The Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d’anthropologie recognizes disproportionate impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) being experienced by members of our community who already suffer most from existing inequities in academia. The rapid transition to online instruction and the loss of access to research opportunities and locations, as well as associated funding, has caused significant stress for many of us. This is particularly the case for early career scholars, the precariously employed, and members of underrepresented groups. There have been well-documented transitions in the distribution of household labour, childcare, eldercare, and other responsibilities, which often severely reduce the time available to some members, especially women, to conduct academic work (Malisch et al. 2020). This situation is resulting in reports of a publication decline for women (Flaherty 2020; Viglione 2020). It is but one example of how Covid-19 can exacerbate existing privileges and inequalities in academia. We are concerned that women and other individuals are now facing additional forms of systemic oppression and/or marginalization, and bearing a great burden under Covid-19. We acknowledge that this additional work and stress could adversely affect evaluations of their merit, as well as tenure and promotion processes and outcomes. For this reason, we encourage committees to consider the very real and uneven impacts of Covid-19 on women’s career advancement in higher education, particularly with respect to intersectional identities and known structural impediments and biases with respect to career progression. We recommend that committee members review their department’s and/or college’s tenure and promotion criteria, consulting recommendations and examples of actionable supportive responses to the pandemic (e.g. Malisch et al. 2020), as they continue to work towards equity and diversity in their places of work. We encourage working to find creative solutions to support community members during this time, and to alleviate non-urgent responsibilities when possible. Recognizing context and dynamism in cultures and communities is key to our research and teaching, and our members deserve the same considerations.

Citations

Amano-Patiño,N., E. Faraglia, C. Giannitsarou, Z. Hasna. 2020. Who is doing new research in the time of COVID-19? Not the female economists. https://voxeu.org/article/who-doing-newresearch-time-covid-19-not-female-economists.

Flaherty, C. 2020. No room of one’s own. (April 21, 2020). https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/04/21/early-journal-submission-data-suggestcovid-19-tanking-womens-research-productivity.

Malisch, J.L., Harris, B.N., Sherrer, S.M., Lewis, K.A., Shepherd, S.L., McCarthy, P.C., Spott, J.L., Karam, E.P., Moustaid-Moussa, N., Calarco, J.M. and Ramalingam, L., 2020. Opinion: In the wake of COVID-19, academia needs new solutions to ensure gender equity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(27), pp.15378-15381.

Viglione, G., 2020. Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here’s what the data say. Nature, 581(7809), pp.365-366.