Caring for the Caregivers: Reimagining Institutional Recognition of Caregiving Work After the COVID Care Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the already uneven terrain of legal academia, shedding new light on and providing additional urgency to the need for both short-term and broader structural changes to support caregivers in academia. This article provides a snapshot of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on caregivers in legal academia, focusing on some of its continuing impacts and implications and lessons we might draw for a more equitable future. Building on the work of the Covid Care Crisis Symposia and related efforts, it analyzes how the dichotomies, harsh logic and perverse incentives visible in the ways that the pandemic played out impacted academic caregivers, underscoring the need for more meaningful social and institutional recognition of care work and caregivers. Applying principles from vulnerability theory, the article argues that we can and must flip this script by re-orienting academic support systems and dynamics around efforts that build and support resilience, innovation, and human potential, rather than require and exploit them. It concludes by highlighting some of the pathways we might pursue to achieve such goals during moments of change, to rewrite the narrative of care and what it means to flourish in academia. 

Keywords: academia, caregiver, carework, care crisis, gender, women, invisible labor, faculty development, faculty success, legal academia, law schools, legal education, legal profession