{"id":24186,"date":"2020-07-20T03:14:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T10:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=24186"},"modified":"2022-07-19T14:51:30","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T21:51:30","slug":"caregivers-we-see-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/?p=24186","title":{"rendered":"Caregivers, we see you."},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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My son ran into my Zoom room last week and yelled, \u201cFart! Poop!\u201d\u00a0 It was no big deal, but it is part of the reality that we who are caregivers constantly manage.\u00a0 In truth, he needed my attention.\u00a0 He has been home since March 13\u2014over four months\u2014playing way too much Fortnite, watching a billion seasons of\u00a0Naruto<\/em>, and wishing he could play with his friends.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m his friend.\u00a0 We have a family poker night and we play Zoom pictionary with his grandparents.\u00a0 But we\u2019re no substitute for other 11-year-old kids, and the computer is certainly no substitute for school or summer camp.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I\u2019m trying to get a paper done this week.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t started learning how to teach online, even though that\u2019s what I\u2019ll be doing in a little over a month.\u00a0 I have another abstract due in two days and a chapter expected before the end of summer.\u00a0 Three students just asked me to read their proposals, and one of my students needs help as she struggles with her mental health.\u00a0 My other service obligations have me designing web pages, sending emails, assessing award packages, and guiding a mentoring group.\u00a0 This is all recognizable, right?\u00a0 It\u2019s our job.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So what\u2019s gonna give?\u00a0 My paper?\u00a0 My son\u2019s math ability?\u00a0 Our collective sanity?\u00a0 Has anybody eaten a vegetable this week?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The truth is, as a caregiver I have it easy.\u00a0 My children are old enough to pursue their own interests for considerable periods each day without my intervention, and I have a wildly supportive partner.\u00a0 And tenure.\u00a0 Lots of faculty members have kids who are younger and need much more direct (read: constant) care.\u00a0 And because of the overlapping life-stage demands of family and academia, which sociologists call \u201cgreedy institutions,\u201d those faculty members with young children are likely also either pre-tenure or in precarious contract or part-time positions. Other faculty members are \u201csandwiched\u201d between caring for children and caring for aging parents, which is challenging even when nobody is at risk of contracting a deadly viral infection at the grocery store.\u00a0These people are tired. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

COVID-19 has provided yet another opportunity for us in the US to grapple with the fact that people need care.\u00a0 Children need care, and it is women in families who disproportionately provide it.\u00a0 People with illnesses need care, and it is women in health occupations who disproportionately provide it.\u00a0 Parents, partners, neighbors, cousins, students, friends \u2014 they all need care.\u00a0 Cisgender and trans women who head their families solo or are in straight relationships bear the brunt of this care work.\u00a0 This gendered pattern of care, I know from both study and experience, is felt acutely by women in academia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One of the actions the George Washington University Faculty Association, GWUFA, has taken to support caregivers in our ranks is to circulate\u00a0a petition<\/a>\u00a0demanding that faculty be able to choose for themselves\u2014not beg the administration\u2014whether they will teach in-person or online this fall.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Looking more broadly across the university, GWUFA has also asked faculty\u2014especially including those with tenure and those in administration\u2014to\u00a0block any layoffs<\/a>\u00a0of workers anywhere in the university.\u00a0 This includes the housekeepers who are charged with keeping classrooms and offices sanitary, IT personnel who keep our technology working, and the staff who often serve on the frontlines of each office on campus.\u00a0 Employees who have caregiving responsibilities are in a particularly precarious position when their employer claims\u2014erroneously<\/a>\u2014that\u00a0layoffs are necessary here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

GWUFA also has its ear to the ground seeking resources to directly address the gendered inequities that can arise from our university\u2019s failure to fully integrate workers\u2019 caregiving responsibilities into our organizational plans.\u00a0 One quick no-brainer:\u00a0 We should be\u00a0paid for learning how to teach online<\/a>!\u00a0 It\u2019s work, and we\u2019re all doing it, for free, even though the caregivers we need to hire so we can do it are not free.\u00a0 On issues of productivity, we applaud the university for granting year-long extensions to faculty members\u2019 tenure clocks if needed, but we continue to be discouraged by the administration\u2019s\u00a0failure to grant equivalent protections to contract faculty members<\/a>.\u00a0 We support the Aspire Alliance\u2019s recent call to\u00a0acknowledge and affirm a work slow-down<\/a>\u00a0while we grapple with the pandemic, and to\u00a0thoughtfully weigh<\/a>\u00a0the levels of productivity among those with and without caregiving responsibilities.\u00a0 Specific people, such as\u00a0Pandemic Response Faculty Fellows<\/a>, should be appointed (and rewarded) for attending to the potentially disproportionate gender, race, and caregiving impacts of any actions the administration takes during this period.\u00a0 We also recommend that GW\u00a0value and honor the extraordinary forms of service<\/a>\u00a0our faculty are providing right now, and to use this as an opportunity to acknowledge and reward the extra burden of service that faculty of color and white women, in both tenured and non-tenure-track positions, regularly over-provide for the university.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And finally, let\u2019s not\u00a0pretend to be \u201cstrong,<\/a>\u201d either as individuals or as a university.\u00a0 What we\u2019re going through is hard, and \u201cstrength\u201d does not prevent COVID-19 from spreading through ventilation systems, nor does it play tic-tac-toe with my son while I\u2019m supposed to be in a HyFlex webinar.\u00a0 It is wisdom and clarity we need to integrate our needs as human beings with our scholarly responsibilities, and a university should be well-positioned to provide those.\u00a0 Until we see some semblance of those characteristics from GW\u2019s leadership, GWUFA would like to make sure that all the caregivers in our community know:\u00a0 We see you, and we are fighting with and for you.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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(Image Credit: CNN<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My son ran into my Zoom room last week and yelled, \u201cFart! Poop!\u201d\u00a0 It was no big deal, but it is part of the reality that we who are caregivers constantly manage.\u00a0 In truth, he needed my attention.\u00a0 He has been home since March 13\u2014over four months\u2014playing way too much Fortnite, watching a billion seasons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[276,6542,4841],"class_list":["post-24186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-caregivers","tag-gwufa","tag-ivy-ken","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26357,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24186\/revisions\/26357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womeninandbeyond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}