those who identify as women or who undertake roles that are traditionally associated with women’s caregiving roles in academia. Brain immediately after and post pandemic. Great there. This has been a fascinating unintended social experiment to see what actually happens when you know the rubber hits the road, or whatever term you want to use for that, what are the assumptions that kick in that are kind of just the line underneath the service? But then they become very surfaced. When so, how are the decisions are made? Who’s going to take care of the kids? Who’s going to do this? And and how that intersects with ones position. You know, in the life course I didn’t have kids at home. I worked with people who had kids at home when you disproportionately have research teams that you know are, you know, largely women, those who identify as women. That will have an impact on your productivity and then how productivity gets measured. We’ve become incredibly quantified in how we quote, UN quote, measure productivity. How do we measure impact? Can that be captured by a singular quantitative score? So all of these things, um, that would have a certain intention of trying. To be able to. You know, measure, you know, academics of the strength of academic endeavors against each other, you know, to have more equitable. Um, systems of comparison. When you’re allocating grants and awards and that sort of thing, my goodness, academic knowledge of the pursuit of academic knowledge is so wide-ranging. How could you capture that in one quantitative score?
Speaker 1
Totally. Totally. And this actually, um, you think one of the questions I had prepared ahead of time was? Well, partly in in the bio section of your website iembroidered.ca, where you can find what I plagiarized at the top of this episode says you wrote gender always matters, period.
Speaker
Which?
Speaker 1
So I’m I’m interested in sort of and I’ve and also I’m interested in knowing more about why you think. I mean, you sort of spoken to this about the periphery so far, and so I’m interested more in that as well. But also just based on what you were just saying, there was an article that you had coauthored in the journal The Lancet in 2018. Been looking at the gendered system of academic publishing and I’m just gonna pull apart here cause I wouldn’t expect you to remember these statistics of of your head. So you wrote of the estimated 27.3 million researchers who authored the 5.5 million research papers indexed in the web of science database between 2008 and 2012, just over 70%, or men. A review of the scope is database between 2011 and 2016 found men’s average output in the UK for the five years to be 2.4. No publications and women’s 1.9. Meanwhile, women in first authorship positions increased from 27% in 1994 to 37% and 2014 in six high impact medical journals. But progress has stagnated or declined since 2009, so in the one to point out that women are less likely to be called on as reviewers as journal board members or editors, and as a result, they receive less research funding. This causes cumulative disadvantages in their careers shortened promotion trajectories. Um, But then there was one. You also cited the self audit by the journal Science and they claimed that the problem wasn’t their bias, but that they get a third fewer submissions from women than men. So aside from the fact that this all sounds rather bleak, like, I wonder if you you could talk a little bit more about what do you think is the cause of this? Like what explains like I I completely agree with you were just saying about how. You know, like we do, like all of these are metrics like numbers that we could reduce academics to to say like how many publications, how many boards, how many, whatever. But what? How do you explain why we see these gender differences?
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And I think you know, when we look at academic publishing. That’s kind of looking at one slice of the academic endeavor enterprise. One element of it, and there’s, you know, there’s a process towards that. Um, you know that a lot of people sort of use an analogy of pipeline that we have more women that go into. Um undergraduate Masters, PhD, Um and as you move along that quote academic pipeline, you see fewer and fewer women. So sometimes people refer to as a leaky pipeline, which has this notion that, you know, women are just falling through, you know, holes in a pipeline. And that’s not what’s happening. What is happening are layer upon layer upon layer upon layer, through each of those, you know progress through the ranks of Academy. Yeah, the gendered bias and inherent gendered bias. I’m not saying that there is any conspiracy that people are cooking this up in the backroom again, when you describe a profession as masculine, profession has evolved, you know, from the 18th and 19th and 20th century in way that reflects those who occupied those professions. There were periods of time that women were actively excluded, you know, from professions including academia, and so that gets structured into each layer. Of the profession, what is the application process to get into undergraduate? What are the and like? Even looking further back right in terms of what? Um courses due to take in in high school. What courses are you encouraged or not encouraged to take? How do they even structure the curriculum that enables women to take, you know, a certain course in another course? Very gendered or nongendered course. Right. So that all happens and all of that is gender. That’s why I say gender always matters, like even when you Don. Think about it explicitly. It is having an impact. It is the in my opinion, #1 cleavage in society. That is the first way that we identify people. Here’s a little experiment that I get people to do. If you think gender doesn’t matter, what’s the first question that you ask when a friend of yours or a family member has had a baby?
Speaker 1
Totally right.
