Researching Gender Inequalities in Academic Labour during the COVID‐19 Pandemic: Avoiding Common Problems and Asking Different Questions
Autor/in:
Pereira, Maria do Mar
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: As the COVID‐19 pandemic unfolds, a growing body of international literature is analysing the effects of the pandemic on academic labour and, specifically, on gender inequalities in academia. In that literature, much attention has been devoted to comparing the unequal impacts of COVID‐19 on the research activities of women and men, with studies demonstrating that women's research productivity has been disproportionately disrupted, in ways that are likely to have detrimental effects in the short‐ and long‐term. In this paper, I discuss that emerging literature on gender inequalities in pandemic academic productivity. I reflect on the questions asked, the issues centred and the assumptions made within this literature, devoting particular attention to how authors conceptualise academic labour and productivity, on the one hand, and gender, on the other. I show that this literature makes major contributions to exposing old and new gender inequalities in academia, but argue that it also risks reproducing some problematic assumptions about gender and about academic work. Discussing those assumptions and their effects, I identify some important questions for us to consider as we expand this literature and deepen our understanding of the complex gendered effects of COVID‐19 on academic labour.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), 28 (2021) S1, S 39–57
Inhalt: In this article, as have many Black women scholars in the past, we again call for collective action against anti‐blackness and White supremacy in the academy. Drawing from black feminist theory, we discuss the long history of Black women academics' activism against anti‐black racism and introduce the current movement: Black Lives Matter (BLM). Although BLM is often construed as resisting anti‐black violence outside the academy, it is also relevant for within the academy wherein anti‐blackness is likely to be manifested as disdain, disregard, and disgust for Black faculty and students. We discuss some of the ways in which anti‐blackness and liberal White supremacy are manifested in the lives of Black faculty and students, and propose that non‐Black allies have key roles to play in resisting them. Like second‐hand cigarette smoke that harms everyone in proximity, anti‐blackness and White supremacy harm us all, and a shared movement is needed to dismantle them.
Schlagwörter:academia; black feminism; black women; Hochschule; racism; Rassismus; Schwarze Frauen; Schwarzer Feminismus; white supremacy
Twice a ‘housewife:’ On academic precarity, ‘hysterical’ women, faculty mental health, and service as gendered care work for the ‘university family’ in pandemic times
Autor/in:
Docka‐Filipek, Danielle; Stone, Lindsey B.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: Extensive research has explained women's pandemic-related workforce exodus as driven by the presumed pressures of gender disparate private, domestic burdens. The impact of gender asymmetries in academic labor on faculty well-being is less understood. We examined the effects of job-related factors on faculty mental health, a critical measure of precarity during the initial Spring 2020 “lockdown” and transition to remote work. Faculty (n = 345) were recruited via social media to participate in a survey on their work/life pandemic experiences. Women were over-represented in our sample, yet respondents at both the highest and the most tenuous ranks were underrepresented. Gender, teaching load, having dependents, and greater financial concerns were associated with higher depression and anxiety. Critically, women's heightened mental health risk was not explained by the other predictors. Results indicate women faculty's well-being and career advancement are threatened by disparate, obscured service burdens both within the academy and at home during the pandemic.
“How did they protect you?” The lived experience of race and gender in the post‐colonial English university
Autor/in:
Salmon, Udeni
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: With this article, I seek to contribute to understandings of how racial and gender hierarchies are reproduced through organizational processes. Using an autoethnographic method, I seek to demonstrate the workings of Mill's Racial Contract Theory and Ahmed's concepts of raced and gendered encounters through the implementation of a university diversity initiative: the Race Equality Charter. My findings demonstrate how the “doing” of diversity work results “undoing” the non-white diversity worker, as their lived experiences catastrophically diverge from the sunny promise of the diversity project. Furthermore, the Race Equality Charter's is revealed that the Charter is a factual, rather than normative type of contract, which enshrines a socio-political reality in which colonialism continues to shape white over non-white domination. Scholars and activists have long been naming the secret weapons of white supremacy in order to expose how anti-racist practice is co-opted by institutions. In this article, I theorize my lived experience to expose how policy and organizational processes fail to protect me, a non-white woman early career academic. I conclude that the Race Equality Charter, far from being a tool of social justice, enforces raced and gendered privileges in academic settings.
