Through addressing female academics in three public universities in Egypt, we aim to find out the extent to which female academics prefer to continue working from home (WFH) as a means of fulfilling their job responsibilities and the determinants for accepting or rejecting that option. A qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 33 female academics from three public universities selected from among 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Moreover, our findings show that the preference to continue working from home varies across the addressed female academics, as they all differ in terms of workload, psychological well-being and the level of authority, control, and autonomy they have over their job. Furthermore, we identified familial commitments, availability of the information and infrastructure needed for work, cohesiveness when adopting WFH, and the extreme level of work from home as the four main determinants shaping the preferences of female academics in regard to working from home. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Continuing working from home in the academic context: what do female academics prefer?

Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) promise both emancipation and loss: freedom from workplace constraints also strips away protective work-life boundaries. To date, very little is understood about how flexible work shapes workplace imaginaries. Drawing on a sample of 44 managers from a Middle Eastern firm, we explore their evolving internal representations of the workplace and domestic space under (in)flexible conditions. Findings suggest that (in)flexible work arrangements fashion and amplify subjective, organizational, and gender-specific workplace imaginaries. While both genders in this study imagined the workplace as a site of ‘salvation,’ it became a haven from domestic labor for the women, while for the men it provided a crucial extension of individual managerial identity. Such distinctions provide glimpses into how (in)flexible scenarios influence and shape neoliberal workplace imaginaries that may sustain gendered career trajectories and the perpetuation of FWAs as a misleading panacea for individual freedom and happiness in the workplace. 

Toiling from the homespace, longing for the workplace: gendered workplace imaginaries in an (in)flexible work scenario


 Previous studies have highlighted how the academic peer review system has been marked by gender bias and nepotism. Panel meetings arranged by research funding organisations (RFOs), where reviewers must explain and account for their assessment and scoring of grant applications, can potentially mitigate and disrupt patterns of inequality. They can however also constitute arenas where biases are reproduced. This article explores, through a gender lens, the shift from face-to-face to digital peer review meetings in a Swedish RFO, focusing on the implications for an unbiased and fair grant allocation process. Drawing on twenty-two interviews with panellists and staff in the RFO, the analysis identifies both benefits and challenges of this shift, regarding use of resources, meeting dynamics, micropolitics, social glue, and possibilities for group reflections. RFOs deliberating digitalisation of their peer review processes need to consider these implications to develop policies promoting unbiased and fair grant allocation processes and procedures.

Online panel work through a gender lens: implications of digital peer review meetings

ABSTRACT The paper explores whether work-life balance (WLB) is affected by the unbounded work context and how organisational support, work flexibility and gender affect this relationship. It is a quantitative study, involving a survey of academics based in three UK institutions, using OLS regressions. There is a significant negative relationship between the perception of the unbounded nature of work and WLB among academics, irrespective of their gender. While flexible work and organisational support are positively associated with WLB, they have limited effect in an unbounded work context. This study makes original contributions for practitioners and academics. First, it provides empirical evidence of the relationship between the unboundedness of work and WLB, and finds no significant gender differences in WLB within an unbounded work context. Second, it helps to understand how flexible work and an organisational support culture are insufficient to eliminate the negative effect of unbounded work. Although the research involves a relatively small sample of UK academics provides insights into WLB in an unbounded work context. As became evident during the coronavirus pandemic, the boundaries between work and non-work domains in contemporary work settings are more and more blurred. Work will therefore become increasingly unbounded, potentially undermining WLB and causing tension between growing work demands and the necessities of family and personal lives.

Annali Bamber Jones

Papers

Blurring boundaries: work-life balance and unbounded work in academia. The role of flexibility, organisational support and gender