Exist or exit? Women business‐owners in Bangladesh during COVID‐19

Within the unique context of COVID‐19, this feminist research provides novel insights on how gender‐specific issues are articulated in the experiences of women concerning their small businesses in a patriarchal developing nation. Based on the interviews of women business‐owners in Bangladesh, this research reveals the diversified gendered experiences of women in private and public spheres in continuing their business operations during the pandemic period. It also unveils patriarchal practices regarding women's discontinuing or closing down ventures due to the COVID‐19 crisis. Thus, the research substantially advances the understanding on the influence of gender on women's continuing or discontinuing or even closing down their businesses in a highly patriarchal developing nation during the pandemic period. It further offers important suggestions for policy practitioners in supporting women business‐owners of patriarchal developing nations during the COVID‐19 pandemic.     

What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw academic labor rapidly shift into domestic spaces at the same time as households were “locked down.” In this article, we offer an exploration of our own experiences of working from home as women and mothers in the academy. Inspired by feminist approaches to knowledge production and self‐reflection, we each developed a personal reflective narrative guided by three key questions centered on our experiences of working from home pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and what this may mean for the future of our work. We then collectively analyzed how our personal stories reflected different dimensions of the experience of working from home, and our fears and hopes for the future. We present three distilled themes from our collective experiences here with the aim of entering a dialog with others seeking to live feminist lives during this time, and beyond.     

Feminism and gendered impact of COVID‐19: Perspective of a counselling psychologist

When women, girls and gender‐diverse people — who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak since the public health crisis has also become a crisis for feminism — will identify and acknowledge their organismic phenomenological self, wholeness and growth will be fully functioning. Psychological aspects for the public health emergency operated through counselling psychologists to manage mental health, emotional, psychological, cognitive, behavioural, relational and social impacts are fundamental. And the role of counselling psychologists in maintaining personal mental health and their clients is a crucial indicator of collective wellbeing. This perspective is embedded in the gendered approach and feminist framework which attempts to explore and offer the embodied intersectional and divergent impact on living during the COVID‐19 pandemic lockdown.     

“Having a family is the new normal”: Parenting in neoliberal academia during the COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has made explicit the burden of care shouldered by academic mothers, in addition to juggling their scholarly commitments. Although discussions are abundant on the impact of caring responsibilities on the careers of women academics, neoliberal academia continues to minimize such struggles. Despite the disruptions to family routines caused by the health crisis, academic institutions have expected academic mothers and fathers to continue undertaking their professional responsibilities at the same level as before, disregarding their parenting demands. This paper contributes to the research on parenthood in academia by looking at how, throughout the pandemic, academic parents have negotiated the tensions between parenthood and academic demands, and by investigating the strategies they use to confront neoliberal culture of academic performativity, even amid the health crisis. The paper engages with the “space invaders” concept used by Puwar (2004) to analyze the “hypervisibility” of academic mothers' and fathers' “bodies out of place” during the pandemic, and to investigate their “renegade acts” against the uncaring attitudes of their institutions. Evidence is drawn from a qualitative study conducted during December 2020 and January 2021 among scholars affiliated to Portuguese academic institutions: 17 in-depth interviews conducted with women, and two mixed-gender focus groups. Our results research reveal how the experiences of academic mothers and fathers were not uniform during the pandemic. In addition, it shows how, despite their commitment to their academic responsibilities, these parents have crafted various resistance strategies to confront the institutional pressure to continue maintain their working routines, and instead positioning themselves as “more than just academics.”     

The differential impact of COVID‐19 on the work conditions of women and men academics during the lockdown

That the COVID‐19 pandemic has affected the work conditions of large segments of society is in no doubt. A growing body of journalistic accounts raised the possibility that the lockdown caused by the pandemic has affected women and men in different ways, due mostly to the traditionally gendered division of labour in society. We attempt to test this oft‐cited argument by conducting an original survey with nearly 200 academics. Specifically, we explore the extent to which the effect of the lockdown on childcare, housework and home‐office environment varies across women and men. Our results show that a number of factors are associated with the effect of the lockdown on the work conditions of academics at home, including gender, having children, perceived threat from COVID‐19 and satisfaction with the work environment. We also show that having children disproportionately affects women in terms of the amount of housework during the lockdown.     

