Positive During COVID-19: Women Academics' Strategies for Flourishing During a Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to far-reaching detrimental impacts, with challenges weighted toward women, who experience a double-burden of paid work and care/domestic work. Professional lives were enacted in new spaces, as many were ordered to work from home. This was particularly testing for women, who found themselves servicing additional expectations each day, such as complex relational work and home-schooling. For many, this caused stress, damage to career, and strained relationships. Yet, as women academics, we were surprised to see that some of our peers were reporting they had positive experiences during lockdowns. Drawing on interview data from 23 women academics based in the United Kingdom, we found that participants did not report damage to their professional identities; indeed, in some cases the pandemic provided new ways to expand academic identities, for example through skill development and international networking. Furthermore, participants reported the pandemic as a chance to choose how to focus their energies, withdrawing from relationships and activities that did not contribute to the achievement of the selves they sought to become and capitalising on those that did. This paper is therefore valuable in revealing the techniques and resources (narrative and otherwise) that can enable women to report positive experiences, even when facing adversity.