What COVID-19 could mean for the future of work from home: The provocations of three women in the academy

The COVID-19 pandemic saw academic labor rapidly shift into domestic spaces at the same time as households were locked down. In this article, we offer an exploration of our own experiences of working from home as women and mothers in the academy. Inspired by feminist approaches to knowledge production and self-reflection, we each developed a personal reflective narrative guided by three key questions centered on our experiences of working from home pre- and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what this may mean for the future of our work. We then collectively analyzed how our personal stories reflected different dimensions of the experience of working from home, and our fears and hopes for the future. We present three distilled themes from our collective experiences here with the aim of entering a dialog with others seeking to live feminist lives during this time, and beyond.

Automated summary

This article explores the experiences of women and mothers in academia working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through personal narratives and collective analysis, it highlights different dimensions of the work-from-home experience and discusses fears and hopes for the future.