IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v28y2021is2p587-596.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Privileged yet vulnerable: Shared memories of a deeply gendered lockdown

Author

Listed:
  • Irene Ryan
  • Fiona Hurd
  • Cassandra Mudgway
  • Barbara Myers

Abstract

The centrality of personal experience plays a pivotal role in feminist scholarship. We draw on the feminist inspired collaborative inquiry research method, memory‐work, to bring to the fore our experiences of living and working in lockdown, a Government enforced policy response to the global Covid‐19 pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. Memory‐work provided the conduit for us to work collaboratively with our experiences and make sense of the whirlwind we lived through. Our exploration is set against the backdrop of the challenges of the conservatism endemic in the neoliberal pathway taken in NZ and its transmission into the university sector. Through our collective editing of each account generated by the phrase “her murky boundaries of lockdown” two interconnected themes came to the fore in various guises: restricted and vulnerable. Using á collective “she” and “her,” we reconstruct and analyze the nuances of our shared experiences revealing layers of gendered vulnerability paradoxically intertwined with privilege at this unprecedented time. We conclude by arguing that lockdown exacerbated already existing divisions reinforcing how female, feminist, and academic remain an uncomfortable fit.

Suggested Citation

  • Irene Ryan & Fiona Hurd & Cassandra Mudgway & Barbara Myers, 2021. "Privileged yet vulnerable: Shared memories of a deeply gendered lockdown," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 587-596, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:s2:p:587-596
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12682
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12682
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.12682?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kim Toffoletti & Karen Starr, 2016. "Women Academics and Work–Life Balance: Gendered Discourses of Work and Care," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(5), pages 489-504, September.
    2. Banu Özkazanç‐Pan & Alison Pullen, 2020. "Gendered labour and work, even in pandemic times," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(5), pages 675-676, September.
    3. Ryan, Irene, 2009. "Profitable margins: The story behind ‘our stories’," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(5), pages 611-624, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heidi Reed, 2024. "“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 435-455, March.
    2. Leonel Prieto & Md Farid Talukder, 2023. "Resilient Agility: A Necessary Condition for Employee and Organizational Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-24, January.
    3. Heidi Reed, 2023. "“When money is more valuable than people…”: The pandemic as a call for business to care," Post-Print hal-04461114, HAL.
    4. Rafia Faiz, 2023. "My first Little Black Dress: A Muslim immigrant woman academic's reflection on entanglement of esthetic labor and emotional labor at a White dinner," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 1142-1147, May.
    5. Stefan Jestl & Maryna Tverdostup, 2024. "The Path Through: Early COVID-19 Job Loss and Labour Market Trajectories in Austria," wiiw Working Papers 246, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    6. Eva O. L. Lantsoght, 2025. "Improving Work–Life Balance in Academia After COVID-19 Using Inclusive Practices," Societies, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-27, August.
    7. Pamela Agata Suzanne & Lea Katharina Reiss, 2024. "The power of sharing with support: Exploring the process and roles involved in sharing vulnerability in solidarity," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 2180-2203, September.
    8. Sara Ashencaen Crabtree & Chris Shiel, 2019. "“Playing Mother†: Channeled Careers and the Construction of Gender in Academia," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(3), pages 21582440198, September.
    9. Isabela Blasi Valduga & Mauricio Andrade De Lima & Brenda Caroline Geraldo Castro & Paulo Guilherme Fuchs & Wellyngton Silva de Amorim & José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra, 2023. "A Balanced Scorecard Proposal for Gender Equality and Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-26, September.
    10. Erin Percival Carter, 2024. "Power and the perception of pregnancy in the academy," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 1951-1975, September.
    11. Shradha Kundra & Naman Sreen & Rohit Dwivedi, 2023. "Impact of Work from Home and Family Support on Indian Women’s Work Productivity During COVID-19," Vikalpa: The Journal for Decision Makers, , vol. 48(1), pages 39-53, March.
    12. Lakshmi Balachandran Nair, 2024. "Mrs. Dalloway and the Shecession: The Interconnectedness and Intersectionalities of Care Ethics and Social Time During the Pandemic," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 194(1), pages 1-18, September.
    13. Anke Strauβ & Ilaria Boncori, 2020. "Foreign women in academia: Double‐strangers between productivity, marginalization and resistance," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(6), pages 1004-1019, November.
    14. Dorothea Bowyer & Milissa Deitz & Anne Jamison & Chloe E. Taylor & Erika Gyengesi & Jaime Ross & Hollie Hammond & Anita Eseosa Ogbeide & Tinashe Dune, 2022. "Academic mothers, professional identity and COVID‐19: Feminist reflections on career cycles, progression and practice," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 309-341, January.
    15. Shreemathi S. Mayya & Maxie Martis & Lena Ashok & Ashma Dorothy Monteiro & Sureshramana Mayya, 2021. "Work-Life Balance and Gender Differences: A Study of College and University Teachers From Karnataka," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.
    16. Omar Manky & Sergio Saravia, 2022. "From pure academics to transformative scholars? The crisis of the “ideal academic” in a Peruvian university," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 971-987, July.
    17. Emily Yarrow & Julie Davies, 2024. "A typology of sexism in contemporary business schools: Belligerent, benevolent, ambivalent, and oblivious sexism," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(5), pages 2019-2039, September.
    18. Angelo Benozzo & Mirka Koro & Anani Vasquez & Mariia Vitrukh & Pietro Barbetta & Charlton Long, 2022. "A femin… manifesto: Academic ecologies of care and cure during a global health pandemic," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 1236-1258, July.
    19. Maryna Tverdostup, 2021. "Gender Gaps in Employment, Wages, and Work Hours: Assessment of COVID-19 Implications," wiiw Working Papers 202, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    20. Tobias Reisberger & Philip Reisberger & Lukáš Copuš & Peter Madzík & Lukáš Falát, 2025. "The Linkage Between Digital Transformation and Organizational Culture: Novel Machine Learning Literature Review Based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(1), pages 2082-2118, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:28:y:2021:i:s2:p:587-596. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.