The Impact of COVID-19 on Maternal Research Careers: Advancing Equity in Social Work Research

Overview: Women have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing gender-based disparities in funding, research productivity, and publication have been exacerbated for women in academic careers. This panel will bring together maternal mental health and feminist scholars to lead a discussion of this challenge facing social work research and education.Proposal text: The often-invisible labor of caregiving, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women, has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this has been seen broadly in record numbers of women leaving the workforce in higher percentages than men (Heggeness et al., 2020) and the impact of pandemic related job losses disproportionately impacting sectors with high proportions of female employees (Alon, Doepke, Olmstead-Rumsey, Tertilt, 2020). The transition to hybrid and remote learning and reduction of services and closures of childcare centers, before and after school programs, and other social agencies and systems that provide support and care for children, people with disabilities, and older adults has also disproportionately impacted mothers. Mothers have reduced paid work hours 4 to 5 times more than fathers while concurrently maternal mental health has declined substantially (Kitchener, 2020, Davenport et al, 2020).

Researchers and academic faculty have not been spared this pandemic stress. Faculty, particularly women, have faced both increased demands and stress as they attempt to balance teaching, research and service responsibilities with personal and family obligations. Gender-based disparities in research productivity and publication have been well documented (Amano-Patiño, Faraglia, Giannitsarou, & Hasna, 2020, Anderson, Nielsen, Simone, Lewiss, & Jagsi, 2021; Kitchener, 2021). Following the general trend, mothers in the academy have been disproportionately disadvantaged (Bell & Fong, 2021; Flaherty, 2020; Gewin, 2020), particularly mothers of young children. Yet social work, a discipline that purports to champion equity and justice, has been largely silent on this issue. The outsized impact of the pandemic on maternal research careers (especially those of single mothers, mothers who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and contingent faculty) illuminates preexisting tensions and the inadequacy of supports available at many schools of social work that predate the pandemic.

This panel will bring together a diverse group of maternal and infant mental health and feminist scholars, many who are mothers themselves, at various stages of their careers. It will focus on institutional experiences, practices and policies in social work research and academia that assist or constrain mothers who are researchers in their pursuit of scholarship, research, promotion. Speakers will highlight the challenges of research and mentoring during the pandemic, as well as the impact and fragility of systems, institutional supports and policies that fail to support a diversity of perspectives in social work research while reinforcing patriarchal norms and power structures.

The panel discussion will be designed to yield actionable strategies that schools of social work and other social work research focused institutions can utilize to advocate for institutional support, equity, and justice for mothers during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Panelists will share and suggest specific recommendations initiated across multiple Universities and Schools which seek to mitigate short and long-term impacts and focus attention on post-pandemic equity and justice.