Speaker 2
And I mean some people say, oh, is it healthy? No, that’s not. The first question that you asked because it’s structures the rest of your questions, the rest of your thought? Yes. Um, so everything is is gendered. So yeah, so gender always has an impact, even if you stick it in a multiple regression equation and you find out that gender doesn’t have a significant effect. That’s because you are only including one dimension of gender, and that could be gender identity. What about gender roles, which intersects with gender identity? What about, you know, gender jobs, right? Jobs are gendered as well. As you know, we were describing an academia being very masculine. So, um, I think that when you come back to look at academic publishing, that’s at the very end of a long process about who gets into academia, who gets into. Productive. What are considered, you know, producing knowledge parts of academia? Um. Some of that requires research funding. There’s a whole gendered nature of access to research funding and how peer review of research funds gets constructed, right? I mean, no one would ever the problematize A-Team or they haven’t previously problematized the team. That’s all men, but if you have a team, that’s all women, that tends to get. A little bit more prominent.
Speaker 1
Ohm. My God, I was thinking about this with when Pamela Harris became. Team um the nominee when Biden stepped down and where was talking about who was going to be the her VP and as a joke I like because my kids are really into politics and they are like, oh, it’s this guy or this guy or that guy. I’m like, why couldn’t be another woman? And they’re, I mean, in these guys like my kids, like my daughter is like a trans woman. My son is a very progressive thinker. It’s just like the reality of it is.
Speaker
Like.
Speaker 1
It’s a it’s an impossible thing. It it is so impossible that nobody stopped to think. Why is it that every single viable running mate is a white man?
Speaker 2
You know, absolutely, absolutely. So it’s those types of things, you know, cause you to, you know, to look at the system in terms of and. And and again, it’s not just like. Thank you. A woman who is in science is going to be exercising these gender lenses. You have to have additional training for that and men and those who don’t identify as women or men could, you know, have that additional that additional gender lands. So I think as you mentioned, it’s accumulative impact. Act of access to courses. Scheduling. Who’s available to write letters? You getting awards, you being able to garner research funds, are you in? Have you chosen to be or have you been channeled into a discipline that is research intensive or not research and? Instead of, you know, where do you end up with in academic jobs? Are you in a research intensive university or not? Research intensive university do you have a heavier teaching mode which makes it difficult to to continue with? Um, you know, with a with a program of research, all of those things that. Cominate in a publication or a series of publications. All of those layers are gendered, and you have a cumulative disadvantage if you identify as women, it’s just describing what is. It’s not. It’s not saying that there’s a conspiracy, but in order for us to address the inequity, we need to 1st know that it exists and read that it exists. And then figure out how do we look at the root of the problem. And with any complex problem, you need multiple interventions at each of those stages. In an academic career, UM. And so that’s, that’s what I would like to have people realize now, that doesn’t make me popular. It’s, you know, in some environments where you.
Speaker 1
Is killjoys.
Speaker 2
Yeah, you don’t, you don’t. You know, they just want to proceed with something and you want them to stop and consider what the inequities are. And I’m just talking about gender. I mean, if we take an intersectional lens to that, it’s very it’s distinctly different when you intersect gender and racialized identity and indigenous identity and you know, country of origin and all of these, you know, forms. Of of social exclusion within society. As I mentioned earlier, urban versus rural, whether you are able bodied or you know not able bodied like they’re all these different you know permutations and not all of those are equal, right?
Speaker 1
Totally. Totally. So here’s another hard hitting question that’s gonna punch. Even like that. Um, so you are like a shining example of how what you’re saying at first glance will say is totally untrue. Like you have published more than any man, woman, child. Children are not publishing research and if they are, they can. I just will be too jealous. So you like you are extremely successful. You bring in. I really wanna ask it is that like gosh to ask how much money in research funds have you?
Speaker 2
No, because I often ask you to somewhere.
Speaker 1
On how much?
Speaker 2
Likely No 4.
Speaker
How much?
Speaker 2
Well, I mean, it went into stress, the stratosphere where this last mega project. Yeah, but it’s it’s over, like 50, nearly 60 million. Yeah.
Speaker 1
That’s like huge. Yes, so much money. And so, like, you’re doing all of the things. And I heard you say before. Like you grew up with farm. If I were at the hard hitting question would be like, why doesn’t everyone just act like Ivy and then like, why? I know the answer. Again, this is gonna hang in the gut.
Speaker
This.
