essay

Received: 24 June 2020 - Revised: 21 August 2020 - Accepted: 13 September 2020DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12548 F E M I N I S T F R O N T I E R S

What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy

Danielle L. Couch1 | Belinda O'Sullivan2 | Christina Malatzky3

1Monash Rural Health, Monash University,

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

2Rural Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine,

The University of Queensland, Toowoomba,

Queensland, Australia

3School of Public Health and Social Work,

Faculty of Health, Queensland University of

Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Correspondence

Danielle L. Couch, Monash Rural Health,

Monash University, PO Box 666, Bendigo,

VIC 3552, Australia.

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw academic labor rapidly shift into domestic spaces at the same time as households were

“locked down.” In this article, we offer an exploration of our

own experiences of working from home as women and

mothers in the academy. Inspired by feminist approaches to

knowledge production and self‐reflection, we each devel- oped a personal reflective narrative guided by three key

questions centered on our experiences of working from

home pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and what this may mean for the future of our work. We then

collectively analyzed how our personal stories reflected

different dimensions of the experience of working from

home, and our fears and hopes for the future. We present

three distilled themes from our collective experiences here

with the aim of entering a dialog with others seeking to live

feminist lives during this time, and beyond.

K E Y W O R D S

COVID‐19, feminist dialogs, reflective narrative, women in academia, work from home

1 | INTRODUCTION

The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused dramatic changes to social and work organization in many countries around the world. These changes, and the threats some may pose to working conditions have, in many instances, happened

rapidly, and evolved over short time periods. In many countries, individual freedoms were re‐positioned within a culture of self‐compliance and severe regulation for a collective good. The rapidity of this response and the regularly shifting policy discourse from around the world seemed to heighten people's awareness of lived

266 - Gender Work Organ. 2021;28(S1):266–275. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/gwao © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

experiences, including new ways of “being.” Among the experiences of lockdowns, social distancing, frequent

handwashing, hand sanitizer, and behaving for a social good, working from home has been widely experienced.

Once the domain of a minority of employees, and heartland of majority female domestic unpaid labor, the increased

numbers of community members who have conducted paid employment from domestic spaces provide a rich

opportunity to explore how new arrangements blend with existing understandings of domestic labor and female

work, work legitimacy and reward. In particular, useful perspectives can be gained from the reaction of industries

that have had pre‐existing work from home (WFH) capability and flexibility, though male leadership dominance, such as academia (Savigny, 2014). Thus, in this article we explore the WFH experience of three female‐identifying university research and research/teaching academic staff pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, which might usefully inform awareness of gender as a central feature shaping future WFH policies.

We examine and reflect on how WFH changes were experienced and enacted during COVID‐19, and position these and previous WFH experiences in the wider literature, media, and social discourse to consider the future

potential impacts of COVID‐19 for ongoing WFH practices. In undertaking this analysis, our intention is to detail our own experiences as women academics employed in different universities, locations, and fields (public health,

rural health, policy, and sociology), with varied past academic and non‐academic employment, family contexts, and demographics, as a means to provide a breadth of perspectives on this topic. In presenting our experiences, we

acknowledge that while most academic work in our disciplines is amenable to WFH, our opportunities and expe-

riences of WFH vary based on our different contexts (familial, workplace dynamics, and wider governance) and

positionalities. We are all mothers, with different‐sized families and children ranging from preschool to high school age; we all work full‐time; we live in varied locations—city, regional, and rural parts of Australia; we are all part- nered, but with partners in differing caring and employment contexts (full‐time work, part‐time work, and principal carer with casual work), and we had differing opportunities and practices of WFH pre‐COVID‐19, although similar “lockdown” experiences during the first wave of the pandemic in Australia.

2 | INQUIRING INTO OUR(SELVES)

Feminist research has played a key role in dismantling and challenging the dominance of, and assumptions inherent

within, positivist approaches that seek to deny and relegate the personal and subjective from knowledge pro-

duction (Brigg & Bleiker, 2010; Doucet & Mauthner, 2008; Oakley, 1998). There is a long and rich tradition within

feminist methodologies of not simply acknowledging, but centering the role of the researcher/self in the process of

knowledge creation and relatedly, transforming how knowledge is understood, and the kinds of knowledges

considered consequential (Crary, 2001; Oakley, 1998; Ramazanoglu & Holland, 2002). Across different feminisms,

there is acceptance that “the subject's understanding of her life is inherently valid” (Stivers, 1993, p. 420) and the

self can be a legitimate source of knowledge (Brigg & Bleiker, 2010; Wright, 2009). Forms of inquiry that organize

experience into self‐narratives—auto‐ethnographic, autobiographical, introspective, reflective, expressive, and/or personal writings—as a way of making sense of our lives in context (Spigelman, 2001; Stanley, 1992; Wright, 2009)

are considered legitimate, and necessary to the political project of feminism.

