Kateřina Berchová: Science Is Not a Nine-to-Five Job

You have been working in science for more than two decades. How do you assess the position of women in academia today compared to the beginning of your career?

It is a completely different era today. The expectations placed on researchers are different — and probably much higher. I mean publication output, grant acquisition, self-presentation, and so on. At that time, there were fewer women in science than there are today, and we faced certain prejudices — for example, that once we had a family, we would leave science. Or that it was not possible to have a “female” approach to research because it would not be analytical or goal-oriented enough. It was also uncommon for a woman to lead a research team, and when it did happen, it was relatively rare. All of that has changed. Today, women are much more strongly represented in science.

Did the Czech environment also play a role? Was this partly shaped by historical factors?

Yes. There were differences between the situation here in the Czech Republic and abroad. When I was a PhD student on a research stay in England, I saw a considerable contrast. Today, that difference has largely disappeared, and I believe the situation is comparable to that at foreign research institutions. Women are equal partners and are generally respected and evaluated according to their abilities, with only minor exceptions. Overall, however, it seems to me that when I was starting out in science there was much more time for research itself. But perhaps that was also because I did not yet have a family, students, or a research group.

What do you personally still see as the greatest challenge for women in science? What difficulties do they most often face?

Without doubt, the greatest challenge is balancing professional and personal life for families with young children. This period is demanding for any family — for parents regardless of gender. In the Czech Republic, one significant disadvantage has traditionally been that the main share of childcare and household responsibilities falls to women. That is changing, however, and I know many young families in which both partners are actively involved. The possibility of a long parental leave is both a major advantage and, paradoxically, also a disadvantage.

Could you elaborate on that?

Returning to full professional engagement after several years spent caring for young children is challenging in any profession, but I believe it is particularly demanding in science. The world changes extremely quickly in terms of technologies, methodologies, and software. After a longer break, catching up can feel almost insurmountable.

A parent would need additional time — beyond their regular work responsibilities — to catch up and ensure that they do not “miss the train.” But there is no extra time available, because they also want to devote themselves to their young children. Scientific work is not a nine-to-five job; it requires thinking deeply about problems and searching for the most appropriate solutions, which demands significant mental focus.

Women, across societies, are often emotionally oriented toward family and childcare. It is simply difficult to think intensively about a professional problem while at the same time being fully mentally present for children and partners — listening to them, providing emotional support, and managing the invisible day-to-day functioning of a household: preparing snacks, supervising homework, attending speech therapy sessions, organizing free-time activities, maintaining children’s social connections. This is very hard to combine with extended research stays abroad or fieldwork. And in addition, the scientific environment is highly competitive.

Do you see any measures within academia that could make it easier for women — or more generally, parents — to return to work after parental leave?

There are currently mechanisms in place that help parents return to full professional engagement. We have re-entry grants, part-time positions, and in the case of our university, a university kindergarten. I believe that at CZU this support is above standard compared to many other institutions in the Czech Republic.

However, in my view, the real issue lies elsewhere — in publication output and success in securing grants. Academic performance is evaluated largely on the basis of scientometrics, and those metrics are unforgiving. In this respect, a parent who takes on the primary responsibility for family care — whether a woman or a man — simply cannot compete with those who are able to devote themselves fully to research.

Unfortunately, that is probably true. The question is whether any real solution exists at all…

I do have a personal proposal. For every child, three years should be deducted from the “scientific age” of any parent who has taken on the primary responsibility for family care — regardless of whether they worked during parental leave or not.

Let me give an example: if a woman with three children returns to a full-time research position at the age of, say, 45, she could be assessed as if she were 36 — in other words, as an early-career researcher shortly after her PhD. Not as someone expected to be moving into a senior position, with an extensive portfolio of grants and publications behind her. I mean this specifically in terms of evaluating publication output and the number of funded projects. That might help level the starting line somewhat.

But perhaps this is too idealistic — or too ambitious — and it is certainly not something that could be implemented at the level of a single institution. Other adjustments — such as part-time contracts or flexible working hours — are already in place, at least at our university.

One of your roles within the Forest Invasion Synthesis Centre, Prague also involves communicating science to the public. Some researchers still do not consideroutreach an essential part of their work. What do you see as its main benefit for scientists themselves?

Science communication is extremely important. Researchers are funded by public resources, and society therefore deserves a clear and understandable explanation of what it is supporting and why. Moreover, high-quality communication of a topic can influence public opinion and even change public behavior. That said, I admit that it is a challenging discipline for us.

What do you consider most difficult for scientists when communicating complex scientific topics to broader audiences?

There are several aspects, and I apologize in advance for the longer answer.

First, the topics themselves are inherently complex. They do not lend themselves to simple explanations, and the questions involved rarely have straightforward answers. A substantial part of the issue is often not fully understood; rather, we estimate how things might work, for example based on case studies — in our field, on individual species or groups of organisms. Explaining this degree of complexity, together with the uncertainty inherent in scientific knowledge, in just a few sentences is extremely difficult.