Speaker 1
What is it like? Why does it not just that women are making bad choices, that women should just copy? What men are doing? Like, how is it that you have been so successful and like, how do you, how do you sort of balance individuals with these averages? That we’re looking at.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Thank you for for asking that. I think you know just personally like how did I get to where I got to. No. And I will say with humility, a lot of that is accidental, right? You know, just being, you know, the first person that you know, there’s that borderline that they talk about between you being the last person that got in the ward versus the first person that didn’t get the award. There’s very little difference between that. I mean, there’s an area of research in medicine that means very competitive mentioned. Percent. I mean, there are some people that you know in the top 25%, they’re going into medicine. The whole middle group, it’s really rather random as to whether or not they get in to a medical program and then become a physician.
Speaker 1
And I’ll say that that is totally true and I do not disagree with that, but I will also say I believe and it’s been awhile, but I believe that there’s research showing that when men. Are asked questions like this. They’re like hard work. When women are asked question, it was chance. It was. I was lucky.
Speaker 2
But I think I think it’s. Yeah, I think it’s it’s standard, guys. Like I said, generous manner. So gender will matter in my responsive, but I’m really. We thinking quite specifically about turning points in my career and many of them were I just made it right. But you know now that I know how people are reviewed, then I would just say, well, maybe I just made a maybe I could have been, you know, white quite clearly. You know ahead of the pack if you know these gender circumstances were were considered. So all that, I’m just very mindful that there have been some important turning points. And then when you have that turning point and you know for example, early in my career I got an A, you know, early career research award which. You know, reduce my teaching. I love teaching, but teaching consumes all of your time because it’s so salient you’re up in front of a class. You know, once, twice, three times a week and you need to be on and you know, those were nights that I was like up until, you know, 1/2 3:00 in the morning, making sure that I had a really good lecture in that you’re prepared and that you’ve got a really good. I’m so so I have to say, you know, winning that award reduces your teachings or the nables you to have more research productivity which makes you more likely to get the research grant, which gets you more likely to get the research chair, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So there is, you know, there’s a set of prerequisites, right? So that set me on a path of very intensive research productivity and therefore continued environments that would sustain that had I not passed that first hurdle, I would not be on this trajectory. So I’m very mindful. That of this trajectory and what what is needed so and why does one produce so many publications? Will you have large teams and you are mentoring people to write up publications and you also feel like you ask research questions. You gather data. People spend their time giving you. There lived experience. You bring it together and you feel a sense of responsibility to get that stuff. Out and so. Um, because you want that to be part of the knowledge endeavor and you want it to be part of, you know, knowledge synthesis and systematic reviews and scoping reviews. Those are increasingly popular methodology, as you know, research and all that has has expanded. So you want to make sure you know that your your findings have been considered in that body of knowledge. So I think that there is, I think that there’s a very heavy burden to get that information out. And as many publications as you have on your CV, it’s it’s your shadow CV that keeps you up at night. There’s like, OHP, the publications that I didn’t finish, you know, those ones that are mean, they’re going, it’s the they’re like a monkey on your back.
Speaker
Hold on.
Speaker 1
Ohhhhh, my God, yeah.
Speaker 2
So my sabbatical is really to try to get to get that backlog so that I can start a bit fresher. I won’t get all of it done. Because you know, I’m like, I’m like the dog in in app, you know, squirrel right now, another new idea. And I want to expand there and that you have to you have to finish off those other ones. And so that sense of responsibility that people took time to share their knowledge with you and you are applying your lens at synthesizing that and publish. Net in a way that will add to the scientific endeavors. So I think I think those prerequisites, those kind of you know turning points in your career has an impact on where you end up.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I love that. Even though you know is making the joke about it, but. I. I think that it’s, you know, one of the goals of this podcast is to help, you know, emerging researchers, junior faculty, graduate students, you know, to understand, sort of, peel back the curtain, but also to like. Deal with that kind of imposter syndrome stuff because it’s so easy to see someone with a really strong CV and just be like, well, I’m a failure. I can never do that like it it it is so hard to see that it took. Yeah. How would the person got them like? Yes. And I think you’re 100% right, even in the top 25 like there is so much that is arbitrary and selections of so many things within. Getting here and partly because everyone is so smart. Like you know, there are **** *****, but like so many people are smart and they are working hard and like and it depends on the field, you know, like I think in English don’t know this probably terror 15 years ago. It’s like 50% placement or something of PHD’s. So it’s like. Having a job getting an academic job isn’t about being smart. You know, it’s about like everybody is smart supply. It’s do you have the specific experience having taught or like research this very? Specific thing that like replaces the old guy who just retired, that doesn’t **** *** the other person in the department that doesn’t like, you know, make any enemies. But it’s cutting edge enough to make the university seem cool, but not so cool that they’re, you know, like there’s so many bizarre criteria.