This article had its beginnings in a reflective discussion between the authors, who were loosely affiliated

through discipline and scholarly focus, when WFH arrangements were imposed in Australia during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We decided to independently develop a three‐page personal reflective narrative of our experiences to share with each other. We grounded this work in the notion of social constructionism and narrative. Narratives

offer the opportunity to develop sociocultural understandings of individuals' experiences (Somekh & Lewin, 2005).

The telling of stories and creation of narratives allow individuals to construct the self, along with offering trans-

formative possibilities for changing society (Byrne & Lenṭin, 2000). From a feminist perspective, narratives represent a means of “finding a place, a voice to express both the personal and the collective” (Wright, 2009,

p. 625), and of enacting agency when few other avenues may be available. The reflective narrative was designed as

COUCH ET AL. - 267

a deliberately open‐ended task to allow for individual style and personal expression of the lived experience, intended to draw out different perspectives and contexts. We were guided by three co‐created questions as follows:

1. What is my experience of working from home during the COVID‐19 pandemic? 2. How does this compare to previous experiences of working from home?

3. What might it mean for future WFH opportunities post the COVID‐19 pandemic?

We shared these personal reflections with each other, and individually annotated each reflection, including our

own, to identify key ideas expressed in the writing, noting both points of commonality and difference. This process

of (re)reading each other's narratives (Wright, 2009), and our own, allowed us to consider individually, and

collectively through discussion, how our personal stories reflected different dimensions of the experience of WFH

during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In this sense, the resulting analysis of our narratives alludes to Richardson's “central imaginary for validity” in postmodern texts like this, of the crystal:

Crystals grow, change, and are altered, but they are not amorphous. Crystals are prisms that reflect

externalities and refract within themselves, creating different colors, patterns, and arrays casting off

in different directions. What we see depends on our angle of repose—not triangulation but rather

crystallization. (Richardson & St Pierre, 2005, p. 963)

In analyzing our narratives, we met several times via videoconference to discuss interpretation and ongoing

reflective thoughts. From these discussions DC developed an analytical skeleton to reflect the themes identified,

and each author wrote a detailed description of one of these themes, informed by the collective discussion. The

analytical work of each author was then compiled by DC and each author contributed to the subsequent devel-

opment and refinement of the analysis through consecutive rounds of review and alteration (Morse, 1994).

This process has provided the opportunity to make sense of and “construct” a genuine expression of our lived

experiences and the possibilities of WFH. In recognition of how narratives contribute to the construction of our

own personal experiences and make visible issues of gendered discrimination and power imbalances, we offer

our analysis as a means to open up opportunities for empowerment and transformation (Savigny, 2014). We use our

own reflections as a source of data to explore how the current pandemic is affecting our lives and livelihoods and

enter a dialog with others seeking to live feminist lives during this time, and beyond. While there is the potential

that pre‐set conclusions could fashion the nature of reflections produced, the breadth of reflections identified both commonality and diversity of experience between us as academic women, which suggested otherwise.

3 | BLENDING, BLURRING, AND COLLIDING SPHERES: ROLE CONFLICT

For each of us, WFH in the pre‐COVID‐19 pandemic era was an effective strategy to manage the demands of our multifaceted roles as academics, partners, mothers, and “family managers.” However, social isolation, which has

brought partners and children into the home throughout the day (and night), has radically transformed the

experience of WFH and how we have each previously managed the demands of, and conflicts between, our pro-

fessional, familial, and social roles. Now, WFH and being the (gendered) person responsible for keeping it all

together and coordinating the needs of our families (Malatzky, 2013) with the (ever‐increasing) demands of our occupation (Berg, Huijbens, & Larsen, 2016; Caretta, Drozdzewski, Jokinen, & Falconer, 2018; Thwaites &

Pressland, 2017), has become decidedly more difficult, ironically lonely, and often overwhelming.

