Well-being in French Astrophysics

Bibliographic Details
Title: Well-being in French Astrophysics
Authors: Webb, N. A., Bot, C., Charpinet, S., Contini, T., Jouve, L., Koliopanos, F., Lamberts, A., Meheut, H., Mei, S., Ristorcelli, I., Soucail, G.
Source: SF2A-2021: Proceedings of the Annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics. Eds.: A. Siebert, K. Bailli\'e, E. Lagadec, N. Lagarde, J. Malzac, J.-B. Marquette, M. N'Diaye, J. Richard, O. Venot, 2021, pp.35-40
Publication Year: 2022
Collection: Astrophysics
Physics (Other)
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies, Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, Physics - Physics and Society
More Details: It has become clear that early career astrophysics researchers (doctoral researchers, post-docs, etc) have a very diverse appreciation of their career, with some declaring it the best job that you can have and others suffering from overwork, harrassment and stress from the precarity of their job, and associated difficulties. In order to establish how astrophysics researchers, primarily in France, experience their career, we sent out a survey to understand the impact that their job has on their well-being. 276 people responded to the survey. Whilst around half of the respondents expressed pleasure derived from their career, it is clear that many (early career) researchers are suffering due to overwork, with more than a quarter saying that they work in excess of 50 hours per week and 2\% in excess of 90 h per week. Almost 30\% professed to having suffered harrassment or discrimination in the course of their work. Further, whilst only 20\% had suffered mental health issues before starting their career in astrophysics, $\sim$45\% said that they suffered with mental health problems since starting in astrophysics. Here we provide results from the survey as well as possible avenues to explore and a list of recommendations to improve (early) careers in astrophysics.
Comment: 6 page conference proceedings on well-being in French astrophysics
Document Type: Working Paper
Language: French
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01768
Accession Number: edsarx.2202.01768
Database: arXiv
More Details
Language:French