Speaker 2
Absolutely. And all of that is random, you know, I mean, it’s structured, as you said by you know we need, we have these courses.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
While these courses come to be, are those the most important courses to have our worthy these courses that were interest courses of a faculty member that just retired? So could we could we rethink that right? And, you know, I’ve participated in enough undergraduate curriculum renewals both in sociology and Health Sciences. You know new programs, so it is to a certain extent somewhat random what you say are the mandatory required courses. You know, in some discipline there is a consensus about what’s. Are, but how do you move the field if all you are doing is just continuing to teach what has always been taught in the same way that it has been taught mean the whole thing, that will not the whole thing, but a lot of what excites me about academia is that enormous privilege that you have in creating college and and creating knowledge in an area that hasn’t previously existed. And this is the reason why we have to have more representation in academia to really explore knowledge from all of those different lived experience. As you know, people who identify as black gender, et cetera, have a different lived experience than I do. I have a different lived experience than those who are traditionally, you know, dominant within an academic endeavor like so, there isn’t one truth. There are multiple truths based on multiple experiences, and I would want to. I feel it’s exciting to be involved in an endeavor where we are much more inclusive. And have many more aha moments, like all my God, I I never even thought about that. That is so cool. And then like your gear to start going and that’s just generates a whole other set of new ideas. And then you just kind of go off on that? So it’s so that’s why I feel it’s very important to have diversity within the profession of academia. And that was. That’s why I really wanted to dedicate my research chair to that. Uh is to expand upon that knowledge. You know, building on knowledge I have of other professions and professionals are very kind of like 19th 20th century trope that we have. But it’s very persistent. You know, it’s a very persistent social structure.
Speaker
The.
Speaker 1
Yes, this is also a bit of a side note, but this is also what not as worried about AI as some people are because to me. The only thing that AI like maybe someday, but what it cannot do that only academics in like and I think it’s getting harder the more funding is tied to corporations and like you know, engineering and science and these other places. But it’s like in the. Humanities and social sciences. This is the place. Where we get to do. Pardon my language, whatever we want, we can. It’s seriously, especially once we get to be in this privileged position, we are the ones who get to say like, wait a second. Why are we doing it this way? Why is this this way? Is it necessary and we can ask all kinds of? You know questions that other people just wouldn’t even think to pause to ask about it. And and I can’t do that like all I can do is reproduce like and I think AI is cool for like being able to like pull together, you know, all kinds of information. That’s already been established to give us a nice list of, like, here’s what we know. But like it can’t. Tell us what we don’t know. Like maybe some things that people have said, we don’t know. And so to me, I think like you’re really getting me excited to return to a paper that has been been working on forever. And I feel so terrible. To the participants because it was like data collected in 2018 and I just it. Is so passe. But it’s like I will not let go of it because I’m like what I’m thinking about feels so novel of, like, cause I’m looking. I’m not gonna go into it, but just like the I’m looking at the ways in which breastfeeding promotion has been sort of used as a tool of the colonialism in international settings, and it’s like nobody’s talking about that. Like everyone talking about breakfast, they’re not talking about whether or not how it’s used. It’s like a political. The ball. And so, I mean I I just think you’re really getting me all excited again to think about the ways in which research just has such importance. And it is such a privilege to get to be able to do this kind of work.
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So I have been a perturbed um by by AI. I don’t know where I sit on it, but you know, just reflecting on on your comments, Noam Chomsky, you know described, you know, AI as you know very sophisticated. Said high speed plagiarism software. And I was just. Like, OK, I I that that helps. That helps that notion of creativity. You know that liminal space, you know when you’re going to bed or when you’re waking up in the morning and something clicks and you just go, oh, maybe that’s connected to that. I don’t know how I would do that. I don’t even know how I do it right. I don’t know how it happens within me that things get connected, but that’s amazing. And so I’m not as I’m not as worried about that. What worries me from a pedagogical perspective is it’s easy to be lazy. It’s easy to use tools instead of like learning how to do things, and I know that I’m going to start sounding like, Oh my God, I walked uphill both ways, you know, in this snow, to get to school, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nobody does that anymore. Um, but there is there is something about learning how to do certain things so that you. Stand the internal workings like even just like and I know this is gonna sound really strange doing a multiple regression equation by hand and understand what does it say and not say before you just put code into a computer and spew something out. I think it helps you to interpret things.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And interpretation of data like is AI going to interpret data? I mean, I think that it could describe. Data. How does it link it back so I don’t know that it has all those capabilities?