And another aspect?

The second issue lies in our way of thinking. For us, our scientific topic is almost everything — we know it inside out. It is therefore hard to imagine that someone might have no background knowledge at all, or may never even have heard of the issue. As a result, we struggle to explain a problem from the very basics through to its broader societal implications.

How do you deal with the need to use a “different language” when addressing the general public?

The use of technical terminology is another challenge. These terms have precise meanings, but very few people understand them. It is a bit like older generations not understanding today’s teenagers and feeling as though they are speaking the language of a different tribe. In the same way, specialists in a particular field are often not understood by people outside their discipline.

Another aspect concerns the channels of communication. The scientific community is primarily oriented toward written formats, at most toward recorded video. Even spoken communication — for example on the radio — can be challenging. Modern television formats, unless they are narrowly focused interviews, are difficult as well. And contemporary communication through social media, influencers, and similar platforms — that is truly demanding. But we are not alone in this. Politicians face similar challenges — at least those who genuinely try to explain their work honestly.

And finally, there is the issue of brevity. That is a real art form, and very few people master it. Explaining climate change in three sentences, without jargon, in a way that even your seventy-year-old aunt at Sunday lunch would understand — that is extremely difficult.

Let us now move from these broader questions to your own area of expertise: invasive species and hybridization. How does hybridization influence the evolution of invasive species?

Hybridization is essentially the crossing of genetically distinct individuals, whether within a species or among different species. The formation of hybrids is therefore a key process in understanding what will happen next in an invasion. Will new, more competitive and more invasive combinations arise? Or will the hybrids have reduced viability, exerting little or no influence on the subsequent evolutionary trajectory of the non-native species?

When assessing the invasive potential of hybrids, how do you distinguish between a simple increase in population size and genuine evolutionary mechanisms such as heterosis, adaptive introgression, or the emergence of novel extreme traits?

We examine the characteristics of individual hybrid combinations. We assess whether they are more vigorous than the parental species or other hybrids, evaluate their reproductive capacity, their ability to survive in different types of environments, and their competitive performance relative to other species or to different genotypes within the same species.

If hybrids exhibit superior traits in one or more of these respects compared to their parental species, then we are likely observing one of the evolutionary mechanisms mentioned — whether heterosis, adaptive introgression, or the emergence of novel phenotypic combinations that influence the taxon’s evolutionary trajectory.

Are there recurring traits or patterns that allow us to predict in advance that hybridization will increase a species’ invasive potential? Or is each case strongly context-dependent?

That is precisely the question we hope to address within our FISC working group. There are indications that such patterns do exist. In plants, for example, hybridization associated with polyploidization or vegetative reproduction may enhance invasive potential.

However, these processes vary substantially among species and across taxonomic groups. To what extent particular mechanisms can be considered broadly applicable is something I cannot yet say with confidence.

What methodological advances in recent years have most significantly transformed our understanding of hybridization in invasive plants? What can we detect today that was previously beyond our reach?

Certainly genomic analysis and cytogenetics. With modern techniques, we are now able to detect not only the origin of hybrids, but also structural rearrangements of individual chromosomes and their effects on overall organismal traits.

Epigenetic analyses also allow us to disentangle which characteristics arise as responses to environmental conditions and which are the result of hybridization itself. There is a wide range of such molecular methods, they are developing extremely rapidly, and I certainly do not know them all. Another major advance concerns data analysis. Today, we are able to process large datasets and synthesize numerous studies within a relatively short time frame.

We touched on this earlier, but what key questions related to hybridization and biological invasions do you primarily aim to address within FISC?

In essence, we want to understand how frequently, under which conditions, and in which taxonomic groups hybridization acts as a trigger or accelerator of the invasion process. Conversely, we are also interested in identifying situations in which hybrid combinations represent evolutionary dead ends — and whether such cases could be used as management tools when non-native species are introduced for economic purposes.

Can the FISC model as a synthesis centre contribute meaningfully to answering these questions?

Absolutely. Within FISC, thematically focused working groups bring together experts from different disciplines that intersect with this topic, as well as from different parts of the world. Their combined expertise and complementary perspectives enable us to address these overarching questions in a much more comprehensive way.

What do you personally find most fascinating in the field of hybridization?

There are several questions that interest me deeply. Since I work primarily with plants, I am particularly intrigued by how hybrids adapt to different environmental conditions, and by their ability to overcome sterility — for example through polyploidization or irregularities during meiosis. I am also interested in the relationship between epigenetic plasticity and genetic variability in shaping the traits of particular hybrid combinations. This is closely linked to hybrid adaptation more broadly. There are still many unanswered and fascinating questions in this field.