Women's History Seminar
Institute of Historical Research
University of London
Friday, 16th October 2020, 17.15-7pm
Online via Zoom (see URL below to register)
Roundtable:
Academia, Labour, and Care Work in the Context of the Pandemic
The seminar will be a discussion springing from the recent online essay of Sarah Crook in Women’s History Review: ‘Parenting during the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020: Academia, Labour and Care Work’, which everyone should read before the seminar . It is available online here.
Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic instigated fundamental challenges and changes to parents’ working lives in Britain. This viewpoint article reflects upon the experience of balancing childrearing responsibilities with academic work across the Spring and Summer of 2020. It positions the removal of formal and informal childcare networks within the history of feminist demands around childcare and sets it against the background of the recent history of women and reproduction within Higher Education in Britain. Drawing upon feminist literature, personal experience, academic parents’ testimony and emerging studies of the gendered effects of the crisis, the article explores some of the critical challenges that balancing childcare and academic work presented and offers some preliminary reflections on the experience of the concurrent ‘double shift’ the lockdown engendered.
Discussants will include Sarah Knott (Indiana) and Margot Finn (RHS/UCL).
Attendees may find it useful to also read the Royal Historical Society’s recent reports on Equality in UK History Departments and Teaching at University level. They can be found here.