Speaker
Search.
Speaker 1
So it’s like, how would it even know?
Speaker 2
You didn’t.
Speaker 1
Like if you have a regression model with like 30 variables in it, how is it going to know which ones to like? Tease it. It’s just it’s not coming to me. I see AI is like a calculator, so like tools and it’s like when you’re in elementary school you can’t use a calculator for your tests because you need to learn how to do arithmetic. But by the time you’re, if you’re in, like, you know, calculus or some. Thing. Well, actually, I think my daughter was in calculus and allowed to use calculators and my stats classes. Students are allowed cars cause I don’t.
Speaker
I don’t know.
Speaker 1
Testing you, the learning outcome is not. Can you multiply and subtract? It’s. Can you interpret data? Can you analyze data and so to me I do think that this poses a problem because how are we supposed to assess learning if students are just like Bing things?
Speaker
So that.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And that is like and it is so tempting, I think for some students.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
Speaker 1
Yeah, just like, you know, it’s cheating. It’s like no different than borrowing a paper from someone. Who took a course?
Speaker 2
True, it’s just that the paper has been generated, you know, in real time by your interaction.
Speaker 1
If she’s here.
Speaker 2
You know, with the with the, with an AI, and I think it ultimately does a disservice to the learning, you know, cause we are not just a system of assigning grades, although sometimes we feel that’s exactly what our job is to do, but that you were really trying to encourage folks to to learn. So I think. It. You know, it’s another um, it’s another challenge for you as an instructor to figure out how to create learning. And um, I learning environment learning opportunities for students and and I mean ultimately I know it’s one of the least desirable parts of my job is to assign grades. Um, I just really want people to do the work to achieve a certain grade. That’s what I that’s what I typically tell students like. I I don’t just want to assign you a grade, I want you to learn and I want you. You may need to work harder to get the grade that you want, but it’s what you put into it and if you can’t put it, put that work into getting a certain grade, then this is the grade that you get and sometimes that’s you having to balance, you know, not being in privileged position of being able to go to school just full time and having to do work. Um, you know, outside of school, etcetera. So I’m I’m I’m very sensitive to those issues. I’m cognizant of those issues. And um, but at the same time, this is what we are to be doing. That’s what our endeavor is, is to have people learn and to learn the skills that will ultimately, some will continue on into academia or, you know, continue on in other positions that still requires them to synthesize information, to ask new questions, to think about, new ways to, you know, build a building to undertake a. You know, a treatment plan. Ah, or, yeah, anything that people are doing both inside and outside of academia.
Speaker 1
Oh really?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
I mean, even just, you know, you wanna be like a social media influencer. Like, are you just gonna copy what everybody else is doing? I mean, I could. Think that is part of it’s.
Speaker
The.
Speaker 1
I don’t really understand it, but it’s it’s also like how are you gonna come up with something new like that? Requires synthesis, right of seeing, like doing a review of what is out there, and then trying to find the one you know Golden Nugget that comes to us at 3:00 in the morning that we hadn’t thought about. And then suddenly. Years now, so I was just thinking you’re talking. I was like is my least favorite job as a professor of, like grading work, or is it being a cop of student work which is like kind of the same thing of like it’s like?
Speaker 2
Yeah, there’s that too, yeah.
Speaker 1
And I think that’s the one thing about AI. It’s like I don’t want to be a cop like it is. So like I want to just assume we all are working hard and everything doing it and I get so like personally offended if I find plagiarism cause I’m like, how dare you?
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, because it takes, it ends up taking all of your time and and you want to spend time in a classroom. Them with students that are really keen to learn and not just get a grade. Um, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I agree with that.
Speaker 1
Or even just like, fluff it and then just like. I don’t know. I don’t like any of it, just everyone. Do your jobs like come on, just do your jobs.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
But yeah, it drives me crazy. Well, maybe I’ll just say one other things too, about this idea of like, ideas that come from nowhere. I can’t remember if I left it in my book or not, but. There’s. I started thinking at the end I was trying like tile the ideas together and I started talking. I think I took this all out, but I started thinking about the writing about relaxation as resistance because I was trying to figure out because it was all about breastfeeding. Like, how can we think about breastfeeding away that isn’t just about, like instrumentalized women’s bodies or about no making like deifying women’s bodies? And I was like, maybe people just should do it if they think it’s fun or it feels good or whatever. And so I was. Um, thinking about um.
