ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a migration of workforces to work from home. A key issue for academics was the implications for the ability to carve out ‘thinking time’ to engage in what we term sustained knowledge work, the type of work essential for producing research. We administered an employee survey to academics from seven Australian and seven Canadian Universities, receiving over 3000 responses. We report on both quantitative and qualitative findings from the survey, with a particular emphasis on the latter. The two countries displayed broadly similar patterns in responses, but these patterns were gendered in specific ways. We distinguished between episodic and sustained knowledge work and found the shift of the location for sustained knowledge work from the workplace to the home affected academics unevenly, with disproportionate negative impacts on women. There are implications for all knowledge workers: while gendered, domestic norms continue to exist, the sustained knowledge work that is critical to career advancement can become especially problematic for women knowledge workers.

摘要

COVID-19 大流行引发了劳动力迁移到在家工作的趋势。学术界的一个关键问题是对开辟“思考时间”以从事我们所说的持续知识工作的能力的影响，这种工作类型对于开展研究至关重要。我们对来自七所澳大利亚和七所加拿大大学的学者进行了员工调查，收到了 3000 多份回复。我们报告调查的定量和定性结果，特别强调后者。这两个国家的反应模式大体相似，但这些模式以特定的方式区分了性别。我们区分了间歇性知识工作和持续性知识工作，发现持续性知识工作的地点从工作场所转移到家庭对学者的影响不均衡，对女性造成不成比例的负面影响。这对所有知识工作者都有影响：虽然性别化的国内规范继续存在，但对职业发展至关重要的持续知识工作对女性知识工作者来说尤其成问题。