Y'all can do better

On academia, motherhood, and how context is everything

Recently in my sociolinguistics class, a graduate student presented part of his thesis project, which centers on the evolution and usage of the word “y’all.” He talked to us about previous research that followed the rapid spread of the word, from one mostly identified with Southern dialects and African American English to a word widely adopted by young people across the U.S. His research examined variations in usage of “y’all” on social media, particularly Twitter, and traced its increasing popularity with followers of Black Twitter—whether the users were white, Black, or had any association or experience with the South.

It opened up interesting questions and conversation about how we use this word. A PhD candidate in Education from Raleigh shared that she grew up being told by her parents and teachers not to use “y’all,” but when living for a time in the Northeast, started using it again. Another student, also from North Carolina, said that he felt when non-Southerners use “y’all” that it sounds condescending to him. A Moroccan-American graduate student and teacher shared that among her African friends, “y’all” is American slang used in texting and messaging. The graduate student who presented his research described various ways he’d seen y’all used—as a way of drawing attention to something personally meaningful (“Y’ALL.”); as a statement of inclusivity (“Y’all means all”); as a way of drawing people closer in an agreed-on statement (“It’s Fall y’all” ); or sometimes as a way of chiding others (“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.”). What seemed to connect all of these different usages was an agreement that y’all implied some amount of community-based knowledge—either y’all know better, like the speaker, or y’all should know better, as the speaker does.

I thought about this usage during a Friday Zoom presentation by a colleague about her 2020 research leave, which was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This colleague, a Fitzgerald scholar who was literally working in library archives when the world shut down, is also a mother of two young children; she began her talk by drawing attention to the documented negative Covid-19 impact on women’s professional lives and research. Throughout the pandemic, women have been submitting research-driven papers to fewer journals, and publishing less often, relative to men. The women most affected by this disparity are mothers and Black women—men, on the other hand, have seen a disproportionate increase in productivity. In academia, publishing is everything—for early-career scholars and researchers, it is the difference between keeping your job or not.

My colleague, who is tenured, spoke about this disparity and her fears for what it means for our profession with disarming frankness, and with candid reflection on the way the pandemic has impacted her own research. Throughout the pandemic, she has had to shift her own writing time to weekends and nights; though day cares and schools are back open, they are all operating on reduced and sometimes disrupted schedules, and it is very difficult to find childcare. This, she acknowledged, is much more difficult for people at earlier, less financially supported stages of their careers—graduate student mothers, for example, or pre-tenure or non-tenure-track faculty who are mothers or caregivers. How can we maintain this unsustainable situation, working every minute of the day and still producing less than our male colleagues—and being penalized for it?

This all spoke very directly to me, and the couple of other mothers on the Zoom meeting. Yes! We said. We thanked her. I spoke for a while about my feeling that I can’t talk about my kids—AKA my “short roommates,” which is how I sometimes think they are perceived—at work without people looking at me in perplexity or maybe pity.

But I don’t want to be pitied! I want other people to step up and help, which is what I said on this Zoom: not with things related to my personal life but with the things that my personal life make me very good at, but that also interfere with my research time. Creating community, being steady and responsible, doing what in academia is called “service.” This is everything from chairing committees to advising students to working with undergraduate clubs. I want help with these things because even though they are not valued in the scorekeeping of the tenure dossier (I have tenure, and am even a full professor), they matter a lot in the lives of students.

After we moms had our say… crickets. Our boss smiled pleasantly. A few of the male faculty members turned the conversation back to the scholar’s research, as if the context in which the research was done—which was how she started her whole talk, with an insistence on the centrality of context—not only did not matter, but was perhaps a little embarrassing to talk about. Our colleague engaged with their comments and questions, and then another awkward silence fell. We waited for a few long moments, and finally the event organizer said something salutary about how we need to work on these important issues, and then the meeting was over.

This was when I thought: Y’all. C’mon.

I thought this not because I don’t like or trust my colleagues to know better but because I know they do know better. They say all the right things when it is theoretical or at some sort of distance from something they need to do right now. They do the right things when they are asked, mostly. But they are not, in my experience, taking responsibility. They are getting by following the old rules, the ones that were not made for mothers or a pandemic or a crumbling democracy and higher educational system, because that is what helps them advance in their careers.

It’s mostly women who are talking about this and writing these papers about Covid productivity loss, my colleague noted. More service, I thought. No one said anything.