The kind of labor that produces the most highly valued “outcomes” in academia requires, for the most part, a

particular kind of environment; one that fosters deep concentration and focus, usually for an extended period.

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The literal and figurative embalming of our professional, familial, and social roles together in the home has made

this environment difficult to secure:

I'm still trying to get my head into the zone, down the hole we need to go for the kind of work we do but

I can hear my son crying out for me behind the study door. He is 3 years old and he's saying he wants to

give mummy a hug. He wants to be where I am, to be doing what I am doing, for me to be with him.

Trying to undertake academic labor with children in the house, who require support, feeding,

mediation of arguments and just general love and attention means that my work is broken up into

smaller sporadic pieces, limiting the time for deep thinking and extended writing tasks.

Our reflections articulate how WFH under COVID‐19 conditions intensified the demands and conflicts be- tween our roles, impacting our emotional realities. We all expressed feelings of inadequacy and, at times, anguish

over how our professional and maternal roles are being compromised in different, painful ways.

Relatedly, the prevailing influence of dominant good versus bad mother discourses in contemporary Western

societies (Couvrette, Brochu, & Plourde, 2016; Goodwin & Huppatz, 2010) is evident within our narratives. The

lockdown situation (re)produced feelings of maternal guilt and shame as we were more evidently “unavailable” to

our children in a sociocultural context in which expectations of intensive mothering remain dominant (Meisenbach,

2010; Rodriguez Castro, Brady, & Cook, 2020).

My guilt, which I know to be a product of my sociocultural context, but that knowledge is still not

quite enough to fully scrape it off my consciousness, smacks me in the face throughout the day now.

Before the current shutdown or lockdown or whatever we are calling this time, it was a few moments

in the morning; some mornings would be fine, others would include tears and cries for me, but soon it

would pass, for both me and him. But now those moments litter the day …

On top of this coordination, (re)scheduling and maneuvering, is the constant guilt that I should be

providing better support for my children—I should be helping them better adjust to home schooling, I

should be more available for hugs and cuddles, to do things with them, and to meet their needs and

concerns in this time, instead of suggesting they do more school work, watch TV, go outside, play a

game, etc., all to give me some more time at my computer so I can feel productive. I often wonder

what their memories of me as a mother will be. I suspect it will be of a mother perpetually busy,

stressed and not available to play or talk with them when they want …

Simultaneously, we are highly conscious of the ways in which our professional identities are under threat. In

our reflections, we each articulated a sense of trying to keep our masks on, to effectively present an alternative self

to our (paid) work worlds (now accessible through Zoom windows)—we are doing our best to present as “ideal

workers,” free from other responsibilities (Chesterman & Ross‐Smith, 2010; Crowley, 2014) to avoid having our professional credentials undermined by the perception that we are in any way not fully present, and thus not fully

professional. We are guarding against the implicit assumption (and for many, reality, that this pandemic is making

visible in new ways) that women (who are also paid workers) are shouldering the additional domestic/family work

created through home isolation requirements, that would mean we are less “focused,” less on top of our (paid) work;

that we are in fact not really “working” at home.

I am trying to field my children's schoolwork questions and concerns, in between their Zoom meetings

and mine. I'm trying to prepare for my meetings, so I can offer some semblance of intelligence and

maintain my professional standing. I am frequently muting myself in meetings, mindful of the

COUCH ET AL. - 269

background noise from the household and children that might filter into meetings and provide a

distraction for colleagues. I am also aware how I may look distracted and unfocused in some meetings

when I am hearing my children argue, and I keep looking sideways to the closed office door,

wondering if I'll need to intervene, or if there will be further crying, or possible injury.

I am used to the feeling that on all fronts, I am failing. Never quite making it at work, always almost

enough, and never enough at home, never competent with the Mum stuff. But now that I am working

from home, the worry about not being perceived to be really working is there in my mind.

To perhaps counter these perceptions, in acknowledgment of the fragility of women's academic careers—how

long they take to construct and how easily they can collapse (Savigny, 2014; Tsouroufli, 2020)—our reflections also

evidence the lengths to which we are each willing to go to protect our professional identities. We are waking before

dawn, and/or working late into the night, on the weekends—whatever we can do to find the time and space needed

for the deep thinking required by our profession. It seems that rather than resisting the sexist structures and

assumptions of our institutions (Roos, Mampaey, Huisman, & Luyckx, 2020; Savigny, 2014), we are resisting the

challenge that the COVID‐19 pandemic policy structure has posed for women (and in our cases, mothering women) in academia, and perhaps most worryingly, we may have better luck fighting this virus than we do fighting the

cultures of academic institutions.

