Covid-19 and the Woman Academic

Catalina Ionita
May 2, 2020
3 min read

The struggle of juggling academia and family life

At the beginning of the month Anna Fazackerley was writing for The Guardian about the stark drop of article submissions by women academics during the Covid-19 pandemic. "Not so for men", Fazackerley was saying.

According to David Samuels, co-editor for the Comparative Political Studies Journal has recorded 50% more article submissions from men during the same period of time.

Dr Elizabeth Hannon, deputy editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science was telling us on her Twitter account that:

“Negligible number of submissions to the journal from women in the last month. Never seen anything like it.”

Andy Casey, an astrophysics research fellow at Monash University noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on women academics. Casey analysed and compared the number of article submissions to the astrophysics "preprint servers" from January to April 2020 to the same period of time in previous years, observing "perhaps up to 50 percent more productivity loss among women."

What is the reason why women academics' submissions dropped so dramatically?

Well, it's pretty straight forward, really. Among the numerous responses on social media, the most common one was highlighting women struggling managing their academic work and childcare during the coronavirus lockdown.

I am not a mother so it's hard to relate to those of us out there challenged by the issue of lockdown childcare. However, I can't but reflect about the gravity of the situation in a world where so much progress is needed in terms of equality among the academic ranks. We all know that publishing articles is a critical tool in being promoted at many universities across the globe, as well as a success measuring instrument used by the government's Research Excellence Framework, which offers universities an annual funding of approximately £2bn.

I suppose the evidence is anecdotal. However, it seems to be consistent within the larger spectrum of academia. Leslie Gonzalez, a professor of education administration at Michigan State University, who focuses on tactics for diversifying the academic field asks a very important question:

When institutions are deciding who to grant tenure to, how will they evaluate a candidate’s accomplishments during coronavirus?

Gonzales continues:

“We don’t want a committee to look at the outlier productivity of, say, a white hetero man with a spouse at home and say, ‘Well, this person managed it,’” says Gonzales. “We don’t want to make that our benchmark.”

It just seems to me that if men and women are at home, men manage to be more productive and produce more academic work. According to Caroline Kitchener, staff writer at The Lily, "when men take advantage of the "stop the clock" policies, taking a year off the tenure-track after having a baby, studies show they’ll accomplish far more professionally than their female colleagues, who tend to spend that time focused primarily or solely on child care." I try to place myself in an academic mother's shoes and I am worried I will be told:

"You were home for over 3 months, what were you doing? Why were you not writing?"

I hear people saying all the time: "Oh... the lockdown has been so difficult for everybody." I don't think it has been equally difficult for everybody, I don't think I struggled as much as an academic mother has and.... I struggled!

We need to be more aware of the realities around us because they are affecting us in different ways and every case is unique. Leslie Gonzalez says:

For the next few years, there should be a letter added to every tenure application, Gonzales says, instructing readers to consider how the “fallout [from coronavirus] has very different effects across gender and race.” Evaluators should consider each applicant’s individual set of circumstances, she said.

I want to hear universities saying "It's okay if you could not finish your paper."