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I’m expected to work excessive hours in the lab. Should I speak up about my disability?
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A few months ago, I started a PhD at a university in North America. I have a disability that affects both my physical and my mental capacity, and its impact on me fluctuates. The more I can rest, the fewer symptom flare-ups I experience.
Unfortunately, my laboratory has a severe problem with overwork. Most students work 50–60 hours a week and sometimes more. We’re constantly asked to take on new tasks for the projects of our principal investigator (PI), often with tight deadlines. I’ll go into the lab intending to work on my experiments and end up spending all day on my PI’s tasks.
My PI, to whom I have not disclosed my health status, has repeatedly expressed disappointment in my work ethic. I have worked in other labs with different supervisors without facing issues (during my master’s degree, for example), and I know I’m not the only person struggling in this environment: my lab-mates are also burnt out.
Many of my issues are tied to being unable to take breaks while working long hours, often 12–16 hours per day for several days in a row. In previous jobs in which my colleagues and I worked overtime, we could take the equivalent amount of time off either the following week or as holiday time. But in my current lab, we’re expected to come back to work immediately. Sometimes we’re called in on weekends. I can barely keep up because I’m given no time to rest. A task that would take me an hour now takes longer because I’m fighting through pain. When I asked for time off, I received a firm no.
I’m nervous about what I might face in the rest of my programme. I know that I can have the success I want if I find the right environment. I plan to seek accommodations by contacting someone at my university. But should I disclose to my PI? I fear it might make things worse, and that I will face disability stigma. What can I do to make sure myself and other students are well cared for and protected? — A disabled graduate student
“Disability stigma contributes to power imbalances between graduate students and advisers,” says Bonnielin Swenor, director of the Johns Hopkins Disability Health Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland. That stigma is evident from discrepancies in earnings1 and grant outcomes2 between disabled and non-disabled researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, according to her research on US scientists. Understandably, then, “taking action can feel intimidating, and many disabled scientists fear retribution”, she says.
“What you describe is not a personal failure of work ethic,” emphasizes Deepti Sharma, a management researcher at Ahmedabad University in India. You’re in a dysfunctional work environment, in which “your disability made the dysfunction visible to you earlier and more painfully than it did for others”.
Nature’s careers team asked Sharma, Swenor and two other researchers for advice on how disabled graduate students and other people facing similar challenges can protect themselves.
Rebecca Williams, an environmental-law researcher and disability officer at the University of Glasgow, UK, says that there should be staff members who can offer support to students. She recommends investigating what resources are available at your university. These could be from a graduate-student union, a director of graduate studies or university disability services.