Female academics gripped by guilt as they battle to balance demands: study

The productivity of female academics while working from home during the Covid-19 lockdown took a huge dive, primarily because they had to care for toddlers and help older children with schoolwork.

This was one of the most important findings of the first comprehensive study undertaken in SA on the impact of the pandemic lockdown on women’s academic work.

At least 42.7% of respondents who had children indicated that helping them with schoolwork had a high impact on their own work performance, while 43.8% attributed this to childcare.

Besides the traditional family roles assumed by women, the dramatic increase in teaching and administrative workloads was also identified as a key factor behind the reported decline in research activity among female academics at SA’s 26 public universities.

I work with several women academics who are on the verge of breakdown, and are extremely fragile in terms of their emotional state, as they are just plain worn out.

—  Denise Zinn, an adjunct professor at Nelson Mandela University

A total of 2,209 women academics participated in the study conducted by researchers from Stellenbosch University, University of Cape Town and Cape Peninsula University of Technology, including Prof Jonathan Jansen who was the principal investigator.

The highest number of responses came from Unisa (287) followed by the University of Pretoria (185), Stellenbosch University (172) and the University of Cape Town (111).

More than half of the respondents who found academic work “extremely difficult” were those with children under the age of six and those with school-going children.

“It is evident from the qualitative data that the age and educational stage of children were significant factors in the decline in productivity among female academics,” the report found.

Another significant finding was that the sharp increase in the demands on teaching time during lockdown “has effectively displaced the available research time among female academics”.

Those involved in chemistry, biological sciences, and biochemistry stated that the closure of laboratories or facilities affected their research productivity.

Half of the respondents said they spent more than 80% of their work time teaching online.

At least 80.3% of the women believed that it has been “more” to “much more” difficult for women than for men to do academic work during the lockdown period.

“Female academics felt strongly that the academic productivity of male academics continues to flourish despite the pandemic, which is a finding consistent with Covid-19-related research in other parts of the world.”

Where most have used this opportunity [lockdown] to reconnect with their children, I have been overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, depression, and anxiety at not being able to juggle everything.

—  A female academic

The study also highlighted the issue of “academic guilt” that women academics experienced, while caught up in the demands of competing roles such as teaching online, nurturing vulnerable students, taking care of toddlers and “trying to jumpstart research and writing”.

“This resulted in either a sense of helplessness or a tendency to ‘overwork’, which itself maintains cycles of guilt,” the report stated.

A female academic said: “Where most have used this opportunity [lockdown] to reconnect with their children, I have been overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, depression, and anxiety at not being able to juggle everything.”

Some of the recommendations included:

• University leaders should invest in childcare support for female academics working from home and provide on-campus childcare facilities; and
• Provide research assistantships to support women academics.

One of the researchers, Cyrill Walters, a research fellow in higher education at Stellenbosch University, said she was surprised to see that the “lament of guilt resonated so widely across the study”.

She said that for working women with children “it was the pressure of many competing roles that created their sense of guilt”.

“We do not say men do not experience conflict about the competing demands of their work and home lives. However, recent studies demonstrate that women have significantly higher levels of guilt related to their work interfering with family responsibilities relative to males.”

Denise Zinn, an adjunct professor at Nelson Mandela University, said it was imperative that higher education “sits up and take notice” of the study, as it is already having serious consequences for academia ranging from personal to professional consequences for women.

“I work with several women academics who are on the verge of breakdown, and are extremely fragile in terms of their emotional state, as they are just plain worn out.”

She said that the quality of their work in teaching, learning, research and engagement will inevitably suffer and result in consequences for academic success for their students and themselves.

“The divisions responsible for policy-making will collectively have to come up with new ways to support and change the ‘way things are currently done’. The ‘new normal’ conditions are a few notches more oppressive and damaging, especially for women academics, than the ‘old normal’.”

But Prof Labby Ramrathan, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s education faculty, said while it was important to acknowledge the challenges that women academics faced during the pandemic, “most of these challenges are being experienced by all academics”.

“These are unprecedented times and, as such, have altered substantially the way of life of an academic.”

He said that “a fundamental rethink of higher education is needed and a concomitant higher education academic needs to be conceptualised”.