COVID‐19 as a Transformative Opportunity for Families and Therapists: Harnessing the Possibilities That Constraints Offer Us

This article demonstrates several ways in which the constraints that the COVID‐19 pandemic has posed for families can provide transformative opportunities to strengthen family relationships, become more resilient, and resolve conflicts and longstanding difficulties. Since most families worldwide have been greatly impacted on many fronts by the pandemic, they are looking to us for hope, guidance, and solutions for coping with high levels of anxiety about living in a world where life as we knew it has been turned on its head and we are struggling to cope with uncertainty about what the future will bring. However, in spite of all the limitations and health consequences COVID‐19 has posed for our client families, the majority have been quite resourceful and creative in coming up with their own novel self‐generated coping, problem‐solving, and health‐enhancing strategies well before we see them for the first time. Finally, the article discusses how the constraints of COVID‐19 afford family therapists with many opportunities to further hone their therapeutic alliance‐building skills, gain an intimate insider’s view of their clients’ daily lives that are not accessible in our offices, and co‐design with them therapeutic experiments that can produce high‐quality solutions.     

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.     

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.     

Pandemic and macho organizations: Wake‐up call or business as usual?

The COVID‐19 pandemic is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. The global spread of the virus is affecting societies’ gender dynamics in general and in organizations in particular. Based on ethnographic research being carried out in a police organization in Brazil, this piece discusses how COVID‐19 is impacting hegemonic masculinity in organizations. Police organizations are prototypical hegemonic masculinity organizations. I argue that the COVID‐19 pandemic at first encouraged the performance of the typical police macho masculinity, but as the disease progressed, it created a situation that challenged it. I explore that even though the pandemic threatens macho masculinity in organizations, it is still unclear if an alternative gender dynamic will emerge from this crisis in macho organizations.     

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.     

(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.     

Reflections on front‐line medical work during COVID‐19 and the embodiment of risk

Drawing on the voice of a woman NHS front‐line doctor during the current COVID‐19 pandemic, we explore her lived experience of the embodiment of risk in the crisis. We explore her struggles and difficulties, giving her voice and mobilizing our writing to listen to these experiences, reflecting on them as a way of living our own feminist lives. Her story illustrates that the current crisis is not only a crisis of health, but a crisis for feminism. Through telling her story, we cast light upon the embodied amplification of inequalities, paternalistic discourses around risk and lived experience of exposure to risk of contracting a deadly virus. We explore her work on the NHS front line, providing a conceptual framework of the multi‐level facets of the embodiment of risk, through lived experiences of risk and observations of the inequality of risk in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the UK.     

Towards a ‘virtual’ world: Social isolation and struggles during the COVID‐19 pandemic as single women living alone

This article is a personal reflection of how the current COVID‐19 pandemic affects our working lives and wellbeing, as single female academics who live alone in the UK. We offer a dialogue of our daily lives of being confined at home with lockdown measures extended. In particular, we focus on the experience of, and coping with, isolation and loneliness. Is isolation making us more socially connected? Through ‘virtual’ working and changing learning environments for us as teachers and learners, we explore changes in our working life and subsequent changes in the domestic environment. By capturing our lived experiences, we create an intellectual and safe space to voice our emotional struggles — as ‘invisible’ isolated individuals containing and consuming loneliness on our own. We foster alternative conversations as to how we might engender new perspectives from single female academics to combat social isolation in the workplace.     

Care and community revalued during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A feminist couple perspective

The COVID‐19 pandemic led us to understand and revalue care ethics within our daily lives and communities based on the feminist theory of care ethics. This article is a personal reflection of an academic couple living in Japan as we reflect on our experiences and the challenges encountered in caring for ourselves and our community. We discuss the ideas of care theory mainly: caring‐about and caring‐for, interchangeably in our discussion across the three‐stage categories: Home — A Commonplace; Care Ethics in Community; and Care Ethics for Self. Through these personal narratives, we strive to recognize the struggles of living through the pandemic in a virtually connected world that often disconnects us from self. We foster the idea of embracing care ethics as a starting point at an individual level.     

