Bracing for Impact
This essay was written by two, middle-income, cisgender women faculty members with advanced degrees. One of us identifies as white and Latinx, a second-generation immigrant, and first-generation college student. The other is white, is the descendant of colonizers and enslavers, and was a second-generation college student. We were both raised in low-income, rural households. One of us identifies as queer; however, we are both in heterosexual marriages and are mothers to young children. As authors, we have chosen to use the first-person plural throughout this essay because, while we have different identities and lived experiences, we have engaged in deep conversations and found commonality around the issues presented here.
Even as we contribute this essay about the ways our marginalized identities have impacted our experience of working in academia during the COVID pandemic, we also recognize the protections afforded us by our privileged identities. It is vitally important that diverse voices are uplifted in future discourse, and that both the goals and the process center those marginalized by our systems of power. We want to be clear that while we are describing our challenges as women faculty and caregivers, the problems described here are not institution or gender specific, because they apply to all individuals with competing roles as faculty members and primary caregivers to children or to adults.
As women faculty members with young children, we are barely holding it together. We have always been working at our edge, with few extra resources to accommodate new demands. Now, we find ourselves responding to our own mental health crises, reworking our courses and research, learning new technologies, homeschooling our children, and managing the total transformation of life as we knew it. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased our demands at work and at home, pulling systemic gender inequities into stark relief.
While our additional (and largely invisible) labor is keeping our programs afloat, this labor comes at the expense of our own health and well-being, our achievements, and our long-term success. In this essay, we share a perspective on the challenges we face as women faculty members and caregivers to young children. We rebuke any attempt to frame COVID-related challenges as individual-level problems with individual-level solutions. We argue for changes to policies, systems, and environments within academia to make space for women faculty members to prioritize their health and well-being, as well as their essential work as educators and scientists.
Before the pandemic, we struggled to harmonize responsibilities at work and home, relying on a fragile system of childcare in order to do our jobs. Even under normal circumstances, we worked nights so we could care for sick children during the day, gave lectures while breastfeeding feverish infants, and called ourselves lucky to have support. Since March 11 of 2020, we have endured a caregiving crisis. We are constantly flexing our schedules to shoulder the burden of unpredictable childcare responsibilities, and this means additional labor in the early mornings, evenings, and weekends — times when people typically engage in rest or leisure.
At the same time, academic labor, particularly service, has been unevenly distributed based on gender roles, likely because women are socialized to be compassionate, approachable, and helpful, and to value the boundaries and needs of others above our own. When the pandemic dramatically reshaped university operations last March, women faculty stepped up with more student check-ins, more time spent grading and in trainings and meetings. This additional labor may well have been the safety valve stemming the flow of students from dropping out.
As women, we embrace our strengths as they support students and bolster our professional efficacy. However, the uneven workload negatively impacts our personal health and well-being, reduces our productivity, and takes a toll on our long-term achievements. The superhero narrative says that we, as women, can always do more, but we stand with other women leaders in health sciences and health professions and reject the superhero narrative.
This pandemic has cracked open the vulnerabilities in our policies, systems, and environments and exacerbated existing disparities for women faculty with children. Our workloads have dramatically increased at work and at home. We are exhausted, stressed, and anxious. There is no break, and everything is a blur. These feelings do not reflect our personal shortcomings or individual inability to cope, but rather our feelings toward policies, systems, and environments that have failed to support us or recognize our labor.
For exactly 1 year, we have heard messages from administration to do more. (“Consider that you might have more time to write now.” “Think of COVID-related research questions in your field and pursue them with grants.” “Your students really need to hear from you.” “Maybe you need to increase your office hours.” “Let’s offer online and in-person courses and make them the best they can be.” “Make sure you take care of yourself.”) The COVID pandemic is not an individual problem; therefore, messages for individual women faculty to do more are misdirected. They fail to acknowledge the systemic nature of the pandemic-related problems and they place additional demands on individual women faculty.
The solutions, which have been presented to us, include taking paid leave for physical or mental health, doing more self-care, and tolling the tenure clock. While we appreciate the gesture to offer a response in crises, these solutions do not reduce our demands, and all carry unintended consequences. For example, taking paid leave for substantial mental or physical health issues increases the workload for our colleagues, compounds our demands when we return, and undermines our productivity. Expectations to engage in more self-care adds another task to our list of demands and requires additional labor. Delaying the tenure clock by one year jeopardizes our financial and professional gains long-term.
Even if we were willing and able to take leave, engage in more self-care, and toll the tenure clock, we would remain in a compromised position in terms of our health and well-being, professional achievements, and long-term success. None of these solutions address the current or future challenges we face as women faculty with children. The COVID pandemic has revealed stark gender inequities that have always existed in academia and made them intolerable.
Our health and well-being are critical to our ability to meet demands at work and at home. However, it is impossible to engage in health-promoting behaviors when we, women faculty members who work in health sciences and health professions, are exhausted, stressed, and anxious. Because we are dealing with exhaustion, stress, and anxiety, we do not sleep as well. Also, it is harder for us to be active and eat a nutritious diet. Because we feel exhausted, stressed, and anxious, our immune systems are compromised, which means we are more likely to get sick — from COVID or anything else. Because we have unmanaged stress and cannot consistently engage in activities that cultivate energy in our bodies, it is difficult to concentrate. Every single task requires more time and effort. The phrase “take care of yourself” places the responsibility for a failed system on the individual. As we try to make up for lost productivity, we are doing more (not less) with respect to work, which means we have little time left to “take care of ourselves.” Expectations to spend more time in health and wellness activities, when we have impossible demands already, set us up to fail. These circumstances are part of a vicious negative feedback loop that erodes our health and well-being.
The COVID pandemic has placed us in a vulnerable position at the intersection of a faculty member crisis and a caregiving crisis. We cannot talk about productivity, much less achievements and success in health sciences and health professions, if we are not talking about systemic changes to make it easier for people to manage stress, sleep, and engage in other health-promoting behaviors.
It is time for a change, specifically to acknowledge that the pandemic has caused systemic problems that require systemic solutions. We do not need short-term solutions to a time-limited problem like the pandemic, but strategic actions to acknowledge and redress longstanding gender inequities for women faculty with children.
At a minimum, we must redefine our essential activities related to teaching, research, and service, center health and well-being in our work, and adjust evaluations to recognize and reward the work we do. Systemic changes should enable us to prioritize our own health and well-being and labor on. Hopefully, these changes will also be enough to keep diverse women faculty in academia. Finally, we ask for the support of our women colleagues, allies, and leaders. Stand with us and fight for changes to the policies, systems, and environments to support womxn (trans and cisgender women) faculty members. If we do nothing, we are just bracing for impact.
Written by: Cassandra Johnson and Hannah Thornton
