Telework during COVID-19: exposing ableism in U.S. higher education

Abstract

Abelism, like the many other 'isms, ' pervades the rules and norms within the U.S. higher education system. Through a first person narrative, this article explores one person's perspective and experience with the accommodation process -first, as a person without a dis/ability serving as an Americans with Dis/abilities coordinator and then as a faculty member with a dis/ability. It also documents the miraculous ability to institute telework accommodations within weeks when people without dis/abilities needed it due to COVID-19 and consequently exposes one form of ableism in the U.S. post-secondary educational system. The article concludes with a call to anti-ableism and intersectional activism to expand higher education.

Workplace accommodations during the COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review of the impacts and implications for people with disabilities

“…Overall, there was optimism that the experience of the pandemic has presented an opportunity for advocacy for people with disabilities with respect to workplace accommodations. Some of the studies argued that the swift implementation of accommodations like flexible location and hours at the onset of the pandemic serves as evidence of underlying ableist attitudes among employers and governments, who previously refused to provide these same accommodations on the basis of "undue hardship" [51,52]. This argument is consistent with earlier studies that have suggested a link between ableism and the denial of workplace accommodations [77].…”

“…Twelve studies (five perspective [45,[50][51][52][53], four secondary analysis [46,48,54,55] and three primary research [38,56,57]) focused on how rapidly workplace accommodations, especially work from home arrangements, were implemented at the onset of the pandemic. Four studies highlighted (drawing from either their own or secondary data) how certain jobs tended to see the swift transition to remote work, particularly management positions and other whitecollar, knowledge-based jobs such as business and finance, education, information technology, and the sciences [38,46,57,58].…”

“…Seventeen studies (10 secondary analysis [28,46,48,49,54,55,58,[60][61][62] and seven perspective [43-45, 47, 50-52]) discussed how workplace accommodations implemented during the pandemic created new conditions and opportunities for accommodations-related advocacy by and for people with disabilities. While the process for obtaining accommodations before the pandemic had often been a long and bureaucratic one [52,63] these studies argued that the pandemic demonstrated that some accommodations can be quickly and easily granted. For example, in the pre-pandemic era working from home arrangements represented one of the most requested and most denied accommodations for workers with disabilities [45-47, 52, 63].…”

The indignities of shielding during the COVID-19 pandemic for people with sickle cell disorders: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

“…And he also reminded the interviewer of the uncertainty of impairment effects in that, "We have a time where we cannot even stand up. " Some participants, while not naming it, mentioned ableism (Campbell, 2008(Campbell, , 2009, for example, how flexible working from home had not been an option but was now possible for their employers and made accessible (Ocean, 2021;Samuels and Freeman, 2021). Participants noted that individual self-management of the risks was how they coped with shielding, especially during tiers 3 and 4 10.…”

When work came home: Formation of feeling rules in the context of a pandemic

“…The call for a shift to ‘telework’–with goals including traffic reduction, decentralization of organizations, and efficiencies in land use–is longstanding ( Nilles 1975 , 1988 ; Toffler, 1980 ); so, too, are analyses of its public and private costs and benefits (e.g., Olson and Primps 1984 ; Hambly and Lee, 2019 ). Studies suggest that telework offers increased flexibility, on one hand, and increased exploitation rooted in gender, class, dis/ability, and race, on the other ( Sullivan and Lewis, 2001 ; Nevin and Schieman, 2020 ), which contribute to stratified and segregated labour markets ( Acker, 1990 , 2006 ; Foster and Wass, 2012 ; Jarman et al, 2012 ; Ocean, 2021 ). Research has shown the persistence of such inequalities during the pandemic ( Selden and Berdahl, 2020 ), as well as the growth in the gender gap in housework and childcare, and to greater mental health issues for telecommuting mothers ( Lyttleton et al, 2020 ).…”