Time is flying: discussing time in academia and science after covid-19

Abstract

This paper examines the advantages, difficulties and challenges of working from home with digital communication as perceived and experienced by junior women researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two hypotheses are discussed: i) with the pandemics, higher education institutions and research centers may sponsor and support the intensification of working time at home, incorporating the increasing use of digital means; ii) within this process of intense valuation of home spaces and times, young academic women might have to deal with increasing levels of time compression as a result of the complex combination of different factors that still ascribe them to family and household temporalities; as well as with decreases in academic productivity that can affect their ability to continue and persist in academia. In order to tackle these two main ideas, the authors will introduce some main points concerning the relationship between time structures in academia and the increasing capability of digital means of communication to provide new types of constraints, new time valuations and new patterns of using and perceiving time which continue to produce differences and inequalities of gender. Empirically, the paper draws on qualitative and quantitative data provided by a survey with 108 young academic women, from several scientific fields focusing on the experience of working at home with digital communications during the pandemic. The results of this research, together with the theoretical contributions on gender time, and academy allow authors to put forward a few recommendations to higher education institutions for rethinking the effects that pandemic-related implications have on time availability, and young academic women’s productivity.