Gendered workload allocation in universities: A feminist analysis of practices and possibilities in a European University
Autor/in:
Steinþórsdóttir, Finnborg S.; Carmichael, Fiona; Taylor, Scott
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: The negotiated allocation of teaching and institutional service workload in universities is a key determinant of the quantity and quality of all work for academic staff. There is abundant quantitative evidence that women and men experience differential outcomes from faculty, school, or departmental workload allocation processes and convincing theoretical explanations as to why this happens. We add to this knowledge through feminist analysis of a mixed methods case study of an academic unit in a European University, focusing on gendered dynamics in the workload allocation processes there. Our analysis follows the “sweaty concept” methodology proposed by Sara Ahmed as a means of developing feminist theory that is founded on embodied experiences of discomfort in worlds that are not welcoming. The concept we develop through this is “inequitable modeling”; it suggests that while workload allocation processes are understood by model designers as a managerial tool to enable transparency and fairness (forms of procedural equity), the managed, especially women, experience them as opaque and unfair (forms of lived inequity). We conclude by questioning the principles and outcomes of such tools in achieving gender equity, and then describe how a feminist approach to workload modeling and allocation might be implemented.
Perceptions of Gendered‐Challenges in Academia: How Women Academics See Gender Hierarches as Barriers to Achievement
Autor/in:
Eslen-Ziya, Hande; Yildirim, Tevfik Murat
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: Despite the egalitarian and collegial philosophy in its ideals, academic market is segregated and gendered where women receive fewer rewards than their male counterparts, are under-represented, segregated and excluded from participation in the formal and informal academic structures in academia. The country contexts, the gendered academic organizational settings as well as everyday interactions all play a major role not only in women's participation within academia, but also how they perceive their future in academic institutions. This research note, through an original survey with over 200 academics, attempts to study the latter assumption by looking at women academics’ perceptions of their work life, their challenges, as well as aspirations. Our results show that, those perceiving strong hierarchy in the realm of work are significantly more likely to believe that being woman in academia harms their job prospects. We also show that, not only were they pessimistic about the challenges facing them at the moment, but they were also more sceptical about women's potential in overcoming such challenges in the future.
From pure academics to transformative scholars? The crisis of the “ideal academic” in a Peruvian university
Autor/in:
Manky, Omar; Saravia, Sergio
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: In the last 2 decades, the Latin American university has embarked on a shift toward increasing scientific production, following a pattern common to much of the Global North. Few studies have analyzed how this process has had a differentiated impact on male and female scholars. In dialog with previous studies, we explore the changing nature of the “ideal academic,” accounting for its gendered character in an historically and culturally specific context. Based on a qualitative study, we describe the crisis of a model that idealized theoretical work and exclusive dedication to academia, and show that, in a broader context of feminist mobilizations, a critical discourse is emerging, stressing the need to bridge academic life and professional and political concerns. We seek to contribute to studies on changes in the Latin American academy illustrating the gendered ways through which the neoliberal university ends up being contested in the Global South.
Schlagwörter:academic career; academic work; Gender; global south; ideal academic; neoliberal university; Peru; wissenschaftliche Arbeit
CEWS Kategorie:Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis
Deepening inequalities: What did COVID‐19 reveal about the gendered nature of academic work?
Autor/in:
Górska, Anna Maria; Kulicka, Karolina; Staniszewska, Zuzanna; Dobija, Dorota
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: 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.
Athena SWAN gender equality plans and the gendered impact of COVID‐19
Autor/in:
Aguiar, Thereza Raquel Sales; Haque, Shamima; Bender, Keith A.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: This study explores Athena SWAN as a mechanism to govern gender equality and diversity in the context of the UK Business and Management Schools during COVID-19. More specifically, this study reports on the struggles that UK Business Schools are now facing in projecting themselves as equal and diverse as well as efficient and viable. Using governmentality theory, a thematic analysis is applied to Athena SWAN applications and face-to-face interviews conducted with a number of leaders of Athena SWAN-awarded UK Business Schools. The results suggest that Athena SWAN opens a space for self-governing gender equality and diversity with some progress on this agenda. However, the Athena SWAN framework calls our attention to invisibilities of inequalities in times of crisis such as COVID-19, when governamentality of gender issues can become limited and when targets on efficiency are set as a priority.
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2021)
Inhalt: This study aims to explore the COVID‐19 experiences of Turkish female academics in terms of gender roles by focusing on how these women have dealt with domestic and academic responsibilities. The study group consisted of 21 female academics working from home, along with their spouses. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyze the data collected through semistructured telephone interviews. The findings were clustered under five main themes: the early days of the pandemic, work life after the pandemic, domestic responsibilities after the pandemic, family relationships after the pandemic, and the perception of gender roles. The results indicate that the pandemic has deepened gender inequalities, and the academic life of female academics has changed in terms of academic productivity. Therefore, we recommend that more research examining the quarantine process and involving women in other occupations and of different socioeconomic statuses should be done to develop more effective social policies.