Motherhood and Academia: Reading and Discussion

The Corona pandemic has clearly shown what was already visible before: We are far away from gender equality. This is true for society as well as for science. The gender care gap, or corona gap, shows itself in significantly lower publishing rates during the pandemic among mother_scholars than among male scholars. This also applies to the acquisition of third-party funding, the development of new research projects and conference attendance.

Following their book “Mutterschaft und Wissenschaft” Dr Sarah Czerney und Dr Lena Eckert have published a second book in reaction to the worsening of this situation: „Mutterschaft und Wissenschaft in der Pandemie. (Un-)Vereinbarkeit zwischen Kindern, Care und Krise“ (Barbara Budrich, 2022).

In this reading the editors will provide a glimpse at the texts, with the goal of exploring the tension between motherhood and science in a subsequent discussion.