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

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.     

Equalities in freefall? Ontological insecurity and the long‐term impact of COVID‐19 in the academy

This intervention focuses on the impact of the global crisis resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic on existing racialized and gendered inequalities within the academy and in particular our discipline of Politics and International Relations. We argue that responses to recent crises within the academy have exacerbated ontological insecurity among minoritized groups, including women. When coupled with increased caring responsibilities, the current crises call into question who can be creative and innovative, necessary conditions for knowledge production. While university managers seek to reassure university staff of the temporary nature of COVID‐19 interventions, we argue that the possibilities for progressive leaps at a later state of institutional regeneration is unlikely when efforts to address structural inequalities are sidelined and crisis responses are undertaken which run counter to such work.     

(Dis)embodied encounters between art and academic writing amid a pandemic

The current account recounts the authors’ artistic virtual interactions during the COVID‐19 period of quarantine to discuss how connections between art, writing, humans’ embodied struggles and technologies can enable forms of feminist writing, as a cyborg practice, which have the political potential to meaningfully voice embodied experiences of inter‐sectionality and vulnerability that remain increasingly under‐expressed, in a neoliberal world of pandemic. Presented in a creative prose, whereby theory interweaves with artistic performances, poetry and extracts of the authors’ virtual exchanges, this account reflects how hybrid, non‐conventional, cyborg writing explorations can connect different bodies in an academic text even when these bodies are physically kept apart. By invoking hybridity that counters the masculine conventions of academic writing, this text aspires to produce academic knowledge that writes and speaks of embodied experiences of othering that urgently seek expression under the COVID‐19 pandemic. The current account builds on the burgeoning stream of organizational literature on writing differently and especially feminist forms of writing integrating genre‐blurring prose, poetry and art‐based research.     

Neoliberal motherhood during the pandemic: Some reflections

In this article, I argue that there are at least three essential elements that inform the idealized mother figure today and I reflect upon the effects the COVID‐19 pandemic has on each of these elements. The three essential elements in the contemporary understanding of motherhood reflect neoliberal concerns and are related to mothers’ unpaid work, the female body and mothers’ participation in the labour market. These three elements have been distilled with the help of secondary literature and are based on initial observations and interview results that had been conducted as part of an ongoing research project on contemporary motherhood practices of upper‐middle‐class mothers from Switzerland, Turkey and Germany. Consequently, the focus in this article lies on upper‐class and upper‐middle‐class women. In contrast to optimistic visions that envision the end of neoliberalism, I argue that the neoliberal understanding of motherhood is likely to persist and to re‐emerge as the dominant model of motherhood in the wake of the pandemic.     

A strange tale

We are going through such challenging times that dealing with reality is sometimes easier through fiction. Therefore, we tell the tale of a faraway land where poor women — mostly black — who make a living as domestic servants are particularly impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Their abject bodies are part of a form of necropolitics that separates those who must live from those who can die. Their bodies do not matter, as they are perceived as mere working tools. And what sounds like a strange tale is the true reality of millions of women during the pandemic, in a land that is not so far away as it seems.     

Pivot to Telehealth: Narrative Reflections on Circle of Security Parenting Groups during COVID‐19

In response to COVID‐19 hygiene and physical distancing restrictions, our service rapidly shifted to delivering Circle of Security‐Parenting? (COS‐P) groups via telehealth. In this article we report the perspectives and experiences of the group facilitator and the parents who received the intervention during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We use semi‐structured, qualitative interviews to explore the advantages, challenges, and positive impacts of the online parenting group from the perspectives of the group leader and the five group participants. Participants’ narrative reflections show that they were satisfied with the convenient and engaging online delivery of the program and would recommend it to other parents. Parents reported significant improvements in their parenting and greater awareness of their strengths and struggles. The online delivery of COS‐P resulted in more efficient service delivery, greater attendance rates, and adherence to the model. The stressors on the experienced facilitator, due to the abrupt transition and multiple technical and communication challenges, may have been mitigated by supervisor and collegial support, as well as careful preparation for herself and the participants. Future research should investigate the effectiveness of online versus face‐to‐face delivery of the intervention, including what works for whom.     

