Gendered structural inequalities uncovered by the Covid-19 crisis in Academia: a study on working conditions, academic time usage and academic production in lockdowns and academic teleworking

Under the Horizon 2020 SUPERA (Supporting the Promotion of Equality in Research and Academia) Project, we aimed aim at exploring the differences in academic gender roles and their effects in partner institutions as part of the gender equality plans (GEPs) designed and planned by the project. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown periods dramatically interrupted the at that time formulation and negotiation processes of adopting GEPs, but simultaneously allowed us to deepen on the analysis of those gender roles in academia through the study of domestic, care and academic time usage. This focus on time usage resulted especially interesting to explore in the sort of forced “laboratory” of the first strict lockdown which made teleworking at home compulsory for all. Inspired on the literature on Women & Science and on gender structural change in higher education institutions, the first studies on differentiated gender roles in Academia (Castaño et al., 2019; Heijstra et al, 2017; Castaño, 2016; Rafnsdóttir & Heijstra, 2013), and the studies & methodology on time usage and gender differences and on women’s “mental load”, we designed a survey, targeted to faculty, on working academic conditions, academic time usage perception and academic performance during the Covid-19 lock-down that was conducted in June 2020 in the case of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). This study, which was also replicated with similar surveys in the University of Coimbra and the University of Cagliari, yield very clear results . Female faculty staff experienced a much harder time during the first lockdown period than their male colleagues. Significant differences were found in worse working conditions, and an increased time investment in both domestic/caring and academic work for female faculty during that time period. Also, a gendered academic time usage perception and gender roles -female academics spending more time in teaching and students’ attention and male academics in research, writing and publishing-, which were already reproduced before the pandemic highlighting the persistent structural inequalities at the university, were also significantly aggravated during lockdown. Consequently, the results clearly showed that these conditions and gender roles’ distribution in academia had direct consequences in academic performance and production. This paper will present the analysis and main results of this study on gender differences in academic time usage perception, and its main conclusions and recommendations, including the need of including the systematic study of the gender gap in academic time usage and roles played in Academia as part of an in-depth diagnosis which allows a real gender change and transformation of our HE institutions.