Colliding Identities During COVID-19: Identifying and Addressing the Challenges of Being an Academic Mother During a Global Pandemic

Gill Harrop

doi:10.3389/feduc.2021.643221

Abstract

Academic workloads require a careful balance of teaching, research, supervision, and administrative responsibilities. Being an academic parent adds an additional level of responsibility to this, which has traditionally been successfully managed with organisation, careful planning and support. For many academic parents the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted this carefully curated balance, forcing them to work from home while also dealing with the loss of childcare and the requirement to provide homeschooling. The pre-existing gender disparity in childcare and housework was exacerbated by lockdown, with a disproportionate impact on academic mothers who were often forced to take on additional childcare and housework responsibilities, alongside remote schooling. The gender disparity further affected job stability, with women losing a greater number of paid working hours during the pandemic and having greater employment instability. This article reflects upon the impact of gender disparity in academic parents during the Covid-19 pandemic, and considers potential barriers to productivity and progression, including the role of interruptions, delivering sensitive materials in a workspace shared with children and technological challenges.

Highlights

In July 2020, the New York Times stated “in the Covid-19 economy, you can have a kid or a job
This article reflects upon the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender disparity within working parents, and in relation to obstacles faced by academic mothers
The gender disparity which existed pre-Covid has been inflated due to the increased childcare and housework burden placed upon women during the pandemic

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In July 2020, the New York Times stated “in the Covid-19 economy, you can have a kid or a job. Adams-Prassl et al (2020) analysed time-use data to determine that amongst the population working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, women spent significantly more time homeschooling and undertook significantly more responsibility for childcare than men This increase in caring responsibilities and housework was associated with higher levels of psychological distress for women and may have future implications for mental health (Xue and McMunn, 2020). These uninterrupted periods of time are essential to productivity, in order to avoid errors and delays in the time taken to complete the task (Cole et al, 2016) one of the most difficult losses for academic parents was the opportunity for uninterrupted work This was impactive during lockdown when, for many households, everyone was at home, doing work, remote schooling or just requiring attention and supervision that had previously been provided by childcare facilitators for a portion of the day. The work may have gotten done eventually, but the price paid to achieve it was great, and was significantly higher for women than for men (Hipp and Bünning, 2021)

Findings

Discussion of Sensitive Topics

CONCLUSION