COVID‐19 and the gender gap in work hours

School and day care closures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic have increased caregiving responsibilities for working parents. As a result, many have changed their work hours to meet these growing demands. In this study, we use panel data from the US Current Population Survey to examine changes in mothers’ and fathers’ work hours from February through April 2020, the period of time prior to the widespread COVID‐19 outbreak in the United States and through its first peak. Using person‐level fixed effects models, we find that mothers with young children have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. Consequently, the gender gap in work hours has grown by 20–50 per cent. These findings indicate yet another negative consequence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the challenges it poses to women’s work hours and employment.     

Rendering sexism invisible in workplace narratives. A narrative analysis of female entrepreneurs’ stories of not being talked to by men

Entrepreneurism is widely regarded as being one way in which women can sidestep the sexism of male‐dominated institutionalized work environments and enter into a world in which men and women operate on a level playing field. Yet, in a corpus of stories of female entrepreneurs’ experiences, we noted that being ignored by men was a constant theme. Taking a social constructionist and narrative approach to identity, we analyse the gendered identity work that female entrepreneurs do in these stories and we seek to explicate the process through which female entrepreneurs do not evaluate being ignored by men as sexism‐in‐action. Using positioning theory as an analytical tool, we analyse these stories at three different levels: the here‐and‐now interaction between interviewer and storyteller; the there‐and‐then identity work of the characters in the storyworld; and the wider societal Discourses that the storytellers enact, and which are enacted by such identity work. Findings indicate that despite making gendered difference, inferiority and lack of agency relevant, the stories are not evaluated as sexism‐in‐action because the female entrepreneurs enact a postfeminist and neoliberal Discourse of freedom, autonomy and choice, rather than a feminist Discourse of discrimination and sexism.     

Subjectivation processes and gender in a neoliberal model of science in three Spanish research centres

From a Foucauldian approach, neoliberal rationality in science can be understood as a form of governance of the self that produces mechanisms through which the subject is constructed and subordinated at the same time. In this study we examine subjectivation processes and gender in centres of research created under neoliberal scientific rationality. We analyse 19 semi‐structured interviews of men and women researchers conducted in three highly competitive centres of excellence — a context rarely addressed in the literature of academic subjectivities. Following a critical discourse analysis, we show how subjectivation processes of neoliberal rationality result in two main discursive mechanisms of subjection that prevent or hinder alternative subjectivities and collective resistance, especially for women, presenting a double turn that we call: a ‘turn on oneself’ and a ‘gendered turn on oneself’. We conclude that these centres are spaces which provide the conditions of possibility to develop a scientific entrepreneurial self, excluding ‘other’ scientific subjectivities and preventing possible resistances that could emerge from them.     

COVID‐19: A threat to educated Muslim women's negotiated identity in Pakistan

This study attempts to explore how the lockdown/containment measures taken by the government during the COVID‐19 pandemic have threatened educated Muslim women's negotiated identity regarding wifehood and motherhood in urban Pakistan and how they struggle to reposition to reconstruct it. Through semi‐structured interviews, making an in‐depth comparative study of three differently situated cases (Muslim women), this study argues that the abnormal situation that has ensued from the pandemic has reinforced the vulnerability of women's nascent negotiated identity by landing them in a space where they are supposed by the normative structures to step back to carrying out their traditional responsibilities as ‘good’ wife and mother during the crisis. It has found that the pandemic has similarity in its impacts for the women in their familial lives, despite their being variously situated and resistive, due to the general religio‐culturally defined patriarchal social behaviour of the place (Pakistan) toward women and lack of action on the part of the state for implementing its laws of women's empowerment.     