4 | EXPOSED

Women have a long history of doing both paid and unpaid labor from home, but before the COVID‐19 pandemic our work and our “other” lives were largely demarcated and hidden from the valued domain of paid work

(Osnowitz, 2005). The shape of institutional and organizational policies has largely purveyed a message that the

personal domain is at odds with optimal professional practice, potentially untrusted for its fragility and counter-

productive to the goals of industry. Many working women have strained against these policies to remain engaged in

work, including accessing arrangements that permit private attendance to carer roles (Pocock, 2005). Looking

professional in academia has been synonymous with being child‐free or an “honorary man” as a sign of full commitment to work (Raddon, 2002).

With COVID‐19, we have witnessed a sudden collapse of these walls: childcare and schools closed, and workers were urged to remain productive, but to do so from home. The “messiness” of all the dimensions of working

mothers’ lives were suddenly exposed. To some extent, the special circumstances of COVID‐19 isolation policies created a safe space for this messiness. However, the situation also highlighted the chasm between what is nor-

mally allowed and what is now permissible: “… the messiness of family is not ‘bad,’ it is ‘normal’ and easily managed

with planning and family orientation and support to WFH.”

The reality of overlapping familial and professional spheres exposed during COVID‐19 provided a glimmer of hope for women, regardless of the continuance of WFH policy requirements:

I'm hoping children randomly bursting into video conferences becomes more accepted and under-

stood and seen as normal rather than something to be hidden and/or minimized.

For many women, professional and personal worlds are not easy to demarcate so as to carve out child‐free space for professional responsibilities. Some barriers to this demarcation are the cost of childcare, limited family

support, family size, or other dynamics. Supported and accepted WFH options may provide flexibility and personal

satisfaction for these women: “WFH allowed me to work around the family, and it meant that the kids could

participate in extensive activities, not missing things that would have been (otherwise) impossible.”

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WFH during the COVID‐19 pandemic has been a relatively short‐term phenomenon, and may not be strong enough to disrupt the institutionalized work patterns, particularly where these policies will largely be shaped by

the experience of men who sit in leadership positions (Shepherd, 2017). We are concerned that the male reaction

to working and schooling from home is likely to be definitive of the societal shifts possible from the COVID‐19 experience. One of us who was a full‐time WFH academic, an arrangement continuing during the COVID‐19 pandemic, had increased concerns over the broader discourse about diminished productivity and motivation. She

also suddenly saw greater resources being provided for WFH employees. She perceived that the COVID shut-

down specifically threatened her normal pattern of working, forcing it open to wider workplace scrutiny and

public dialog:

… the uni [sic] that employed me sort of look at me [working from home] as an experiment case.

I now feel that my colleagues there are experiencing how I work, which is empowering but may

also lead to some assumptions that it is not that good, it is like a mass test that could produce

negative views about WFH, rather than the other. Our office has started new online “check in

meetings” once a week in response to us all being isolated. Some people have been saying the

wind is out of their sails by week three. They are expressing that it was novel at first but now they

are not motivated.

She sensed risk that these judgments, formed during the novel experiences of the COVID‐19 pandemic, could lead to mass policymaking that would undermine her normal pattern, rather than reinforcing and recognizing it as a

way of tailoring productive work to her (and other women's) situations. The risk is that WFH during COVID‐19 may be: “devaluing my main way of working, and positioning it as ‘lesser.’” Reflecting that her experience of WFH had

demanded both time and adjustment for various roles she had held in this capacity, needing “time to test and

adjust” to WFH conditions, she was frustrated that these judgments could be borne out of a situation where people

had no adjustment period. She saw that the lockdown could undermine her ongoing participation in WFH, therefore

threatening her overall work hours, and affecting the trust and confidence that her workplace had in her pro-

ductivity. She craved more tailored thinking about WFH, reflecting the experience was “likely to be field dependent,

and very dependent on situations with children and partners (for people who have them).” She also perceived that

