The proposed research is the first in a series of studies on the impacts of the COVID19 pandemic on education. In the process, Stellenbosch University will become a major holding site for studies on the broader educational consequences of pandemics including the development and maintenance of a major bibliographic database on the subject.
This particular study surveys women academics spread across South Africa’s 26 public universities, to determine the impacts of the lockdown on their academic work. Academic work in this specific context will refer to teaching and research. Once completed, the refined study will be expanded to all 26 public universities.
Why is this study important? We know from research that academic work is unequally distributed between men and women academics. Women, moreover, are subject to “the second shift” when they leave the academic office for their homes. This means that in a pandemic-enforced lockdown, of the kind experienced world-wide, it can be assumed that women will experience academic work differently from men. What we do not know yet is how exactly the novel coronavirus has impacted on women academics working from home - raising important research questions.
Published in Research Policy, Volume 51, Issue 1, January 2022, 104403
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Graeme Mehl | Patrizio Piraino | Jonathan Jansen | Samantha Kriger >
ABSTRACT
The underrepresentation of women in research is well-documented, in everything from participation and leadership to peer review and publication.
Even so, in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, early reports indicated a precipitous decline in women's scholarly productivity (both in time devoted to research and in journal publications) compared to pre-pandemic times.
None of these studies, mainly from the Global North, could provide detailed explanations for the scale of this decline in research outcomes.
Using a mixed methods research design, we offer the first comprehensive study to shed light on the complex reasons for the decline in research during the pandemic-enforced lockdown among 2,029 women academics drawn from 26 public universities in South Africa.
Our study finds that a dramatic increase in teaching and administrative workloads, and the traditional family roles assumed by women while “working from home,” were among the key factors behind the reported decline in research activity among female academics in public universities.
In short, teaching and administration effectively displaced research and publication—with serious implications for an already elusive gender equality in research.
Finally, the paper offers recommendations that leaders and policy makers can draw on to support women academics and families in higher education during and beyond pandemic times.
Published in Women's Studies International Forum, Volume 88, September–October 2021
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Linda Ronnie | Jonathan Jansen | Samantha Kriger >
ABSTRACT
According to anecdotal accounts, the guilt engendered by the conflict between employment and family that is pervasive in the academy (or “academic guilt,” in this paper) has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic-enforced lockdown.
To date, there has been no systematic research that provides a detailed account of, and explanations for, the “academic guilt” experienced by women academics, in particular, outside of the Global North.
The research team conducted a large-scale systematic survey of all female academic staff in a nationwide study of South Africa's 26 public universities during the period of the lockdown.
A total of 2029 full responses were received from women at different stages in their academic careers.
The survey included an open-ended section that allowed for detailed, unlimited responses by the participants; this section provided a substantial volume of qualitative data, which was coded and analyzed.
Leveraging the richness of the open-ended survey data, this study presents findings showing significantly high feelings of “academic guilt” among women academics during the pandemic-enforced lockdown for a variety of reasons relating to the working conditions imposed by the lockdown mandates.
Published in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, Volume 6, Issue 3, December 2022
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Armand Bam | Jonathan Jansen | Samantha Kriger >
ABSTRACT
Against the backdrop of an increase in research on the effects of COVID-19,
this article uses the analysis of survey data of female academics from the 26
higher education institutions in South Africa to identify how female academics
with young children coped with academic output during the pandemic-enforced lockdown.
A growing body of research documents the influence of children and childcare on the
careers of female academics. In this article, we see how female academics who stayed
at home during the enforced lockdown period negotiated childcare and home-schooling,
and how the lockdown influenced their academic output. An online survey questionnaire
was administered, consisting of 12 Likert-scale questions followed by an open-ended section
that solicited a narrative account of academic work and home life during the lockdown period.
Data on female academics with children under the age of six years was extracted for this study.
The quantitative and qualitative data that emerged from our study of 2,018 women academics at 26
universities across South Africa describes how academic mothers felt, and how they struggled to
complete the academic work required by their educational institutions. Such academic work
directly influences future career prospects. This study highlights the influence that the
presence of young children in the home, the pressures of home-schooling, traditional gender
roles, and household responsibilities have on the academic careers of women.
Published in Perspectives in Education, Volume 40, No 3, 2022
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Jonathan Jansen | Samantha Kriger >
ABSTRACT
Since 2020, there has been a flurry of research on the impact of Covid-19 on families,
and some research on the effects of the pandemic on academic parents. However,
little is known about how the pandemic reshaped academic women’s family lives and
how this influenced their teaching, research, and inner selves. This innovative study
of South African university-based female academics from 2020 to 2021 investigates how
Covid restructured family lives in relation to children, partners, elderly parents, and
outside support (domestic workers, gardeners, etc.), and what this meant for their
academic work. A complexity paradigm is used as the framework, and it provides a relevant
approach by recognising that elements interacting in a system result in emergent outcomes
that are more complex than can be predicted at the outset. This paper will show that the
pandemic-enforced lockdown exposed vulnerability threats to the Education for Sustainable
development (ESD) both in terms of the direct education goals (such as lifelong learning
opportunities and discrimination in education) as well as the cross-over goals from other
sectors (such as health and wellbeing, gender equality, and decent work and sustainable
growth).
