‘Everyone should have a wife’ – extreme work, eldercare, and the gendered academy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This research explores the micro-level experiences of women with eldercare responsibilities in academia. We present academia as a site of extreme work and a gendered space. The ‘ideal academic’ is predicated on neoliberal logic, where long hours, uninterrupted career paths, and being care-less in terms of responsibilities are rewarded. Our study is set within the Irish Higher Education (HEI) sector where we undertook in-depth interviews with female academics who have eldercare responsibilities. Our findings reveal eldercare as an ‘invisible’ form of care, while research, arguably a substantive performance metric in academia was also experienced as an invisible pursuit taking place outside normal working hours. The interplay between these two invisible forces had disastrous consequences for women during the pandemic, as they attempted to respond to the intensification of elder care needs while extreme work in academia became normalised and research metrics continued to be a key measure of excellence, regardless of context. Our findings highlight the need to reshape the identity of the ‘ideal academic’ and dismantle the link between intense work patterns and success. Equally, the recalibration of HR policies, and performance metrics, to support staff with care responsibility emerged as vital in ensuring a sustainable academic workforce.