“WFH involves excellent levels of productivity, but this doesn't just happen in a neat 9–5 clock,” highlighting the

notion that flexible WFH, embedded within domestic complexity, could be better legitimized. She thought there

was “great potential to plan, structure and support components or whole jobs that can be done from home,

respecting their fixed and flexible elements.” Her experience was that this had enabled her continued participation

in paid employment through different stages of childrearing and career development. However, it was understood

to be far from recognized as a social norm, nor reinforced by organizational policies. Counter to the increasing

rhetoric of “family friendliness” and “flexibility” in contemporary workplaces, work remains structured around the

assumption of the traditional male worker and career trajectory; and there is a disconnect between policy and what

is enacted in practice (Chesterman & Ross‐Smith, 2010). Rather than shifts within work institutions, it remains up to individual (largely women) workers to fit into a work system designed for a particular gender dynamic and draw on

their own capacities and resources to manage the resulting conflicts and gender disparities (Malatzky, 2013). This

was reflected in descriptions of how, to date, she had survived on her own self‐determination, having had strong role modeling of WFH from mothers and grandmothers:

I learnt that female work and career development pathways are highly malleable and positioned to

align with other roles they may have. I also learnt that the sky is the limit, and if I showed self‐ determination and persistence, I could open doors, not limited by “normal ways of doing business.”

COUCH ET AL. - 271

There are barriers to malleable female participation in work unless we allow it to be exposed, and decision

makers allow it to be legitimized, tailored, and role modeled to the next generation. It is possible that these

mechanisms will mean that more women can engage in paid work and develop professional careers.

5 | FEARS AND HOPES

From our reflections, a range of fears and potential hopes have emerged in relation to the adoption and fragility of

organizational and social policies around COVID‐19 WFH, which mingled with our desire to maintain employment and progress our careers:

I fear that very quickly, those old structures [having to work in the office] will close back in, supported

by the emerging sense of fear in our sector. That fear, which thanks to the almost complete erasure of

governmental support for the social good we perform, is valid. And with it we risk the grip tightening

rather than loosening.

In terms of realizing a new dawn of opportunities for women in academia, there was reflection that WFH for

many women is intimately linked to overcoming structural barriers that would otherwise reduce the number of

hours they work, and thus their capacity to assume new roles and careers, if concurrently managing family:

… choice needs to be positioned in light of the structural barriers that females/carers may experience

when it comes to participating in work.

The rigid academic structure and gender bias common in the academic industry (Caretta et al., 2018; Roos

et al., 2020; Savigny, 2014) was viewed as having the potential to position women at a more significant disad-

vantage unless they had options to work at an equivalent employment ratio to men. We all identified the need to

recognize the significant burden of fitting full‐time academic work around family, which may deserve more attention in academic career performance weightings:

I am a full‐time worker, have been both before and after [x] was born since I went back to paid work after taking minimal maternity leave … Not just for financial reasons, but also because the impact on

my career would have been even more pronounced. Here I am still a level B while many of my male

colleagues of around the same age and time‐distance from their PhDs are at least level Cs, some professors.

For academics who were also primary income earners, security of full‐time employment was a major issue to balance around family: “I can't lose my job, it would be catastrophic. I can't even imagine a pathway out of the

despair if that were to happen. I need to be working.”

It was also reasonably clear that we all faced significant challenges working from home, particularly in relation

to the pressure we felt to be productive in a field that requires long hours, connected concepts, and extensive

collaboration:

I am working late at night after they have gone to bed, I am working on the weekend in short spurts.

While I have never been a 9 to 5 worker, all the boundaries are blurring between work and family life,

as everything bleeds together, so that all the days become undifferentiated, and there are no work

days, and no weekends …

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Another of us described: “Many hours after bedtime need to become paid work hours and more of the ‘weekend’

(an illusive concept) is given over to ‘catching up’ on both paid and unpaid labor.” And the fear of failure of doing

academic work around children was compelling for another: “I was also organized in the extreme to minimize the

potential for failure.” These perspectives highlight the load women in the academy carry to perform well within a

system that has few options to recognize and reward gendered effort (Shepherd, 2017; Tsouroufli, 2020).

We reflected on the potential opportunities for WFH to be expanded across industries in a post‐COVID environment. However, there is great need for system‐wide reform rather than relying on individual women to navigate this agenda in their own lives: “My hope is that there is more academic research to highlight WFH as a

potential way of aiding work participation of marginalized groups, including females and males with carer roles.”