Speaker 2
Or if it causes you to relax, to take some time, and to sit. Back right?
Speaker
Hmm.
Speaker 2
Which is what you need to.
Speaker 1
Do exactly.
Speaker
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um and but it made me think of how, um, what’s his name? Who invented came up with a theory of buoyancy. You know who was in the bathtub?
Speaker 2
Oh, archimedia, yes.
Speaker 1
Archimedes right. That it was. I always liked to remember like he didn’t think about that while he was, like, burning the midnight oil at the office. He wasn’t like cranking out his 30th publication. He was in the bathtub and discuss and said Eureka. Yeah. Discovered the law of buoyancy, so it’s always a good reminder to like we all need to, like, take breaks. We need to do self-care.
Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1
We need to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 2
And the importance of a walk right to walk and get away from and just sort of think about ambulation is very important for the scientific endeavor. Lots of scientists talk about the importance of walking when you’ve when you’ve got a not you know that you’re trying to kind of work through looking at it from a different perspective and that’s what you kind of accelerate that when you have a team because they look at it from a different perspective than you do and you just go, ah, OK, because I was just banging my head against the wall with that one. But you coming at it from a different lived experience, different perspective. So that’s why you know, teamwork and science is really important and the same way that they argue, you know, teamwork in Healthcare is really important. You have people that come at a particular complex challenge from those disciplinary perspectives and that, you know is as is of great interest for me, both both in science and in in care, care work.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it seems like there’s sort of this consistent thread throughout your work of an interest in hearing the voices of those who haven’t had a voice. I wonder too because. Oh love, I think the title of your book on midwifery is my favorite book title of the book ever called Push. I just think that is the best, but you know, midwifery is sort of medical providers at the margins and and I think it’s you know you can really see throughout your work this thread of this excitement and interest in trying to get at some of the many truths of life out there. There by hearing from different voices than that, it obviously has brought you a lot of success in your career by doing that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I I I I loved push and I think that came up just coming out of the taxi somebody because the area of midwifery and probably in in you know, broader reproductive care, maternity care, breastfeeding you you always use those kind of puns. Right. So there’s, you know, my my thesis was delivering midwifery like as in delivering a baby, there is lots of, you know, midwifery in transition like women are in transition. So people use these kinds of analog. Geez. And I liked push because, you know, women were pushing to have midwifery be legalized, you know, Canada being the only developed country that didn’t have any provisions for midwifery in Quebec. It was illegal in in in Ontario. It was not legal, but not illegal, so it was kind of like a legal they talk about it. So so it was actively pushing for it as in the same way that you push when you’re in Labour, they were really and it was very funny because the visual on. On the book cover was supposed to be a birth canal. It didn’t quite land, but so surprisingly, the the designers of the book cover won an award for it. And I was just like, I was not crazy about it. So I’ll I’ll admit that, you know, they were trying and.
Speaker 1
Oh my God, we can have a whole episode about frustration with book covers and my book cover, which anyway it was like a whole thing.
Speaker 2
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1
I’m like the stupid thumbnail. You can’t even figure out what the hell it is. And they wouldn’t let me change it. And I was like, my husband is an artist. Graphic designer.
Speaker
OK.
Speaker 1
He’ll do it for free. They’re like, no, we really like it. I was. ****. And that I get so mad.
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s participating in sort of the academic publishing empire that our books is. Yeah, is a whole other is a whole other conversation. But push has been, you know, we are pushing hard to Unova. Variety. Different friends and it’s important not to be on too many friends, right? I so it’s kind of like there’s this little meme that I came across and they go too many battles, put some battles away. Nope. Still too many battles put some more battles.
Speaker 1
So how do fewer battles? You just said that actually I have this little. I have this little thing on my desk that is a flow chart for deciding to take on a new project, and so the question is, do you have enough time? Yes. No you don’t. No, don’t do it.
Speaker
Is.
Speaker 1
It’s no matter what. So this is what I try to look at and yet I still I can’t stop taking on new projects.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
Speaker 1
But how do you decide what what?
Speaker 2
I have um, I have a a group of really amazing colleagues that around me, one of whom, Ah, has said these are the questions that I asked myself. Is this something that really excites me? Is it something that I am uniquely positioned to contribute such that nobody else could do this and I can’t remember what the third one is like?
Speaker
Woo.
