Apart, But Together: Voices of Women Academics Working from Home

In 2020 governments and their leaders across the globe took action to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus by implementing voluntary and mandatory quarantines, lockdowns, and social isolation, closing schools and nonessential workplaces, preventing groups from gathering, and limiting or stopping international travel (Anderson et al., 2020). In some cases, more extreme and opportunistic measures were used by governments, such as tracking bracelets in Hong Kong (Strielkowski, 2020), the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán pushing through a law to permanently sideline parliament to rule by decree (Amat et al., 2020), and the Trump administration issuing an order suspending equal opportunity requirements (US Department of Labor, 2020). In homes and workplaces, the pandemic impacted men and women, but both new and existing gender inequalities that disproportionately affected women came to bear. The pandemic took a heavier toll on the psychological, as well as physical health of women. For example, in Spain, Hungary, and Israel women described experiencing a higher degree of stress and anxiety when compared to men at the beginning of the pandemic (Ausín et al., 2021; Horesh et al., 2020; Szabo et al., 2020). It also led to greater domestic obligations (Collins et al., 2021), and with schools closed or going to virtual formats, women tended to take over more homeschooling duties (Carlson et al., 2021). This resulted, in the case of UK women, in “unbridled role conflict” (Adisa et al., 2021, p. 241) as their work and domestic roles interfered with each other, resulting in tension and imbalance between demands. There is considerable, growing evidence that COVID-19 has changed academic work globally with women being more negatively impacted overall when compared to men (Pereira, 2021). Deryugina et al. (2021) and others (e.g., Aldossari & Chaudhry, 2021; Minello et al., 2020) explain that all academics, regardless of gender, reported escalations in childcare and housework; however, not surprisingly, women academics faced significantly larger increases than their male counterparts. And women with children reported less time for research when compared to men academics with children or childless academics (Minello et al., 2020). This came at a time when women already faced deterrents to continued professional development (Chuang, 2015), and Black women, in particular, faced challenges in predominantly White higher education institutions (Dowdy, 2008). While most colleges and universities did little to support faculty and staff in the new reality of emergency online teaching and advising, others offered extensions of the tenure clock, providing the option to forgo student evaluations, and even funding personal internet connections (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2020). For some, the pandemic even provided a time of “feverish productivity” in academic research (Plakhotnik, 2021, p. 2). As the context of the academic labor market highlights, there is evidence that large-scale disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic present what North et al. (2013) call “massive extra-organisational stressors that can threaten the productivity and stability of organisations” (p. 101). While at the same time, individuals experienced fear, grief, disgust, existential angst, and displaying ethnocentrism, but also moral elevation and cooperative behaviors (Van Bavel et al., 2020). Whether at the individual or organizational level, recognizing the effect of this pandemic on the well-being of people is vital (Alshaabi et al., 2021). Thus, the problem for adult education and human resource development (HRD) practitioners and scholars is that without a deep, reflexive understanding of the experiences of individuals, both personal and professional, we cannot begin to find ways to support each other ─ and women in particular ─ and their universities in the subsequent recovery, nor lay claim to “socially conscious human resource development” (Bierema & D’Abundo, 2004, p. 449).