“Set Your Soul on Fire”: A Feminist-Informed Co-Constructed Autoethnography of Sixteen Multidiscipline, Multicultural, and Multilingual Globally Located Academic Women Exploring Gendered Academic Productivity During COVID-19 (original) (raw)
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2021
The discourse on research productivity during the early months of COVID-19 has been dominated by bibliometric and quantitative studies highlighting the fewer publications from women scholars compared to men, but few considered the reasons behind this phenomenon. This paper offers new empirical insights into the experiences and perceptions of women scholars during the early stages of the pandemic using the feminist standpoint theory approach to understand why they have been seemingly less productive. Our findings, based on 101 qualitative survey responses, illustrate the centrality of support with respect to childcare, professional-emotional support from peers and mentors that were lost. Restricted access to institutional facilities, resources, loss of structure, additional time required to prepare for online teaching, and increased service load have negatively impacted research productivity. These factors are compounded by poor mental health with high cognitive and emotional tolls, ...
Feminist Scholarly Communities Have Been a Lifeline During the Pandemic
Aphra Behn online, 2021
I teach writing and literature at a community college, and I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate. Because I balance full-time teaching and graduate research, I am accustomed to the intensity of a heavy workload. Still, during this past year, my home and work responsibilities have multiplied and with that so has my anxiety. Stress and lack of time have made it challenging to write and research. However, two feminist organizations have helped me cope and remain hopeful about my scholarship.
Leveling the Field: Gender Inequity in Academia During COVID-19
PS: Political Science & Politics
ABSTRACTThis article explores the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity of male and female academics and whether the ongoing health crisis will exacerbate further the existing gender gap in academia in both the short and long terms. We present early evidence of the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women’s research productivity using online survey data supplemented by interview data with regional and international female political scientists. The interviews and survey findings reveal gender disparities in perceived research productivity and service workloads during the pandemic. The results also shed initial light on the pandemic’s impact on the research productivity of academics who are parents, especially among women.
International Journal of Qualitative Methods
Bringing our collective experiences of past collaborations through a virtual connection, we created an international research team of 16 multidiscipline, multicultural, and multilingual academic women called “COVID GAP” (Gendered Academic Productivity) to explore the ongoing challenges and effects of COVID-19. Identifying as insider researchers, we engaged in a two-phase, primarily qualitative research project to better understand the lived experiences of academics during the pandemic. Our past individual experiences with cooperative research informed our roles and responsibilities and how we organized and communicated. This article is a reflection of how COVID GAP has refined our collaborative process in response to an evolving comprehension of our own lessons learned including understanding the nature of cooperative research and that it takes time and effort. From our experience, we provide specific recommendations for group collaborations emphasizing the need to identify a team c...
The Great Equalizer? Gender, Parenting, and Scholarly Productivity During the Global Pandemic
PS: Political Science & Politics, 2021
ABSTRACTHas the global COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the scholarly productivity of academics? Do gender and parenting magnify its effect? To obtain insight into the changes the pandemic has wrought in the lives and careers of women and parents in academia, we surveyed scholars in political science and international studies. The survey was in the field during the period in which many academics were experiencing shelter-at-home orders and adjusting to a new reality. It captures initial reactions to changed circumstances as well as the fears and anticipated consequences of the disruptions. We find that perceptions of a negative impact are broadly shared. The open-ended responses suggest that the pandemic may widen the gender and parent productivity gaps. Although further analysis is needed to better understand the effect of the pandemic on scholarly productivity, we conclude that the pandemic exacerbates existing structural inequalities.
Deepening inequalities. What did COVID‐19 reveal about the gendered nature of academic work?
Gender, Work and Organization, 2021
This study discusses the gendered nature of the transformation of academic work, which has been accelerated by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We collected empirical material in spring 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, via 28 interviews with academics in Poland. The results illustrate the far‐reaching and lasting impacts of the pandemic on academia that reinforce existing gender inequalities and bring new ones. The study also reveals the invisible academic work, which is performed mostly by female faculty. This work, neither recognized nor rewarded in the course of women’s academic careers, deepens the gendered organization of work in higher education institutions.
2021
The objective of this article is to amplify the stories of female doctoral students and their passage through role conflicting periods of uncertainty and trauma. Specifically, this article highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic and racial unrest in the U.S. have impacted women pursuing doctorates in education. In addition to sharing personal reflections and experiences, the authors have outlined resources and recommendations for those who support doctoral students. Through the diverse perspectives of five students and one faculty member in the EdD in Higher Education Leadership program at Regis College, this article explores the lived experiences of second-year doctoral students during an incredible period of uncertainty. Douglas T. Hall’s model of coping serves to frame content around the many conflicting roles these students have been navigating and found to be exacerbated during the year 2020. This article seeks to empower leaders to re-envision approaches to support doctoral stude...
The precarity of women’s academic work and careers during the COVID-19 pandemic
South African Journal of Science
The novel coronavirus set off a global pandemic of the COVID-19 disease that affected higher education institutions in profound ways. Drawing on the experiences of more than 2029 academic women, this article shows the precarity of academic women’s work under pandemic conditions. We analysed seven persistent themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses to an online survey across South Africa’s 26 higher education institutions. In short, these seven factors have rendered women’s work precarious with serious implications for an already elusive gender inequality in the academy. Finally, we aim to provide insight for academic leaders and policymakers to accommodate support for women academics and families in higher education during this time and in the future.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Professional Lives of Women Academics: a Scoping Review
2021
BackgroundWomen academics face specific professional and personal challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic resulting from lack of access to adequate childcare, increased demands on women’s time to address the needs of family members, and physical and mental health concerns. Prior to the pandemic, women academics faced disparities regarding merit, tenure and promotion. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in paid and domestic work resulting in a disproportionate effect on the personal and professional lives of academic women. The burden is even heavier for women academics who face intersecting systems of oppression, such as those based on ethnicity, skin colour, body size, sexual orientation, gender, age, economic class, dependent status, and/or ability. The objectives of this scoping review are to (a) identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the professional lives of women academics, and (b) explore the individual, organisational, and systems levels strategies that...