Speaker 2
Do you have time? Yeah, but you you will make time for something that you are excited about and are uniquely positioned. And so I I have used that as Occam’s razor to say that’s very interesting. I could do that, but lots of other people could do that and I’m just going to let them do it. And but there are some things that I’m uniquely positioned to do, and that’s what I’m going to focus on. And so and and I also think about again in a very kind of I I think in sort of pyramids, what’s foundational, what do you need to do in order to build anything further from that? And you know from this looking at academia from a gendered lens is very important to start to unpack what’s happening. And you can pass the baton along to others to say, OK, how do you structure interventions to address what we just found as as a, as a circumstance? In that and so I try to think about what do we absolutely need in order to progress, because there are certain things that I’m far more interested in doing. Just as an example, we’re doing a project to create a minimum data standard for the health workforce. Nobody. Nobody dreams up that Oh my God, I’m going to create a minimum data standard for health. Voice.
Speaker
No.
Speaker 2
No nerdy person like, even the nerdiest person would not identify as you’re up against. But if you can just nudge them just to get started. Then there’s a bit of a tipping there.
Speaker 1
And my point that that I I love that and it also makes me think of push again. I was like, how hard do we have to push and like?
Speaker
Oh.
Speaker 1
And yeah, I mean I like, I used to talk with my kids were little that the people in the civil rights movement like passive resistance they must. I mean, they did have children, but it’s like. A little kid who is a toddler and you’re trying to pick them up and they just flop down and how impossible it is to move something that does not want to be moved is like such a light. It is so viscerally frustrating to me, but also so powerful. Yeah, because and it’s like the power. Of doing nothing. Yeah, which is also a good reminder to me in the opposite direction, like it also was like I think so often. Is. I don’t know if it’s. Just women or people who are. I don’t know competent at things. It’s like I have a hard time relaxing like I have a hard time not doing stuff and so it’s also like a reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is to not take on a project.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
It’s to not do something to see. OK, you know what? I’m gonna step back. And you all can figure that out.
Speaker 2
Well, I’m to leave it for somebody else, right?
Speaker 1
For a month.
Speaker 2
I mean, it can’t all just be us ***, right? You have to and this was what was really important for me to delve into the leadership literature in order to kind of unpack cause I came at that from all women are not getting into leadership positions. That’s unfair, blah blah blah. But then you start going down that rabbit hole of what is leadership and what are the different forms of leadership and you know, leadership is mentorship and creating you. So you know sustainability plans and you know, when you ultimately you’re gonna retire and who’s going to be, you know, left in your place you have to create that kind of legacy. You have to pass the baton and you have to support, you know people you know, moving, moving forward. And I actively think about that. Like at some point I will retire and I will want to retire. I will do different things in retirement. I have a colleague who said he didn’t retire. He rewired and I like that you. No.
Speaker 1
Hmm.
Speaker 2
And then he created these little these little numonics about, you know, he does thing Tuesday to Thursday between 10:00 and 2:00. Right. And so it’s all these teas and I’m just like, oh, I like that it’s because I love the literation. And so I’m just like, OK, that’s something that I could, you know, aspire towards and. But so you do you have to, you have to create capacity, you have to create a sustainability plan because it’s not just about you. You are part of a larger endeavor. How are you going to move things in a different direction, but you have to, you have to. Do you know build capacity and pass that along to folks and they’ll do it in a different way than you? But you know it’s different. It’s not necessarily better or worse. It’s different and it’s unique and you could just kind of look at that and go. That’s that’s cool. That’s not the direction I would have gone in, but that’s not a bad direction.
Speaker 1
Yeah. And it’s not all about me. It’s not all about me.
Speaker 2
Stock coming inside phone.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I have. I heard someone once and I put on a little post it on the side of my monitor at home. It says they said. Sometimes you have to drop the ball in order to let other people pick it up, which I dropped the ball a lot.
Speaker
Hmm.
Speaker 1
So we all do, right? But it like it reminds me it’s like, Oh my.
Speaker 2
We all do.
Speaker 1
God, it’s not my job to, like, juggle everything. You know what I think is women like, we often feel this responsibility for juggling at all and.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Well and and I think about it as you know, those Chinese plate plate spinners you know and you only have enough energy to kind of keep all those plates spinning, right? And so ultimately, you know, something’s going to fall. It’s really nice if it’s a ball that falls because it’ll bounce right plate, right? But it’s just that analogy. So in. In order to create more beauty in those types of endeavors, that’s not really all about numbers, right?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And it’s about landing. It’s about landing something because it’s not just about spinning the plates. At some point, you’re going to have to stop that show and you know, maybe you stop the show by handing the plates over to somebody while you know while they’re spinning, or you just hand them over that. Yeah. Where that kind of thing?
