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The Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (UC) has just released the results of the research project Pandemic and Academia at home - what effects on teaching, research and career? Study on changes in the higher education and research system, which aimed to determine the strategies of adaptation to teaching and research work under COVID-19, by institutions and by the different groups that make up the academic staff.

The results of the empirical study conducted as part of this project funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT, in line with the conclusions of other international studies, show that the transformations brought about by COVID-19 in teaching and research activities in Portugal have led to the emergence of new sources of inequalities (or have aggravated existing, but hidden or underestimated inequalities) between women and men, and between people with differentiated household composition.

The results also show that the responses given by institutions to the challenges imposed by the pandemic crisis were limited/insufficient in terms of cushioning its effects on the working conditions and performance of teaching and research staff. Higher education and research institutions assumed that the creation of remote working conditions was mainly an individual problem, paying little attention to the difficulties that each person who teaches and/or researches in them faced in accommodating professional and family responsibilities in the context of working from home. It should be noted that, for example, around 80% of the sample had no previous experience of teaching by virtual means, having abruptly started teaching remotely, without any pedagogical or even technical-scientific preparation. It also quickly became apparent that the generations of students - who were born in the so-called 'digital age' - were little prepared to replace the classroom with screens, due to a lack of self-regulation and motivation for learning, but also, in many cases, due to a lack of technological and logistical means in their homes to accompany the classes. 

The demands imposed by the pandemic situation and the various periods of confinement thus seem to have left teachers and students, more or less supported by their formal and informal support networks, to their fate or to the availability of material and immaterial resources (examples: office furniture, technological devices, computer programmes). Men described themselves as more capable of resolving the problems they face on their own and women tended to value more the support received from colleagues and family members. There was even more agreement among women that the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities among students that were not explained by economic factors.

The results point to the reinforcement of gender inequalities in the division of academic work during the pandemic period, with women assuming the greater share of effort associated with the increased material and emotional demands of teaching/learning and academic service during this period - constituting what literature identifies as "academic housework". Thus, 56,6% of women reported an increase in the time spent on attending to and monitoring students (in contrast to 45,8% of men) and on management tasks performed for the institutions during the pandemic crisis (47,7% versus 39,9%), activities which, despite being essential for the proper functioning of scientific organisations, are generally undervalued and invisible.

The study also highlights the impact of the increase in care/schooling tasks associated with maternity and paternity on the volume and organisation of time available for professional work. A particularly striking result highlights the weak position of academic staff with young children in terms of possibilities of dedicating time to professional work. For example, women and people with young children more frequently reported dissatisfaction regarding their scientific performance: 1 in 5 of women, compared to 1 in 6 of men, and 1 in 4 people with young children, compared to 1 in 5 people without children in their care). The contingencies associated with the pandemic containment measures have thus contributed to creating/reinforcing inequalities between people with and without children in their care in the possibilities of dedicating time to the professional/academic work sphere, in its various aspects.

The study also points to the greater severity of the pandemic on the scientific productivity of women, especially with young children, thus expressing a tendency to worsen the penalisation of motherhood in academia in the pandemic context.  

In the publication “Pandemia e Academia em Casa - efeitos no ensino, na investigação e na cidadania académica sob uma perspetiva de género” [Pandemic and Academia at Home - effects on teaching, research and academic citizenship from a gender perspective] (available online) the results of the project are presented in detail and summarised in four short videos, which can be found at the following links:

1. The Project and the institutional measures to tackle COVID-19
2. Adaptation of teaching and research during the pandemic crisis
3. Confine and perish? Impact of the pandemic crisis on scientific performance
4. The gendered division of academic and domestic labour during the pandemic

Finally, as a way of providing answers to the multiple challenges faced by the Academy in the wake of the pandemic crisis, and highlighted by the study, the “Policy Brief: Propostas para uma Academia mais Igualitária no Pós-COVID-19" [Policy Brief: Proposals for a more egalitarian Academy in Post-COVID-19] was produced, in which the implementation of a set of 30 measures is proposed, guided by the objective of promoting a more egalitarian Academy in the country

_Credits:

_{This study was based on a Mixed Research Plan, operationalised using desk-research, an electronic survey (applied in March/April 2021), which gave rise to 1,750 validated questionnaires, 4 focus group interviews, with a total of 31 participants, and 7 semi-structured interviews with representatives of entities relevant to the national higher education and scientific system. The information produced through these approaches was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistical techniques and thematic content analysis.}

_Team:

_{Virgínia Ferreira (Coordinator) - Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
Cristina C. Vieira - Researcher at the Adult Education and Community Intervention Research Centre of the University of Algarve and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Coimbra.
Mónica Lopes - Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.
Caynnã de Camargo Santos - Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra.
With the collaboration of: Luísa Winter Pereira (Fellow); Joana Teixeira Ferraz da Silva (Fellow); Florbela Vitória (Statistician).}