Academia During the Time of COVID-19: Examining the Voices of Untenured Female Professors in STEM

Abstract

This paper highlighted the diverse voices of 84 female-identifying professors in STEM fields who responded to a series of open-ended questions regarding work, family, and tenure experiences in the context of the current global pandemic. The current paper is part of a longitudinal study of the vocational experiences of tenure-track women in STEM that has examined the “leaky pipeline” in women’s academic careers. Consensual Qualitative Research-Modified (CQR-M; ) was implemented to analyze the data. The findings suggested that participants perceived the precarious balance between work and family to have increased in difficulty in the face of COVID-19. Among untenured female faculty with children, an added layer of challenge was noted related to loss of childcare in the wake of the pandemic. The pre-existing, pervasive barriers (i.e., institutional, systemic, and psychological) were further exacerbated by familial barriers for female STEM faculty seeking tenure during COVID-19. Overall, the results indicated missed opportunities within higher education to implement supportive policies for untenured female faculty in STEM. Clinical implications, future research directions, and social advocacy interventions in the context of COVID-19 are discussed.

“I Need A Break or I Might Quit”: STEM Academics’ Pandemic Experiences

“…For example, experiences of sexism and racism within academic institutions evoke a lack of safety in work environments and create barriers to the career accomplishments necessary for tenure and promotion (e.g., Domingo et al, 2022;Gregor et al, 2022;Ysseldyk et al, 2019). Previous qualitative research with this population also highlighted exacerbated marginalization across the work-family interface, as work and family roles interfere with each other to the detriment of both domains (Dunn et al, 2022). For instance, the unpaid nature of various caregiving roles (which, for many women, increased during the pandemic; Kasymova et al, 2021) may be perceived as an economic constraint that makes maintaining decent work in academia more difficult.…”

“…Women mentors and support from colleagues generally provide important sources of support for faculty (Ysseldyk et al, 2019). For women faculty in STEM, mentor and colleague support offers valuable emotional care and assistance for work-related tasks (Gregor et al, 2022), and long-lasting mentoring relationships with other women may provide a supportive space to discuss work-family balance and experiences of sexism (Dunn et al, 2022). Further, institutional support for work-life balance and having a family has been found to predict job satisfaction and workplace belonging (Moors et al, 2014), as well as career aspirations for STEM women faculty (Gregor et al, 2021).…”

“…For postsecondary women faculty in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), gender inequality and workplace discrimination has been present for years (McCutcheon & Morrison, 2018); moreover, women have been disproportionately impacted by the complications of COVID-19 (e.g., assignment of service work to junior women faculty and increased childcare demands), further disadvantaging them in the workforce (Gabster et al, 2020). These workload changes resulted in reduced time for research (Pereira, 2021), reflected in declining productivity metrics for women STEM faculty in general, and particularly those with young children (Dunn et al, 2022). This places untenured women's academic careers at risk, considering the importance of research productivity for tenure and promotion.…”

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This research highlights the voices of 103 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) women in academia who responded to a series of openended questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their work and tenure. The current study also sought to compare these responses to similar questions that were collected a year prior (n = 84) during the earliest months of the pandemic (Dunn et al, 2022). Consensual qualitative research-modified (CQR-M; Spangler et al, 2011) was utilized to analyze the data.

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Plugging the Leaky Pipeline:A Qualitative Investigation of Untenured Female Faculty in STEM

“…First, the current study utilizes an innovative qualitative methodology that allows for a discovery-oriented examination of a large sample. To our knowledge, this methodology has only been used once before to examine pre-tenure women in STEM (Dunn et al, 2022). Second, the current study includes pre-tenure, tenure-track female-identifying faculty, which is a critical developmental period for academics (Goulden et al, 2011), as attrition and tenure denial are of the upmost concern.…”