Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia: Today marks the end of my “maternity leave comeback”
Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia, Research Scientist II/Epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Today marks the end of my ‘maternity leave comeback.’ From April 2021 to August 2023, I only worked 6 months. The remaining 23 months I was on maternity leave with my two girls, now 2 and 3 years old. For the first leave, I tried to maintain some presence as a Principal Investigator: attending some meetings, putting in small grants, trying to publish a couple papers.
For the second leave, I completely stepped back. It was a risk. Would I still be relevant? Would I lose collaborators because of my lack of progress? Would my likelihood of success as a female PI decrease without increasing productivity?
In September 2023, I returned to work with three papers in mind. I wanted three high-impact papers that would be my comeback and show you can enjoy parental leave and produce meaningful research afterwards. That you can have a work-life balance and succeed. That being a mother wasn’t the end of your research career.
The first paper quantifying the burden of cancer among adolescents and young adults in 2022 and 2050 was published in The Lancet Oncology in December 2024:
Authors: Taylor Hughes, Andrew Harper, Sumit Gupta, Lindsay Frazier, Winette van der Graaf, Florencia Moreno, Adedayo Joseph and Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia.
The second paper exploring premature mortality among survivors of adolescent and young adult in Alberta, Canada was published in The Lancet Public Health in January 2025:
Authors: Taylor Hughes, Ruth Diaz, Sarah McKillop, Paul Nathan, and Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia.
The final paper providing a status report on breast cancer globally was published today, Feb. 24, 2025, in Nature Medicine:
‘Global patterns and trends in breast cancer incidence and mortality across 185 countries’
Authors: Joanne Kim, Andrew Harper, Valerie McCormack, Hyuna Sung, Nehmat Houssami, Eileen Morgan, Miriam Mutebi, Gail Garvey, Isabelle Soerjomataram and Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia.
Funnily, these publications did not bring as much joy as I thought they would now that I’ve experienced so much more. So, take your parental leave, research friends. The papers and grants will be there when you come back.
They may not be easy to get going or get out into the world, and the gender gap may feel wider than you remember, but you are just as strong of a researcher (if not stronger) than before your leave.”
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ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
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ASCO Annual Meeting
May 30 - June 4, 2024
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Yvonne Award 2024
May 31, 2024
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OncoThon 2024, Online
Feb. 15, 2024
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Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023