We see some potential for “a brave new world where our lives are not broken into pieces that shutter family

and work into separate boxes, but perhaps that there is respect for their malleability to each other,” and that there

is opportunity to create institutions that are:

… more open to different ways of working that are based on the shape of our lives and assessed based

on the work we produce, rather than where we are when we are working. It's high time our whole

lives drove work patterns rather than “work” driving our whole lives.

The policy shifts required were clearly expressed: “I'm hoping that post‐COVID‐19 some of the more liberal workplace and governmental policies recognizing the challenges and opportunities of WFH remain.” There was also

hope that the WFH world might leverage new opportunities for rural women: “I'm hoping that jobs advertised in

major metropolitan cities, which have previously assumed you must be physically present to do the work, become

more open to regional and rural applicants … recognizing that a physical presence is not required for all work,”

which would enable more women, regardless of place location, to utilize their professional expertise and build

careers.

6 | CONCLUSION

Our perspective draws on a depth of lived experience between three academic women to discuss some major

considerations to come from working through COVID‐19 in the academy with respect to shaping current and future WFH policies. We identify that WFH policies affect women in complex ways, including potentially causing

tension between the professional, familial, and social dimensions of our lives. Women often have multilayered

experiences of WFH. For some, WFH is their major employment format, although WFH arrangements have not

been formally legitimized as valued and productive for women in ways that acknowledge the value of the “whole”

person and their “lived experience,” not just the dimension which is paid. The mass experience during the pandemic

presents a major threat to winding back opportunities based on a collective and rapidly implemented model, rather

than one that accounts for the nuance of gender and allows time for adjustment. For academic women, the WFH

experience has showcased some of the structural barriers that are encountered in relation to career progression

within highly competitive fields for which academic institutes have displayed only limited accountability.

While COVID‐19 WFH experiences have presented challenges, these experiences also offer an opportunity to positively transform employment markets and academic work practices, if the diversity of experiences and ways of

working are recognized, embraced, promoted, and supported. WFH can offer incredible flexibility that can allow

wider female participation and greater workforce diversity. With flexible and supportive WFH policies and envi-

ronments, people who may normally struggle to participate in onsite workplace‐based 9–5 roles can be included in the workforce particularly amongst those who face barriers to clearly having a separate, accessible “space” to do

their work. This may include carers, parents, people who may be living with a disability, or people who are

geographically dispersed.

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By fully embracing WFH policies and the dimensions of gender in academic work, it is possible that academic

organizations can achieve rapid expansion and input from a wider range of independent thinkers, beyond those

currently privileged to attend, and maintain attendance, in face‐to‐face environments. The visibility (via video- conferencing) of domestic and professional spheres colliding also has the potential to normalize this reality in a

constructive and affirmative way, legitimizing academics and their contributions to society as “whole people” who

add value to academic professional contexts. As the pandemic resolves, it is imperative that female academics

continue to engage in dialog about COVID‐19 WFH experiences and agitate for more gender and context‐sensitive career opportunities and metrics that reduce silo‐ing of their whole “selves.” This has the potential to rapidly improve female participation in the academe and take on roles in wider society, in a productive and sustainable

way. This type of intervention will be pivotal for growing and maintaining the next generation of academic women,

and which should be now, more than ever, a priority given the disproportionate impact COVID‐19 has had on women's career trajectories that will continue to be experienced for some time.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare no conflict of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID

Danielle L. Couch https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5206-9072

Belinda O'Sullivan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4068-3240

Christina Malatzky https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9078-9601

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Danielle L. Couch is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash Rural Health at Monash University. She has a

background in health sociology and public health. Danielle's research focuses on power, surveillance, stigma,

and risk in relation to bodies and place, particularly how these are articulated and manifested through diverse

media. Outside of her academic role, Danielle works in Aboriginal and rural health.

Belinda O'Sullivan is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland with a strong interest in work and its

organization in society, including around gender and career. She has emerging interests in shaping gendered

workforce policies within rural health service delivery.

Christina Malatzky is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health and Social Work at Queensland Uni-

versity of Technology. Her research focuses on the operations of power and discourse in the fields of rural

health, and gender and health. She is particularly interested in power relations within rural health and

healthcare, the cultures of health systems and services, and gender relations in medicine and healthcare

systems.

How to cite this article: Couch DL, O'Sullivan B, Malatzky C. What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy. Gender Work Organ.

2021;28(S1):266–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12548

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