Inhalt: That the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the work conditions of large segments of the society is in no doubt. A growing body of journalistic accounts raised the possibility that the lockdown caused by the pandemic affects women and men in different ways, due mostly to the traditionally gendered division of labor in the society. We attempt to test this oft-cited argument by conducting an original survey with nearly 200 academics. Specifically, we explore the extent to which the effect of the lockdown on child-care, housework and home-office environment varies across women and men. Our results show that a number of factors are associated with the effect of the lockdown on the work conditions of academics at home, including gender, having children, perceived threat from COVID-19, and satisfaction with work environment. We also show that having children disproportionately affects women in terms of the amount of housework during the lockdown.

Schlagwörter:academics; Arbeitsbedingungen; Arbeitsteilung; Befragung; child care; COVID-19; division of labor; gender inequality; Geschlechterungleichheit; Geschlechtervergleich; Hausarbeit; Kinderbetreuung; survey; Wissenschaftler; working condition

CEWS Kategorie:Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12529

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: This article offers a feminist reflection written as a nocturnal stream of consciousness exposing the embodied, emotional and professional experience of living and working during a pandemic outbreak. Framed within a feminist approach, this personal narrative provides an example of the effects of such unexpected and unprecedented circumstances on personal and professional academic lives. Developed during the first stage of the (inter)national coronavirus pandemic, my reflections address issues of privilege; emotional labour; the virtual invasion of the home space within the current increasingly ambiguous space of ‘the workplace'; workload; and wellbeing. Further, I consider how the newly enforced flexible work measures based on online tools have turned current work–life dynamics into a ‘Never‐ending Shift'.

Schlagwörter:Alltag; Care; COVID-19; feminist approach; Hochschule; Lebensführung; Sorgearbeit; Wissenschaftlerin

CEWS Kategorie:Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Wissenschaft als Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12451

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: During the COVID‐19 crisis, being a working mother has taken on a whole new meaning, as mothers navigate working from home while juggling childcare, as well as coming to terms with their intersecting identities. The current article is a feminist, heartful autoethnographic account, couched in Relational‐Cultural Theory, surrounding our authentic experiences working from home and raising children during the worldwide pandemic. We explore academic motherhood, working from home, mental health, and coping during coronavirus and stay‐at‐home orders through engaged dialogue. We hope that showcasing our vulnerability can lead to change in the expectations we put on mothers in academia, while at the same time connect with readers who may be going through similar challenges.

Schlagwörter:autoethnography; COVID-19; Elternschaft; Mutter; Wissenschaftlerin

CEWS Kategorie:Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Hochschulen, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12493

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: This article examines the rise in precarious academic employment in Ireland as an outcome of the higher education restructuring following OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development), government initiatives and post‐crisis austerity. Presenting the narratives of academic women at different career stages, we claim that a focus on care sheds new light on the debate on precarity. A more complete understanding of precarity should take account not only of the contractual security but also affective relational security in the lives of employees. The intersectionality of paid work and care work lives was a dominant theme in our interviews among academic women. In a globalized academic market, premised on the care‐free masculinized ideals of competitive performance, 24/7 work and geographical mobility, women who opt out of these norms, suffer labour‐led contractual precarity and are over‐represented in part‐time and fixed‐term positions. Women who comply with these organizational commands need to peripheralize their relational lives and experience care‐led affective precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schlagwörter:befristeter Arbeitsvertrag; Care; Geschlechterverhältnis; Hochschule; Irland; neoliberal university; neoliberalism; Neoliberalismus; prekäre Beschäftigung; Sorgearbeit; Teilzeitarbeit

CEWS Kategorie:Hochschulen, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.12350

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: Women remain underrepresented in senior positions within universities and report barriers to career progression. Drawing on the concepts of Foucault and Bourdieu, with an emphasis on technologies of the self, this article aims to understand mothers’ academic career experiences. Interviews were conducted with 35 non‐STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) academics in Scotland and Australia, to reveal the gender dimensions of parents’ academic careers, in neoliberal university contexts. The data suggest that there are tensions between organizational policies, such as maternity leave and flexible work, and the contemporary demands of academic labour. New managerial discourses which individualize and make use of moral systems are particularly effectual in driving women to take up marketized research activity and compromise leave entitlements.

Schlagwörter:Australien; Bourdieu, Pierre; Elternschaft; Elternzeit; flexible Arbeitsbedingungen; flexible labor; Foucault, Michel; Großbritannien; Hochschule; Interview; Karriereentwicklung; Mutter; neoliberal university; Organisationshandeln; UK; Universität; Unterrepräsentanz; Vereinbarkeit

CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Gleichstellungspolitik, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12314

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.

Schlagwörter:Organisationskultur; Theorie; Vereinbarkeit; Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf; work-family balance; work-life conflict

CEWS Kategorie:Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12343

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz

Inhalt: This article explores Norwegian female academics' experiences with academic motherhood in an organizational perspective. A main finding is that academia as an organization is greedy, uncertain, and has ‘blind spots' that reveal gender bias related to gender and parental status, especially mothers. By analysing the link between gendered organization of work and the legitimatizing of gender inequality, the article reveals ‘gender blindness' in the academic organization concerning gender and parental status. The article concludes that changes in academia — in line with academic capitalism — may indicate that the Norwegian model of work–life balance is under pressure. This article suggests that the organizational conditions for academic motherhood are important factors in order to understand the persistence of gender inequality.

Schlagwörter:Elternschaft; gender in academia; gender inequality; gendered organization; Geschlechterungleichheit; Hochschule; Mutterschaft; Norwegen; Vereinbarkeit; Wissenschaft; work-life balance

CEWS Kategorie:Europa und Internationales, Hochschulen, Vereinbarkeit Familie-Beruf, Geschlechterverhältnis

Verfügbarkeit:https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12368

Dokumenttyp:Zeitschriftenaufsatz