Coping with the COVID‐19 crisis: force majeure and gender performativity

This article examines the coping strategies of individuals during the confinement in France using a sensemaking lens. We draw on two studies consisting of 85 qualitative surveys followed by a diary in which 20 individuals wrote about their experiences during the first three weeks of the confinement. We employ an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyse the data. The findings reveal two patterns in the ways men and women cope with their experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The first pattern shows intensification of gender performativity manifested in the reproduction of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ reactions to the crisis. The second pattern detects a tendency towards a gradual deflection from gender performances through mental improvisations that foster new awareness of the crisis presenting an opportunity to transcend traditional gender roles. Our study highlights some potential emancipatory implications the COVID‐19 crisis may have for the practices of ‘doing gender’ and perceptions of work–life balance therefore instigating a transition towards more egalitarian households.     

Isolation

This article is a messy account not of the COVID‐19 pandemic but one written during the pandemic. Although written over several successive evenings it is not a linear narrative that builds on a chain of passing moments teleologically to an end. It is not a diary, just a collection of scattered thoughts about living during COVID‐19, the (lack of) care that many elderly people receive and how we, or perhaps only I, struggle to cope in these exceptional times. This is not a typical autoethnography, it is not reflexive writing and there is no conclusion albeit that the article ends.     

COVID‐19, ethics of care and feminist crisis management

The COVID‐19 pandemic threatens both lives and livelihoods. To reduce the spread of the virus, governments have introduced crisis management interventions that include border closures, quarantines, strict social distancing, marshalling of essential workers and enforced homeworking. COVID‐19 measures are necessary to save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people within society, and yet in parallel they create a range of negative everyday effects for already marginalized people. Likely unintended consequences of the management of the COVID‐19 crisis include elevated risk for workers in low‐paid, precarious and care‐based employment, over‐representation of minority ethnic groups in case numbers and fatalities, and gendered barriers to work. Drawing upon feminist ethics of care, I theorize a radical alternative to the normative assumptions of rationalist crisis management. Rationalist approaches to crisis management are typified by utilitarian logics, masculine and militaristic language, and the belief that crises follow linear processes of signal detection, preparation/prevention, containment, recovery and learning. By privileging the quantifiable — resources and measurable outcomes — such approaches tend to omit considerations of pre‐existing structural disadvantage. This article contributes a new theorization of crisis management that is grounded in feminist ethics to provide a care‐based concern for all crisis affected people.     

It’s OK not to be OK: Shared reflections from two PhD parents in a time of pandemic

Adopting an intersectional feminist lens, we explore our identities as single and co‐parents thrust into the new reality of the UK COVID‐19 lockdown. As two PhD students, we present shared reflections on our intersectional and divergent experiences of parenting and our attempts to protect our work and families during a pandemic. We reflect on the social constructions of ‘masculinities’ and ‘emphasized femininities’ as complicated influence on our roles as parents. Finally, we highlight the importance of time and self‐care as ways of managing our shared realities during this uncertain period. Through sharing reflections, we became closer friends in mutual appreciation and solidarity as we learned about each other’s struggles and vulnerabilities.     

Gendered Aspects of Conflict,Displacement and Peace Process in Turkey

The peace process in Turkey, since its inception, has not paid any attention to internal displacement or its gendered aspects. This study analyses how displaced women remember the gendered aspects of displacement and perceive reconciliation and peace. The analysis, based on interviews with 42 internally displaced women, shows that changing domestic and international contexts have substantive impact on how displaced women remember their stories and the meaning they attach to their ethnic identities. Consequently, it suggests that if the peace process is re‐initiated, leaders need to take into consideration that each component of reconciliation (justice, peace, trust towards the state, intergroup relations and truth‐telling) has different difficulties to be overcome when the gendered aspect of displacement is taken into account and consider return not only as a realistic demand but also as a political wish.