Chaos ruined the children’s sleep,diet and behaviour: Gendered discourses on family life in pandemic times

This study adopts a feminist critical approach to explore how parenting was understood during the COVID‐19 restrictive measures in Iceland. Iceland has been known as a front runner in gender equality, and women’s participation in the workforce is high. Data consists of 97 stories that were collected during the peak of COVID‐19 in April 2020 using the story completion method. The stories were thematically analysed. Most of the participants were university‐educated women. The themes demonstrate the power of neoliberal discourses in framing parenting. Parenting during a pandemic, especially mothering, is constructed as an overwhelming project that requires detailed organization and management. There is also resistance to neoliberal governmentality through redefining successful parenthood. Furthermore, the gendered nature of domestic work is questioned, especially the traditional, inactive father who prioritizes his own needs only to fail comically in the domestic sphere. The study contributes to our understanding of gendered parenthood in neoliberal, pandemic times.     

Academic motherhood during COVID‐19: Navigating our dual roles as educators and mothers

During the COVID‐19 crisis, being a working mother has taken on a whole new meaning, as mothers navigate working from home while juggling childcare, as well as coming to terms with their intersecting identities. The current article is a feminist, heartful autoethnographic account, couched in Relational‐Cultural Theory, surrounding our authentic experiences working from home and raising children during the worldwide pandemic. We explore academic motherhood, working from home, mental health, and coping during coronavirus and stay‐at‐home orders through engaged dialogue. We hope that showcasing our vulnerability can lead to change in the expectations we put on mothers in academia, while at the same time connect with readers who may be going through similar challenges.     

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.     

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.     

A Brazilian pandemia/monium: A researcher’s search for a ‘New Normal’

This is the narrative of a Brazilian PhD candidate during the first four months of COVID‐19 in Brazil. Her trajectory and feelings are expressed in evocative autoethnographic format, juxtaposed with the main feminist debates and concerns taking place in Brazil during the pandemic. As scenario, an unprecedented worldwide sanitary crisis and local economic, political and social crises, challenging activists, feminists and the researcher herself in posing new questions to understand the world, her country and herself during/after crises. Her own feminist lenses cannot read ‘New Normal’ comfortably.     

Families in the Time of the Pandemic: Breakdown or Breakthrough?

The COVID‐19 pandemic has taken a toll on all individuals and their families around the world. Some suffer more adversely than others depending on their unique developmental needs, resources, and resilience. However, instead of breaking down, many families and therapists have hunkered down to cope with this ‘wicked’ situation as it continues to evolve. This article examines the unique challenges and opportunities of COVID‐19 for families at different life developmental stages, as well as the challenges and opportunities for systemic therapists as they venture into unfamiliar territory. Through a case example and by integrating recent literature related to this pandemic, we apply three key and interconnected systemic themes (unsafe uncertainty, family life cycle, and social diversity) to discuss the challenges and opportunities for families and therapists, respectively. We are optimistic that there are many possibilities as families and therapists draw on, and often reinvent, currently available resources to navigate their course in this pandemic. We also find that while the pandemic continues to present unsafe and uncertain situations, there are new ways of being and behaving, especially when families and professionals work together collaboratively. Despite formidable challenges, there are many opportunities, both within families and communities that cut through different social contexts related to family, culture, economics, and even politics. Families and therapists could endure better when they are more cognisant of how and what these contexts may impact and offer them.     

A Hitchhiker's Guide to caring for an older person before and during coronavirus‐19

Coronavirus‐19 (COVID‐19) has reconfigured working lives with astonishing velocity. Older people have suffered the worst effects of the pandemic, with governments marginalizing or overlooking their needs. Women perform the majority of care for older people, often compromising their working lives and health. Yet in academic articles their voices are often filtered or aggregated in quantitative studies. Based on a weave of personal experiences and secondary research, the article traces a path through UK forms of care and shows how the inadequate response to COVID‐19 stemmed from existing policies embedded in health and social care. COVID‐19 has severed important informal care work, rendering the vulnerable yet more exposed and carers anxious and bereft. Longitudinal research capturing the trajectory of care from the perspective of older people and their carers would lead to improved support hence gender equality.     

A public health crisis in the university: Impact of crisis response strategies on universities’ transparency and post-crisis relationships during COVID 19 pandemic

During the COVID 19 pandemic, one of the most critical tasks of the university was to effectively communicate with students, faculty, and staff members. This study aims to explore perceived universities’ crisis response messages during the pandemic and examine the effectiveness of each response strategy on public relations outcomes. A survey with 346 university students in the U.S., results showed how defensive and accommodative response strategies differently affected PR outcomes. Accommodative strategies generated higher OPR and greater perceived transparency efforts among students, while several defensive strategies affected students’ negative evaluations on post-crisis OPR and perceived transparency of their universities. Such results revealed valuable insights that make significant contributions to theory and practices in university crisis communication and management, especially when dealing with public health crises that are seen as external locus of control.     

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.     

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: 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.