This article explores the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the productivity of male and female academics and whether the ongoing health crisis will exacerbate further the existing gender gap in academia in both the short and long terms. We present early evidence of the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on women’s research productivity using online survey data supplemented by interview data with regional and international female political scientists. The interviews and survey findings reveal gender disparities in perceived research productivity and service workloads during the pandemic. The results also shed initial light on the pandemic’s impact on the research productivity of academics who are parents, especially among women.

In this paper, I provide preliminary answers to two main questions, namely: How did the politics of disappointment unfold among female activists after the 2011 Egyptian uprising and specifically under the current regime? And what were the effects of the strong sense of emotional disappointment on women’s activism and collective action? The study is situated within the literature on emotions and contentious politics. Utilizing the rich theoretical tools found in the literature, I argue that disappointment did not mark the end of politics and activism among women’s groups in Egypt. The data for this paper was gathered from semi-structured interviews with female activists, protestors, and leaders of women’s rights groups. The data gathered was analyzed within the prism of critical discourse analysis in an attempt to empirically investigate how activists move both forward and backward as they navigate their own emotions in addition to a crippling political system. It is true that the situation is complicated and activism is restricted in Egypt, however, the essence of this research is ignited by participants’ affirmation that their experience in the uprising has changed them, and that “things cannot go back to the old days,” notwithstanding their disappointment over the turn of events. A focus on hope and disappointment places the experiences of activists squarely in our analysis. It allows researchers to reclaim the voices of female activists in explaining the challenges and opportunities that developed post the uprising and how these developments influenced and shaped their experience, movement, and mobilization.

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