Anna Madeleine Ayeh
Contact:
Anna-Madeleine.Ayeh@uni-bayreuth.de
Project:
"Parents in Crisis – Work, Care, and Inequality at the University of Bayreuth during the Covid 19-Pandemic"
Outline:
The PhD project Parents in Crisis – Work, Care, and Inequality at the University of Bayreuth during the Covid 19-Pandemic investigates the relations between (care) work and social inequality during a historical moment of crisis: the Covid-19 pandemic. To this end, the project focuses on a single institution with its heterogeneous groups of affiliates: the University of Bayreuth (UBT), consisting of a variety of members of different status groups—academic staff, non-academic staff, and students. Each of these groups is further stratified by a multitude of axes of differentiation, such as (academic) age/career stage, gender, class, financing background, and employment security. Focusing on those UBT affiliates with parental care responsibilities, the picture is further complexified by the availability of a care support network in the face of the pandemic-induced lapse in institutional childcare, the family-friendliness of employers, and the financial security of the household.
Working with these prerequisites of a highly differentiated group of UBT members, the project traces the premise that the pandemic exacerbated existing and produced new social inequalities through transformed care practices and regimes. Theoretically framing inequality as differentiations that distribute resources (e.g., money, time, contracts) unevenly, this project analyses parenting UBT members’ assessments of their work and care situation. It further takes the institutional framework into consideration, looking at how inequality is being un/done via categorizing people into providers and receivers of care—by the university’s leadership, by social policy regulations and through childcare institutions alike.