Y’all.

---

After that meeting, I took the girls for a walk—and oh, this time of year is magnificent. We’re having exceptionally gorgeous fall foliage, and the brush has died back enough that the girls and I can really trek—across ravines, following deer paths, along the river. We found giant sycamore leaves and a golden patch of pawpaws. We found trees to climb, and to climb inside.

I like walking with the girls because it’s a great way to talk about things that are bothering us, while also moving forward, always forward.

“The boys in my class,” Bea said, leaping across a dry stream. “They are infants. Worse than infants!” Without stopping our vigorous hike, she then proceeded to describe what she perceived to be a senseless, unpunished injustice perpetuated by several of the boys in her second-grade classroom.

My girls are feminists. I don’t mean, like, Chimamanda Adiche’s TED talk feminists. They’re more like Valerie Solanas’s S.C.U.M. manifesto feminists (minus the transphobia of both). Bea, in particular, is quick to guess that a perceived problem was caused by sexism or by a man being selfish, violent, or short-sighted. This is at least partly my fault. But it’s also the fault of the pandemic, the climate crisis, the police brutality Bea has seen seen firsthand, and the insane Trump presidency and coup attempt, all things that have happened in Harriet’s tiny three-year life and over Bea’s working memory. Just look at this photo from COP26:

Bea and Harriet adore their dad and grandpas, of course, Bea’s sweet best friend is a boy, and even when we zoomed in on this very male-dominated photo, we liked finding Joe Biden’s smiling face (even as we recognize that he was carried there by the votes of women, particularly Black women). But I can see that Beatrice is rapidly piecing together the structural problems of patriarchy that are making this world suffer.

Yes, the whole world—because while the world is okay without my individual research and writing, or my colleague’s, the overall impact of having so few female leaders, and not enough women and BIPOC doctors, attorneys, scholars, university leaders, writers, and decision-makers, is devastating.

---

One of the most-documented fields affected by the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women researchers is medicine. This report by the NIH identifies significant pandemic losses in publication—between 16 and 24 percent fewer articles—by women, already underrepresented as authors and co-authors in top medical journals. Though women are more likely to be vaccinated, more likely to be the decision-makers (and vaccine-schedulers) in their families, and although they represent 70% of the global health workforce and more than 50% of medical school graduates, women make up only 24% of Covid experts quoted by media, as well as 24% of national task force membership. Despite this disparity, countries led by women have been shown to have comparatively better pandemic leadership, relative to countries led by men. (Not to mention this study, always boggling the back of my mind, which showed that 32,000 fewer patients would die each year in the U.S. alone if all doctors were women.)

The NIH report goes on to make these suggestions (emphasis mine):

The academic community, funders, and health professionals should support women in academia during this pandemic (and beyond). First, recognise that women are probably taking on more responsibilities than men are. Help families access safe childcare, and provide options for academics caring for family members, by considering the lockdown period as care leave so decreases in productivity do not hinder later career advancement. Second, recognise how gender bias influences selection and evaluation of scientific experts and leaders during times of crisis.

[…]

Amplify the voices of women with established records in infectious disease, pandemic response, global health, and health security. Third, collect and report institutional data on gender representation, including academic output and senior positions. Set clear, specific goals and guidelines and be proactive about identifying and addressing evidence on the impact of COVID-19. Give credit for ideas and ensure that first and last authorship is shared equitably and that contributions are acknowledged fairly among colleagues. Fourth, identify and address structural implicit and unconscious biases in research institutions (eg, hiring) and publication processes (eg, peer review outcome, number of citations). Consider offering training in bias or double-blinded peer review for scientific journals. Establish accountability mechanisms to ensure professionalism and report concerns. Finally, and most importantly, recognise that women from ethnic minority groups face additional challenges in academia, and take structural action to provide support and address these challenges.

I don’t know how many funding institutions, universities, and journals have put these suggestions into practice. I do realize that institutional rule changes can be grindingly slow, especially at large institutions.

But! Look at the verbs: support, recognize, amplify, identify. Help. That doesn’t require a system change. That’s something y’all can do today. Not y’all as in, the moms who read the FTT. The men you can forward this to, who want to be on your side, and kids’ sides, and the world’s side:

Thank you! Now put your feet up—or climb a tree. It’s Sunday.