Speaker
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But yes, it’s it’s it’s important and. And unpacking the neoliberal environment that we’re in, that says every single moment of your time needs to be occupied with something. And but I also kind of reframe some of the things that I do. Um, you know, I I have, you know, lots of activities in terms of organizing and reorganizing things and and and that sort of thing. And sometimes you know, you call that procrasti cleaning because just like I don’t want to be doing this writing project or I don’t want to be marketing those papers. But I’m going to clean. Sure. And because you’re feeling like you’re productive, but if you get joy out of doing that, then just.
Speaker 1
Yeah, do it. Yes, exactly. And I think it’s, you know, I just I think it’s so important for people to remember, like to stop and and just as we are like we’re talking about at the very beginning about why science needs to have moments of pausing and reflecting on like, why are we doing it that way? I think we as individuals also need to pause and think like why am I working this hard? What you know, like sometimes we have to some. Times, you know, and sometimes it’s there’s something in us. It’s like I have to find the answer and I need other people to know, and sometimes it’s like, oh, I’m doing this because my mom thought I should, and that’s weird. So it’s like, you know, I think that we need to be examining all aspects of life.
Speaker 2
And I think we we build that into academia with the sabbatical, right? And it’s really important to take those sabbaticals. I have colleagues who don’t and and and and they find some valor in that. I’m not exactly sure why. Why? But so you have those moments to pause and reflect. What do I want to do in this next chunk of time that I have, in part because I’ve had these career awards, I think in five year terms, right? I I didn’t start my career thinking that I would kind of compartmentalize, but in retrospect, that is how my career has been structured is to kind of devote five years to a particular topic, sometimes longer. But you know, chunks of five years and you build off of. That in your career, but every now and then you need that time to pause and reflect in the same way that from a micro level on a day-to-day level that you need to build in time away from your computer or your zoom or teams meeting to take some time and reflect about things. And I’ve I’m trying to use my sabbatical. Is it time to be much more mindful about how many meetings do I need to have? How much of that could go into an e-mail? Is that all that we need? What? What is the benefit of having everybody there in real time generating, talking about ideas and hearing from people? Um, that is that is required in real time, right? For people to hear and riff off of each other the same way as like what is the importance of going to a conference in person versus, you know, presenting online and just being much more mindful about that during your day thinking about your, the semesters and taking some time, it’s reading week right now the time that one takes midterm. Them time 1 takes, you know, over the course of career. In those sabbaticals, absolutely those points of reflection are really important.
Speaker
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I think it also goes back to what you’re talking at the beginning as well of there’s no one way to do it. There’s no one. True, there’s no one answer, and it’s like all this sort of process of researching and uncovering and discovering. And then we sort of get to someplace it feels like, wow, that’s cool. That’s a new way of looking at it.
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, yeah. This has been so amazing.
Speaker 2
Thank you.
Speaker 1
This is like so interesting.
Speaker 2
This has.
Speaker 1
I I just I well my this is I’m on sabbatical this year in my project when I’m supposed to be doing my other. My procrastination is this podcast, which I just love and I want to because I just. It’s so interesting and I’m learning so much.
Speaker 2
Do what brings you joy. That was the first question, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1
Right. Yes. And this anyway, it has been a total joy. So if people wanna know more about your research, I’m gonna put some stuff in the notes, but also Ivy Lynn bourgeois dot, CA. Right.com yeah. Google Scholar, you’ve got like pages and pages.
Speaker 2
Yes.
Speaker 1
Any other places they should look for? Your work that could just.
Speaker 2
They could follow on social media. I’m not as active, but you know, I post every now and then on LinkedIn. Facebook, less so on X, you know, given the next just.
Speaker 1
They. Circumstances. But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah, but, um, yeah, absolutely. And you can always reach me by e-mail even if you get my. I’m on sabbatical. Message you can still you can still.
Speaker 1
I love it. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Continually.
Speaker 1
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing your work.
Speaker 2
Thank you for asking.
Speaker 1
Alright. It’s it’s been.
Speaker 2
These are great questions and good luck.
Speaker 1
It’s been so fun.
Speaker 2
With the podcast.
Speaker 1
Thank you. Well, if you liked this episode, please give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform and write even just a sentence fragment. Like dude, you’re cool or lame. Whatever. Just five stars and good this will really help us to reach more listeners and make doing Social Research within the reach of everyone. Thank you. Bye.
Speaker
It’s. And. Yeah. And. No. No.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *