How COVID Reconfigured Family Relationships: Explaining the Work of Academic Women Through the Lens of Complexity Theory

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Fourteen
  In Roundtable Session: Complexity Theories Roundtable (Table 11)

Abstract

Since 2020, there has been a flurry of research on the impacts of COVID-19 on families and academic parents. However, little is known about how the pandemic reshaped academic women's family lives and how this influenced their teaching, research, and inner selves. This innovative study of South African university-based female academics from 2020 to 2021 investigates how COVID restructured family lives in relation to children, partners, elderly parents, and outside support (domestic workers, gardeners, etc.), and what this meant for their academic work. A complexity paradigm is used as the framework, and it provides a relevant approach by recognising that elements interacting in a system result in emergent outcomes that are more complex than can be predicted at the outset.

Authors

• Cyrill Agnes Walters, Stellenbosch University
  Presenting Author

• Jonathan David Jansen, Stellenbosch University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Samantha Kriger, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Armand Bam, Stellenbosch University
  Non-Presenting Author