Examining Inequitable Workload in a Time of Crisis: A COVID-19 “Sabbatical”

IF 1.5 3区文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION

Communication Culture & Critique Pub Date : 2021-04-14 DOI:10.1093/ccc/tcab016

Brandi Lawless

{"title":"Examining Inequitable Workload in a Time of Crisis: A COVID-19 “Sabbatical”","authors":"Brandi Lawless","doi":"10.1093/ccc/tcab016","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated already existing disparities for women in the academy (Guy & Arthur, 2021; Hayden & Obrien Hallstein, 2021; Sills, 2020). This is seen most prominently for mothers of infants, toddlers, or school-aged children who are expected to take on the bulk of childrearing and maintain their academic prowess. Institutional efforts to stop the tenure clock may do little to help these women “catch-up” or address the fact that they are more likely to fall behind their male counterparts. Even still, such accommodations do not change the fact that delaying tenure and/or promotion will increase pay inequities. For contingent women faculty, such a blow to productivity may halt the ability to secure long-term employment. These gaps have reached every corner of academe and threaten the future of the professoriate and our discipline. Women in academia are forced to choose between having a successful career and being a good mother. Or they are expected to perform the idea that they can “have it all.” The pandemic has made this discourse more evident. As a cisgender white woman in a heteronormative partnership, I am privileged in many ways and am able to escape the harsh realities of racism, neoliberal multiculturalism, and poverty that have disproportionately impacted BIPOC and international faculty on U.S. campuses. In some ways, I can ride the pandemic wave and appear unscathed on the other end. Yet, as a mother who struggles with an anxiety disorder and moderate depression, COVID-19 was mentally destructive. When I was visibly pregnant, my colleagues would tell me how lucky I was to be taking a “sabbatical” after my maternity leave. They used air quotes. They assumed I was not taking a sabbatical, but rather, an extended maternity leave. Both my maternity leave and sabbatical were deep privileges afforded to me and yet, the gendered expectation that I temporarily leave the workforce to set up house was sexist. In each of these encounters, I would respond with frustration, thinking to myself that none of my male colleagues would be accused of taking a “sabbatical.” I had a","PeriodicalId":54193,"journal":{"name":"Communication Culture & Critique","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Communication Culture & Critique","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcab016","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 3

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly exacerbated already existing disparities for women in the academy (Guy & Arthur, 2021; Hayden & Obrien Hallstein, 2021; Sills, 2020). This is seen most prominently for mothers of infants, toddlers, or school-aged children who are expected to take on the bulk of childrearing and maintain their academic prowess. Institutional efforts to stop the tenure clock may do little to help these women “catch-up” or address the fact that they are more likely to fall behind their male counterparts. Even still, such accommodations do not change the fact that delaying tenure and/or promotion will increase pay inequities. For contingent women faculty, such a blow to productivity may halt the ability to secure long-term employment. These gaps have reached every corner of academe and threaten the future of the professoriate and our discipline. Women in academia are forced to choose between having a successful career and being a good mother. Or they are expected to perform the idea that they can “have it all.” The pandemic has made this discourse more evident. As a cisgender white woman in a heteronormative partnership, I am privileged in many ways and am able to escape the harsh realities of racism, neoliberal multiculturalism, and poverty that have disproportionately impacted BIPOC and international faculty on U.S. campuses. In some ways, I can ride the pandemic wave and appear unscathed on the other end. Yet, as a mother who struggles with an anxiety disorder and moderate depression, COVID-19 was mentally destructive. When I was visibly pregnant, my colleagues would tell me how lucky I was to be taking a “sabbatical” after my maternity leave. They used air quotes. They assumed I was not taking a sabbatical, but rather, an extended maternity leave. Both my maternity leave and sabbatical were deep privileges afforded to me and yet, the gendered expectation that I temporarily leave the workforce to set up house was sexist. In each of these encounters, I would respond with frustration, thinking to myself that none of my male colleagues would be accused of taking a “sabbatical.” I had a

查看原文本刊更多论文

危机时期审视工作量不公平:COVID-19“休假”

2019冠状病毒病大流行极大地加剧了学术界女性本已存在的差距(Guy & Arthur, 2021年;Hayden & Obrien Hallstein, 2021;基石,2020)。这种情况在婴儿、学步儿童或学龄儿童的母亲身上最为明显，她们被期望承担大部分抚养孩子的工作，并保持自己的学习能力。机构阻止终身教职时钟的努力可能无助于帮助这些女性“迎头赶上”，也无助于解决她们更有可能落后于男性同行的事实。即便如此，这些调整并不能改变这样一个事实，即推迟任期和/或晋升将加剧薪酬不平等。对于临时的女教师来说，这种对生产力的打击可能会使她们无法获得长期就业。这些差距已经蔓延到学术界的每一个角落，威胁着教授和我们学科的未来。学术界的女性被迫在事业有成和做个好母亲之间做出选择。或者他们被期望表现出他们可以“拥有一切”的想法。大流行病使这一论述更加明显。作为一名异性恋伙伴关系中的顺性白人女性，我在很多方面都享有特权，能够逃避种族主义、新自由主义多元文化主义和贫困的严酷现实，这些现实对BIPOC和美国校园的国际教师造成了不成比例的影响。在某些方面，我可以驾驭大流行的浪潮，在另一端毫发无损。然而，作为一名患有焦虑症和中度抑郁症的母亲，COVID-19在精神上具有破坏性。当我明显怀孕的时候，我的同事们会告诉我，在产假结束后，我有多幸运，能得到“休假”。他们用了引号。他们以为我不是在休假，而是在延长产假。我的产假和公休都是我享有的特权，然而，我暂时离开工作岗位组建家庭的性别期望是性别歧视。每次遇到这样的情况，我都会沮丧地回应，心想我的男同事中不会有人指责我在“休假”。我有一个

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Communication Culture & Critique COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

2.50

自引率

5.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： CCC provides an international forum for critical research in communication, media, and cultural studies. We welcome high-quality research and analyses that place questions of power, inequality, and justice at the center of empirical and theoretical inquiry. CCC seeks to bring a diversity of critical approaches (political economy, feminist analysis, critical race theory, postcolonial critique, cultural studies, queer theory) to bear on the role of communication, media, and culture in power dynamics on a global scale. CCC is especially interested in critical scholarship that engages with emerging lines of inquiry across the humanities and social sciences. We seek to explore the place of mediated communication in current topics of theorization and cross-disciplinary research (including affect, branding, posthumanism, labor, temporality, ordinariness, and networked everyday life, to name just a few examples). In the coming years, we anticipate publishing special issues on these themes.