Between predictability and perplexity

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on the relationship between academia, the gendered division of labor, and the pandemic. After briefly canvassing preliminary research about the effects of the pandemic on academic women, it discusses the gendered division of caregiving responsibilities, both inside the family and in academic institutions. Through the lens of feminist theory, the article aims to understand what can be perceived as a kind of paradox or contradiction: on the one hand, there is something deeply predictable about the fact that women have shouldered relatively disproportionate caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic. On the other hand, and because these gendered effects are so predictable, there is something somewhat perplexing in the lack of institutional response. This article explains what is predictable about the phenomenon as an instantiation of misogyny and the gendered division of labor—a reproduction of already existing issues. The somewhat perplexing nature of the phenomenon comes from the lack of institutional response to deeply predictable effects, but it is also related to how resilient the gendered nature of caregiving obligations has proven to be, even during the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic. This resilience, the article suggests, might be explained by the intersection of misogyny and economic exploitation.