If MIT researchers produce cutting-edge science, who sustains the researchers?
MIT research is supported by an invisible chain of care work that is institutionalized through MIT Spouses & Partners Connect and that, after more than 50 years of community support, is now being discontinued
MIT researchers need to eat and sleep. They need their clothes and spaces cleaned. They even need moments of joy, such as time with friends and family. If they have children, those children need to be cared for, and someone needs to cook, clean, and take them to activities. So much work is required to sustain each researcher and, therefore, to sustain the labor of thousands of MIT researchers every single day. This work, done many times by ourselves and many times by others, is essential for us MIT researchers to have the time and energy to write papers and grants, teach, serve on committees, and advance research, here and everywhere else.
In Gender Studies, this kind of work has a name; it is called care work or reproductive work. Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) — developed by scholars like Tithi Bhattacharya, rooted in movements like Wages for Housework, and theorized by Silvia Federici — helps us name and understand this labor that sustains and maintains us. It is often rendered invisible next to what we call “productive work.” Scholars in SRT ask: If workers’ labor produces all the wealth in society, what, then, produces the worker? They named this sustenance social reproduction or “reproductive work” — the work that regenerates life. Without it, life could not be reproduced, and consequently, there would be no production. Giving birth, raising children, breastfeeding, fixing things around the home, educating the youth, caring for the sick and elderly — and yes, even leisure — all fall into this category. For any of us to do what we do – including research – reproductive work has to be done, and must be done, every day. According to SRT, most of this work is done by women. And we don’t need to be geniuses to see that this is true.
Why bring this discussion to the MIT context?
Picture this: In the 1990s, institutions like MIT were still figuring out what it meant to have women as faculty. (By the way, thank you to the feminists and faculty women before us for making it happen!) Social expectations of the time were clear — women should do reproductive work, especially in the private sphere. This social expectation was so strong that when women were hired at places such as MIT, they often didn’t have children — not necessarily because they didn’t want to, but because it was assumed they would be the ones responsible for the invisible work of care at home. As MIT researchers, they didn’t have the time for reproductive work. Building a family became incompatible with professional life, because society expected them, as women, to carry that load alone. Did their male colleagues face the same dilemma? Probably not, as this mini-documentary on Nancy Hopkins by MIT Press makes painfully clear.
Since the 1990s, some things have changed. Others haven’t. A 2024 report conducted by the Gender Equity Policy Institute shows that among childless adults in the US, women still do twice as much household labor as men – 11.7 hours a week compared to 5.8.
Now, get a new picture. It’s 2025. At MIT, only 28.44% of its faculty are women (310 women in a total of 1,090 faculty). Only 31.74% percent of its postdoctoral community are women (487 out of 1,534). Of the 7,351 graduate students, 42% are women.
Even if some things have improved, women are still a minority when it comes to research appointments at MIT, especially in advanced positions in their careers. Beyond that, as the Gender Equity Policy Institute report shows, women are still primarily responsible for reproductive work in most households.
So, who does reproductive labor to sustain an institution like MIT that demands so much from every researcher?
Many people sustain MIT through reproductive work, as SRT defines it, including paid service workers, school teachers, and health workers. However, the reproductive work inside one's home is still mostly done in an unpaid way by women. This work sustains research at MIT. In other words, the cutting-edge science produced at MIT and other institutions not only depends on the contributions of those in different labs, but also on the often invisible labor of those sustaining daily life, a kind of labor disproportionately carried out by women.
I am not the first to observe this at MIT. More than 50 years ago, the MIT community recognized that this was not an easy place for those who support the research work carried out here. That’s why MIT Spouses & Partners Connect (MS&PC) — then called MIT Wives (yes, we’ve indeed made some progress) — was created.
As cited in a previous opinion piece in The Tech, for over five decades, MIT Spouses & Partners Connect (MS&PC) has quietly but powerfully supported the families behind MIT’s academic engine. It has been a lifeline for those arriving from around the world – often leaving careers, extended families, and social networks behind – to support their partners’ research. MS&PC helped spouses and partners build community, access resources, navigate new systems, and feel seen in an environment that often overlooks their contributions. As reported in The Tech, it offered “a sense of belonging to those navigating not just a new campus, but often a new culture and a new life.”
Unfortunately, in May 2025, it was announced that this 53-year program would be shut down. This news was abrupt, and has saddened its entire community, including me — I first came to MIT in 2021 as a scholar’s spouse.
In this network, I saw repetitions of the same story: Families (sometimes with kids, sometimes without) came from far away (Sweden, South Africa, Korea, Peru, and so many other countries or U.S. states) while the MIT scholar was quickly consumed by work. For the spouses and children arriving together, everything was novel: the culture, the language, the way of life. All of this unfolded thousands of miles away from their family and friends. The only person they knew — their partner — was deep in the demands of research and professional life at MIT.
As mentioned above, a considerable proportion of MIT researchers are men, and society is still structured so that men are not typically taking on reproductive labor. So, most (but thankfully not all) of the spouses and partners that I have met are women. The closure of MS&PC, therefore, carries specific and disproportionate gendered consequences.
Without MS&PC, who will support those who support the researchers?
In just less than two weeks, 180 members of the MS&PC community put together testimonials of their experience at MIT through the network. You can read these testimonials online. The community came so quickly to MS&PC’s defense because, in the process of sustaining MIT research through reproductive work, MS&PC was also essential for spouses’ and partners’ lives. This program created professional orientation, friendship, and a sense of belonging. It helped people navigate a new country, find a sense of self, and build community while supporting their partners.
For example, through the program, I got my first job as a staff member at MIT, received funding to present my research at an international conference through the MS&PC Professional Development Fund, and made friends who, going through a similar experience, genuinely cared about my well-being, and I about theirs. I also received direct support from the program staff in the early months after my arrival through private office hours, which were professionally and emotionally helpful. Even though I didn’t make use of all the available initiatives — such as those geared toward families with children — I can’t imagine what my first years in Cambridge would have been like without this program.
Actually, the program's impact extends across time: About one year ago, three years after my arrival, MS&PC connected me with someone from Brazil, my home country, who lives on the MIT campus and works in a similar research area. She has since become a close friend — in fact, just before I sat down to finalize this text, we were walking together along the Charles River Esplanade. With this new friend, I’ve been able to share the same care that another Brazilian friend — also an MS&PC connection — once offered me during my early years here, when my spouse was fully immersed in his courses and qualifying exams. This is what a chain of care looks like: It crosses relationships, time, and institutions. And yet, without being embraced by the institution, it might never have begun.
As of May, if MS&PC no longer exists, its termination will neglect the labor of those who do the work that makes it possible for MIT to produce cutting-edge research. This dismissal also includes MS&PC staff labor, including an administrative worker, Jennifer Recklet Tassi, who dedicated 28 years of her life to building the program.
MIT spouses and partners, their spouses (the MIT researchers), know what this program means for the MIT community. And we also know what its absence will mean not only to those behind the scenes but to MIT as a whole. Its discontinuation means the dismantling of a community and of a chain of care work that sustains life at MIT.
This labor of life-making — reproductive labor — is foundational to everything. It must be recognized, valued, and supported. Ending MS&PC sends the opposite message, a message of invisibilization.
There is no excellence without the labor that sustains it. It’s time to center care — not cut it.
Alessandra Jungs de Almeida is a Postdoctoral Associate in MIT’s Women’s and Gender Studies program and a researcher at MIT’s Data + Feminism Lab. She is also a member of MS&PC.