Caring during COVID‐19: A gendered analysis of Australian university responses to managing remote working and caring responsibilities

Abstract

COVID‐19 is dramatically reconfiguring paid work and care. Emerging evidence in the global media suggests that academic women with caring responsibilities are being disproportionately impacted. This article fills a key knowledge gap by examining how Australian universities are supporting academics to manage remote work and caring during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We conducted a desktop analysis of public information about remote working and care from 41 Australian universities and compared them to the world’s top ten ranked universities. Findings suggest that during the pandemic, the Australian higher education sector positions decisions about caring leave and participation in the paid labour force as ‘private’ matters in which employees (mainly women) design their own ‘solutions’ when compared with international institutional counterparts. We argue that COVID‐19 provides another context in which universities have evaded their responsibility to ensure women’s full participation in the labour force.

University staff and flexible work: inequalities, tensions and challenges

“…Staff underlined the importance of improving supervisory capacity through information, resources and training, to support more consistent practice across the institution. This is consistent with previous research that has found FWAs usually need to be individually negotiated, failing to recognise that the need for FWAs is often not a matter of individual choice (Nash & Churchill, 2020). Consistency in access to FWAs across work units in post-COVID contexts is worthy of further monitoring and research, as it not yet clear how the 'unevenness' in managerial mindset and capacity identified by staff in the focus groups have been manifest in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…While the salience of gender in participants' accounts is somewhat unsurprising, it serves as a reminder of the ways university structures create unequal opportunities across gender, seniority and roles, and the contradictions of seeking gender equality through gendered flexibility practices. Whether and how the expansion of flexibility in 2020 disrupts patterns of gendered use of flexibility is not yet evident, however, early evidence (Nash & Churchill, 2020) indicates the pandemic is disproportionately impacting on women with caring responsibilities, with universities providing little guidance about working remotely or with children during Overall, the experiences and perceptions shared by staff prior to the pandemic provide insight into directions for change in the emerging higher education landscape. While higher education -like other sectors -has placed an increasing emphasis on employee wellbeing and increased opportunities for FWAs in recent years, it is not yet clear how the tensions evident prior to the pandemic will manifest.…”

An affordance perspective of team collaboration and enforced working from home during COVID-19

“…The first was a personal reflection on social isolation and struggles of working from home for single women living alone and how technology helped them to connect with colleagues (Gao & Sai, 2020). The second study was a desktop analysis of the websites of Australian universities and how they support academic staff with caring responsibilities (Nash & Churchill, 2020).…”

Students’ Acceptance of the COVID-19 Impact on Shifting Higher Education to Distance Learning in Poland

“…Nash and Churchill raise the interesting subject of academic women's occupation during the pandemic [8]. It is observed that women's publication track records have decreased significantly, even by 50% in some areas.…”