About

Hello, I'm Shuhiba. I'm a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Cumming School of Medicine at UCalgary, and a mother.

When I was thinking about starting a family, I wasn't aware of resources or support available to answer questions about maternity or parental leave, employment rights, or benefits. I then became pregnant and quickly realized I had no parental leave benefits through my fellowship funding. This was further compounded by the fact that I was only contributing to EI through a portion of my salary, which made my potential parental EI leave payments more than half of what they should have been. I was becoming increasingly worried and stressed about how I was to afford parental leave. Would I have to come back to work earlier than I would be comfortable with? Like many Postdocs here, I had no family locally to support me either.

I bounced between asking our Union and Postdoctoral Office with little success due to my then-funding situation. With the help of my Supervisor, we devised a plan for my maternity leave, which would allow me time with my newborn while not having to worry about funding sources for parental leave. Once back from parental leave, I realized there were gaps in resources, support, and information for Postdocs who were aspiring parents, becoming parents, and who were already parents. 

The Postdoc Parents Working Group was born out of the need to spread awareness of our benefits surrounding parental leave and to connect and support one another while pursuing our careers in academia and personally as parents.