This chapter discusses precarious women's experiences in HEI in the UK to explore the precarity of academic women's work under extreme pandemic conditions. The authors analysed eight recurring themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis of the interviews conducted with 18 women who were married with children across London's 3 Higher Education Institutions, adding an intersectional lens. The current study revealed that precarious female academics, who were married with children, faced incredible challenges amidst the pandemic and were further ostracized. It concludes that HEI need to reflect on how they could promote social justice offering opportunities for these women and their families. While previous researchers have reported on the challenges of women in the academy, few have explored the challenges of these ‘invisible' ladies, especially those married with children, who often do more than they are paid for and still remain in the dark.
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In 2020, a new virus set off the global pandemic of COVID-19, placing an additional strain on precarious female academics and researchers. The literature had already been pointing to the unfair implications of nationwide lockdowns on female academics, especially those with a family and children (Kitchener, 2020; Myers et al., 2020; Zimmer, 2020). Simultaneously, there were numerous provocative accounts of the emotional and psychological labour of academic lives (Boncori, 2020), the disproportionate toll on female precarious academics (Gao & Sai, 2020) and the unsurmountable challenges of the work–life balance for female academics with care responsibilities (i.e., young children) (Utoft, 2020). The majority of studies, however, focused on statistical reports of large-scale survey data or the individual experiences of few female academics who had a permanent position in the academy.
Gender inequalities in the academy is not a novel issue and has been frequently explored before the pandemic. Several studies have examined women’s recruitment, representation, recognition, compensation, leadership and productivity in the academy (Huang et al., 2020). These factors have rendered female academics’ work precarious, and the systemic and institutionalised nature of gender inequality has been widely investigated (Coe et al., 2019; Walters et al., 2022). Frequently, women at the beginning of the career in the academy are involved in long years of precarious work, uncertainty and migration which often coincides with the period their biological clock starts ticking and they want some sort of stability to create their families and raise their children.
Precarity and women is not a new issue within the academy (Ivancheva et al., 2019), but an exploration and deeper understanding of its causes and impact particularly on married precarious academics and their families has become more acute during the Covid-19 pandemic. Several studies have tried to examine and portray the ubiquitous sense of uncertainty among women within the higher education sector. O’Keefe and Courtois (2019) claim that precarious work and the lack of gender parity in academia result in female academics feeling like ‘non-citizens’ or ‘daughters of a lesser God’ in the academy (Meletiadou, 2023). Ivancheva et al. (2019) highlight that when investigating precarity, one needs to consider only contractual security but also affective relational security in the lives of precarious women and their families.
Although several researchers have researched the unequal effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on female scientists (Amano-Patiño et al., 2020; Collins et al., 2021; Myers et al., 2020), yet precarious academic work performed by the most vulnerable members in the workforce, that is mothers with caring responsibilities has not been thoroughly examined. In the current study, we synthesise data out of the several interviews we have conducted with precarious mothers with young children working in the academy which demonstrates the precarity of academic women’s work during the enforced pandemic lockdown. As emerging evidence in the past has been dominated by quantitative analyses, the current study adds a qualitative approach to describe these female academics’ challenges in depth. These studies suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the global academic enterprise in several ways. In this study, however, by using a qualitative approach, I aim to provide an account for, and explanations of, the precarity of women’s work within the academy.