The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women working in higher education

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 many organisations, including universities, requested employees to work remotely. Subsequently the education sector saw a rapid move away from classroom-based pedagogies towards distance learning (Aldossari and Chaudhry, 2021). It has been recognised that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on men and women is different (Yildirim and Eslen-Ziya, 2020). This is no different in Higher Education. With the closure of schools and pre-schools, women with children were faced with a sudden increase in childcare responsibilities and household labour (Yildirim and Eslen-Ziya, 2020). Domestic roles and responsibilities appear to become less defined, the boundary between home and work became increasingly blurred (Alon et al., 2020; Cui et al., 2020; Yildirim and Eslen-Ziya, 2020). Household living spaces were transformed into places of learning, childcare and work (Clark et al., 2020). There are indications that divisions widened during the COVID-19 pandemic (Guatimosim, 2020; Minello, 2020).