Retraining in Social Work for Arab Academic Women: Motivation and Integration into the Field

In recent decades, there has been an increased rate of higher education among Arab women in Israel that has been accompanied by an increase in their integration into various forms of employment. However, the employability options of academic Arab women graduates are limited due to the under-development of employment zones in Arab localities in the periphery of Israel. This policy has led to persistent deterioration in the quality of jobs and a high prevalence of underemployment. To examine how these women cope with underemployment, the present study focused on Arab academic women retraining in social work. This qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews with 27 graduate Arab women who have not found employment suitable for their original training. The article examined their motives to retrain in social work (intrinsic-extrinsic factors), learning process and integration into the field, their social-family context, and the way it determines their coping mechanism. The findings reveal their path of retraining in social work in their attempt to overcome barriers and factors such as culture, family, and employment opportunities that contribute to the selection of this coping mechanism that resulted in new employment trends among them and obtaining quality jobs.

The Influence of COVID-19 Lockdown on Women in the Academy in One Rural University in South Africa

The primary objective of this study was to examine, interrogate and establish the influence of COVID-19 lockdown on the well-being of women in the academy and the roles they play as university employees and family members. This study was premised within interpretivism paradigm, and life history; and diaristic approach was used to understand this phenomenon. Biographies and interviews qualitative techniques were used to collect data from six women in academia in one university in South Africa. The research findings identified the COVID-19 pandemic as a cause of anxiety and restlessness among academic women; the excessive workload and lack of time; difficulties in balancing home and work duties; a lack of access to proper resources to aid job duties and research; and a lack of online resources-data, network access and Blackboard. This study recommended adequate online facilities and the design of the virtual mental wellness programmes to help academic women.

Asking Big: Creating a Culture of Support for Academic Mothers’ Advocating in Times of Crisis

This essay brings into focus institutional inequities faced by academic parents that stem from the systematic socialization of women to remain silent about their professional and personal needs under ideal circumstances and even more so in times of crisis. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic’s changing higher education policies daily, we argue there has never been a better time for us to ask for more when academic women, especially those identifying as mothers, are suffering professionally and personally. We trace key cultural insights and recent research regarding how the global pandemic has increased the strain that academic mothers feel, particularly BIPOC mothers, before calling on readers to reclaim their right to advocate on behalf of their and their families’ needs. We conclude by defining the culture of asking we seek to foster at our own institution and make recommendations for how readers might “ask big” at their home institutions.

Atrapadas en casa: maternidad(es), ciencia y COVID-19

This text gives account of the tensions and contradictions emerging from the need to respond to motherhood and respond to the demands of the scientific activity, at a time when the boundaries between the domestic-family and the work public are being erased, leaving to know how women keep think of themselves and we continue to think of ourselves as exclusively responsible for care, as motherhood continues to be central for the configuration female identities. The text counts with the analysis of comments on informative websites, as well as information provided by a netnography made on Facebook, based on the comments of by academic women make and which express the discomforts about the double, or triple burden, they have to perform, indoors. The analysis allows to highlight the existence of an ideal traditional model of motherhood, which is in tension with autonomous and independent female professional identities that, given the confinement derived from the pandemic, becomes more visible, making also more evident the strategies and the difficulties in terms of professional and personal times.

Motherscholar

Academic women leaders are teaching, conducting research, running departments, making policies, and overseeing their faculty and students, all while taking responsibility for their own homes, families, and children, and doing it all under one roof. Motherscholars (i.e., academic mothers who accepted administrative and/or leadership positions in higher education) have a particular story to tell during this pandemic. This chapter will highlight the issues confronting these MotherLeaders and illustrate how institutional gender inequities and societally imposed responsibilities in the home, and with children, impact women's ability to lead in colleges and universities during the COVID-19 pandemic.