Academic mothers, professional identity and COVID-19: Feminist reflections on career cycles, progression and practice

Dorothea Bowyer; Milissa Deitz; Anne Jamison; Chloe E Taylor; Erika Gyengesi; Jaime Ross; Hollie Hammond; Anita Eseosa Ogbeide; Tinashe Dune

doi:10.1111/gwao.12750

Academic mothers, professional identity and COVID-19: Feminist reflections on career cycles, progression and practice

Gend Work Organ. 2022 Jan;29(1):309-341. doi: 10.1111/gwao.12750. Epub 2021 Sep 19.

Authors

Dorothea Bowyer¹, Milissa Deitz², Anne Jamison², Chloe E Taylor³, Erika Gyengesi⁴, Jaime Ross², Hollie Hammond⁵, Anita Eseosa Ogbeide³, Tinashe Dune³

Affiliations

¹ School of Business Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.
² School of Humanities and Communication Arts Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.
³ School of Health Sciences Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.
⁴ School of Medicine Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.
⁵ School of Psychology Western Sydney University Penrith New South Wales Australia.

Abstract

Based on a collection of auto-ethnographic narratives that reflect our experiences as academic mothers at an Australian university, this paper seeks to illustrate the impact of COVID-19 on our career cycles in order to explore alternative feminist models of progression and practice in Higher Education. Collectively, we span multiple disciplines, parenting profiles, and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Our narratives (initiated in 2019) explicate four focal points in our careers as a foundation for analyzing self-definitions of professional identity: pre- and post-maternity career break; and pre- and post-COVID-19 career. We have modeled this research on a collective feminist research practice that is generative and empowering in terms of self-reflective models of collaborative research. Considering this practice and these narratives, we argue for a de-centering of masculinized career cycle patterns and progression pathways both now and beyond COVID-19. This represents both a challenge to neo-liberal norms of academic productivity, as well as a call to radically enhance institutional gender equality policies and practice.

Keywords: COVID‐19; academia; career progression; feminist theory; motherhood; professional identity.