Understanding Gender Disparities in Caregiving, Stress, and Perceptions of Institutional Support among Faculty during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sarah Thébaud (), Charlotte Hoppen, Jennifer David and Eileen Boris
Additional contact information
Sarah Thébaud: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Charlotte Hoppen: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Jennifer David: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
Eileen Boris: Department of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: The loss of the care infrastructure that occurred during the COVID-19 crisis exposed society’s continued reliance on women and mothers as default caregivers. But less is known about how this crisis produced gendered mental health outcomes, especially in occupations characterized by intensive work cultures such as academia. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative responses from a May 2021 campus-wide survey of faculty at a large research university in the United States, we explore gendered patterns in faculty caregivers’ time use, stress, and perceptions of institutional support. Our findings demonstrate that childcare responsibilities were not merely more substantial for women than men in terms of hours, but they were also qualitatively different, with women’s hours being more unpredictable, interruptive, and mentally and emotionally demanding. We also show that the pandemic took a higher toll on women faculty’s mental health compared to men’s. This gap in mental health emerged not merely because women were spending more time caregiving on average, but also because the university’s policies did not effectively support the most strained caregivers. This study contributes empirical evidence to research on academic caregivers during the pandemic and to work demonstrating how (1) gendered caregiving dynamics shape mental health and remote work experiences and (2) the reliance on individual solutions to balancing work and family has failed even relatively privileged workers.

Keywords: caregiving; COVID-19; gender; academia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/4/181/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/4/181/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:13:y:2024:i:4:p:181-:d:1361797

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().