Published in Front. Psychol, Volume 13, 2022
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Linda Ronnie | Marieta du Plessis >
ABSTRACT
This study examines the psychological contract between academics and their institutions
during a time of great stress—the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that relationships between
these parties have been found to be deteriorating prior to the pandemic, we believed it
pertinent to explore how environmental changes brought about through lockdown conditions
may have shifted the academic-institution relationship. Through a qualitative research
design, our data is from 2029 women academics across 26 institutions of higher learning
in South Africa. The major shifts in the psychological contract were found to be workload
and pressure, provision of resources, top-down communication, as well as trust and support.
Whilst these shifts altered the transactional and interactional nature of the psychological
contract, violation, rather than breach, occurred since the emotional responses of
participants point to incongruence or misalignment of expectations between academics and
their institutions during this time of crisis. We offer recommendations for rebuilding
trust and negotiating the psychological contract to re-engage academics in the institution.
Published in South African Journal of Science, Volume 118, No 5/6, 2022
Authors: Jonathan Jansen | Shabir A. Madhi >
ABSTRACT
The somewhat ironic title for this special issue captures a dilemma that we seek to address: how to bring together
the best thinking in the social sciences and the biomedical sciences to work through the complex challenges posed
by COVID-19. How, indeed, does one do social distancing in a shack, or expect people to survive by shutting down
the economy in a country where one third of the population is unemployed and Government is unable to offer a
meaningful social security net? In the early months of the pandemic, the social and policy interventions in South
Africa (and other African countries) were very much based on middle-class sensibilities – that for every citizen
there is adequate housing with ample physical spaces that allow for this important mitigation measure called social
distancing.
Published in South African Journal of Science, Volume 118, No 5/6, 2022
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Armand Bam | Philippa Tumubweinee >
ABSTRACT
The novel coronavirus set off a global pandemic of the COVID-19 disease that affected
higher education institutions in profound ways. Drawing on the experiences of more than
2029 academic women, this article shows the precarity of academic women’s work under
pandemic conditions. We analysed seven persistent themes that emerged from the qualitative
analysis of the open-ended responses to an online survey across South Africa’s 26 higher
education institutions. In short, these seven factors have rendered women’s work precarious
with serious implications for an already elusive gender inequality in the academy. Finally,
we aim to provide insight for academic leaders and policymakers to accommodate support for
women academics and families in higher education during this time and in the future.
Published in Frontiers in Education, Volume 7, 2022
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Armand Bam | Linda Ronnie >
ABSTRACT
After the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020,
countries around the world responded with state-mandated lockdowns. Emerging data
on the adverse psychological impact of the lockdown shows that women as a whole
are among the most vulnerable groups. This study explores the specific stressors
manifesting for women academics during lockdown and their toll on emotional wellbeing.
A qualitative interpretive analysis of responses from 2,029 women academics showed
participants experienced frustration, weariness, anxiety, and being overwhelmed as
the result of emotional taxation from three sources: home responsibilities, social
milieu, and work environment. The work-life merge that occurred during lockdown
seemed to have a concertina effect on emotional wellbeing as participants were
pressured to manage an inordinate number of responsibilities at once. The specific
consequences of the concertina effect found in this study highlight opportunities
for the academy to better support the wellbeing of women academics.
Published in PLOS ONE 18(1): e0280179, January 2023,
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Linda Ronnie | Jonathan Jansen | Samantha Kriger >
ABSTRACT
This article shows how the meaning of home and ‘working from home’ were fundamentally
transformed by the pandemic-enforced lockdown for women academics. Drawing on the
experiences of more than 2,000 women academics, we show how the enduring concept of
home as a place of refuge from the outside world was replaced with a new and still
unsettled notion of home as a gendered space that is a congested, competitive, and
constrained setting for women’s academic work. In this emerging new place for living
and working, home becomes a space that is claimed, conceded, and constantly negotiated
between women academics and their partners as well as the children and other occupants
under the same roof. Now, as before, home remains a deeply unequal place for women’s work,
with dire consequences for academic careers. It is therefore incumbent upon women academics
and higher education institutions to develop a deep understanding of the social meanings of
home for academics, and the implications for the ‘new normal’ of working from home
Published in Sustainability: 15(6), 4999, March 2023,
Authors: Cyrill Walters | Linda Ronnie | Marieta du Plessis | Jonathan Jansen >
ABSTRACT
This qualitative research explores the experiences and sense-making of self-worth
of 1857 South African women academics during the enforced pandemic lockdown between
March and September 2020; the study was conducted through an inductive, content analysis
process. Since worldwide lockdowns were imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,
women academics, in particular, have reported a unique set of challenges from working
from home. Gender inequality within the scientific enterprise has been well documented;
however, the cost to female academics’ self-esteem, which has been exacerbated by the
pandemic, has yet to be fully realized. The findings of the study include negative
emotional experiences related to self-worth, engagement in social comparisons, and the
fear of judgement by colleagues, which were exacerbated by peer pressure. Finally, the
sense-making of academic women’s self-esteem as it relates to their academic identity
was reported. Beyond being the first comprehensive national study on the topic, the
study’s insights are more broadly useful for determining what support, accommodation,
and assistance is needed for academic women to sustain performance in their academic
and research duties at universities worldwide
The list below contains the contact details of the Wellness Centres at the 26 Higher Education Institutions involved in this study. Click on one of the links below to see the details: