COVID diaries: Women’s experience of the pandemic – an interview with Amanda Gouws and Olivia Ezeobi

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Photo of Olivia Ezeobi (top, left): www.sun.ac.za; photo of Amanda Gouws (top, bottom): LitNet

COVID diaries: Women's experience of the pandemic
Amanda Gouws & Olivai Ezeobi
Imbali Press
ISBN: 978-1-928539-84-1 

Amanda Gouws and Olivia Ezeobi, editors of COVID diaries: Women’s experience of the pandemic, discuss the book with Naomi Meyer.

Congratulations on editing a book documenting the female experience of the COVID pandemic, Amanda and Olivia. My first question is: where did you find the time to edit the book, and where did all the female contributors find the time to write down their experiences? What did you do, on a practical level, to make time for editing this specific book?

Amanda: We started with the book during the lockdown period, when people had limited mobility and were quite restricted in terms of social activities. So, while the editing was a huge job (it took some work to turn different writing styles into a stylistic whole), we had time because of the restriction. On the other hand, our care burdens increased significantly, as you will read from the stories, and we had to juggle many balls. I was more fortunate than Olivia, because I was on sabbatical and did not have the soul-destroying demands of teaching online. We worked on the editing daily for a couple of months.

One evening, in a blur of work, after homeschooling and washing up, etc, I noticed a link which a female academic had shared on social media. She shared one of these links (the mere fact that so many studies were conducted on female versus male academic output during the lockdown is already telling): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9, or https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/gender-gap-in-research-output-widens-during-pandemic-67665, or https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/pandemic-lockdown-holding-back-female-academics-data-show, or https://www.iesalc.unesco.org/en/2021/03/08/unesco-iesalc-report-asserts-that-gender-inequality-in-higher-education-remains-a-universal-issue/. During your editing of the book, did you also find indications that women (in heterosexual households) still are responsible for most of the family’s chores during the lockdown and the pandemic? (Olivia Ezeobi’s contribution really struck a chord! As did all the other contributions on “A mother’s work is never done”.) A common theme here is guilt. Many of the contributors feel guilty that they are privileged enough still to have a job and a family, but struggle to combine both at the same time, so to speak. I love my family, and I love my job. But I cannot handle both at the same time. Please would you elaborate on your findings?

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Because everyone had to work from home, men expected to be able to close the door and get online and work without interruptions, while the mothers had to face the expanding care work and interruptions.

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Amanda: Yes, what the contributions in the section “A woman’s work is never done” shows is that it is women who get involved with the homeschooling and the household chores and childcare. Because everyone had to work from home, men expected to be able to close the door and get online and work without interruptions, while the mothers had to face the expanding care work and interruptions. Most of the frontline workers in hospitals are/were women, and they also just had to get on with the job. So, there was an expanding care burden and the idea that care is elastic and can stretch on endlessly. Olivia’s story of doing marking in her car is poignant in this regard. Other sources also show that women’s academic output – for example, articles and books – has declined, as opposed to men’s.

I refer to “the female experience”, but you have diverse contributors from various backgrounds, ethnic groups and countries writing down their experiences for your book. What did you notice in terms of similarities and differences between the different contributors?

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Well, the book speaks to the diversity and intersectionality of women in terms of race, age and (dis)ability. Class is also an important factor – so, even though all the authors are middle-class, educated and employed, the stories show that what happened to you during the pandemic and how you experienced it is related to whether you had a family (partner and kids) or not; whether you were healthy or, for example, had cancer, like one of the authors.

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Amanda: Well, the book speaks to the diversity and intersectionality of women in terms of race, age and (dis)ability. Class is also an important factor – so, even though all the authors are middle-class, educated and employed, the stories show that what happened to you during the pandemic and how you experienced it is related to whether you had a family (partner and kids) or not; whether you were healthy or, for example, had cancer, like one of the authors. Some authors wrote about the impact on their mental health, and about how coping with isolation and without the normal social activities that keep people going had a major impact on their well-being. Some authors wrote more philosophical pieces on their reflections during the pandemic – on how we make sense of impending doom, of friendship, of zoonotic viruses, of animals roaming in city streets, of time passing, and – by some who work with people living in poverty – of the mind-numbing effect of living without food.

Olivia: One thing I liked about the book was that the authors were from different life stages, and so our perspectives and challenges were different. All the writers who had young children were struggling with work-motherhood balance, and wrote about extreme fatigue. The younger writers wrote about introspection and learning more about self. The older writers saw things in a larger perspective – the bigger picture, almost. One common theme I saw in many essays was a call to change – that things need to change for the better.

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One thing I liked about the book was that the authors were from different life stages, and so our perspectives and challenges were different. All the writers who had young children were struggling with work-motherhood balance, and wrote about extreme fatigue.

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Some narratives in life are inevitable, and some lies are, too. We have to lie to ourselves sometimes to make life bearable, to stay in a certain situation (like a marriage, a long-term relationship, a country, a house, a job). That said, we also tell ourselves other stories once the situation or the relationship is over. What is the importance of all the various narratives you came across when compiling the book? How did you plan this, and why did you decide on the themes and the contributors?

Amanda: As you will see from the foreword, we embarked on this book so that we could capture the authentic voices of women, rather than writing an academic book with statistics to document this, that and the other. We sent out a call online, and we got 50 responses. In the end, 35 women delivered their essays by the deadline. We then thematised the essays and ended with five sections. “The personal is political” is a feminist slogan that means that what happens in our personal lives has a political meaning – and the other way around: “The political is personal.” Those are the first two sections. There is a section on the never-ending care work, a section on motherhood and a section titled “The body on the frontline”. This section is about mental health, about physical health and, metaphorically speaking, about our bodies being the terrain on which the pandemic is fought.

Leonard Cohen may sing, “There is a crack, a crack in everything/
That’s how the light gets in.” But, on the theme of cracks in society, while reading the various narratives in your book, I again realised that the cracks in society have widened during the pandemic. Everything which used to be wrong in society has become illuminated. It is easy to pick up a book like this one and think: this will prove to me that women are responsible for childcare, housework, needlework, cooking and so on. But I felt proud and strangely uplifted by the intelligence of all the female contributors in the book. They thought about children and housework, yes. But they also wrote about everything else in society which needs attention: poverty, inequality, violence, human rights, discrimination. While reading this book, one starts to see that this is not only about female experiences. This is a book about the human experience. What are your thoughts?

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I agree that the book is about the human experience, but it is told in women’s voices, through women’s writing. The women in the book have husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, male friends – we have seen men and boys we love struggle during COVID – the job losses, the mental stress, our boy children missing school and friends. We write through our eyes, our experience of being human.

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Olivia: I agree that the book is about the human experience, but it is told in women’s voices, through women’s writing. The women in the book have husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, male friends – we have seen men and boys we love struggle during COVID – the job losses, the mental stress, our boy children missing school and friends. We write through our eyes, our experience of being human.

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Yes, indeed, it is about human experience that locates women in a certain way, and the pandemic has shown the global inequalities, the social exclusion and marginalisation. Who are the most exposed, who has limited access to healthcare, who goes hungry and who loses their jobs first? The global inequalities were/are stark. But the irony is that the virus does not discriminate – anyone can get it and anyone can die. So, in a sense, the virus is the great equaliser, but the social and economic impact of the virus, especially in countries in the global South, is absolutely devastating and harder to recover from than in the global North.

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Amanda: Yes, indeed, it is about human experience that locates women in a certain way, and the pandemic has shown the global inequalities, the social exclusion and marginalisation. Who are the most exposed, who has limited access to healthcare, who goes hungry and who loses their jobs first? The global inequalities were/are stark. But the irony is that the virus does not discriminate – anyone can get it and anyone can die. So, in a sense, the virus is the great equaliser, but the social and economic impact of the virus, especially in countries in the global South, is absolutely devastating and harder to recover from than in the global North. But then, the health impact in terms of deaths was devastating in the USA, because their president disregarded the science. The world was not geared toward a pandemic that would affect every single country. We had a lot to learn, but it also curbed our carbon footprint, our endless appetite for consumption and our disregard for others in need, to a certain extent.

Amanda’s contribution focused on many important aspects of life during the lockdown and now – post the hard lockdown – especially the hybrid experience and technology, one of the key differences between this pandemic and previous ones. Do you want to share something on this topic – thoughts, experiences?

Amanda: Well, I think that we had to turn to life online, and we are still online. As I write in my story, we have all become cyborgs (the human and machine merger). We could not have done what we managed to do, especially teaching students, without technology. I write about Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher, who calls this a form of barbarism that traps us in a spectral screen. After 16 months of being in different forms of lockdown and working online, it has become normal, and this is the danger – its normalisation. We may never go back to “the way we were”. That is why I ask in my essay, “What is normal?” Another danger is that we forget the millions of people globally who are not connected to the internet. What does the lack of connectivity mean for them in this time?

The theme of caring is a common thread throughout the book – caring for families and caring for mothers. A very interesting contribution is the one by Lou-Marie Kruger, maybe summed up by the Ronelda Kamfer quote she uses herself: “Sy was my ma en sy het my geleer om nie lief te wees vir myself nie.” One shouldn’t be fooled that care always means “soft and cuddly”. COVID has also illuminated mother-daughter relationships in uncomfortable ways. What stood out for you in this part of the book?

Olivia: What stood out for me is that parents are human, too, with human shortcomings and frailties. I also thought of that saying, “Hurt people hurt people” – that people who are experiencing hurt and pain, often end up hurting others; they hurt others because they themselves are hurting. Motherhood is associated with nurturing, but to nurture others, one has to be whole/healthy (relatively healthy?). Someone who is unwell cannot nurture others. Just my thoughts. At the same time, I must add that my mother is like the gold standard for motherhood (when it comes to nurturing, etc) – so, I cannot imagine having a mother like the one in Snow White.

Another interesting section of the book is, of course, the one on the body being on the front line. COVID has taken centre stage for the past few months, but cancer is still there. Other diseases, too. Self-care is more important than ever. What are your views on this part of the book?

Olivia: I love how this section of the book speaks to the body – its strengths and limitations. Our body does so much for us, but we sometimes (often?) abuse it (lack of sleep, unhealthy eating, substance abuse) and take physical health for granted. I love that Loretta Williams wrote candidly about being sick with COVID, and how it compounded her mental illness and brought new comorbidities. People think (hope?) that COVID will happen to others, not to themselves, but anyone can get sick with COVID. Sonja Cilliers’s essay about cancer gave me hope – that the suffering can end and people can get well again, and that there are lessons learned through all experiences – lessons that prepare us for other challenges.

I have to ask this question: how about all the unheard stories? The stories of the working poor, the struggling houseworkers or the women without jobs and homes? I think one cannot answer this question with a real answer, because it is not a real question. I think your book made me think about all the different stories in society, and the fact that we should try to listen to other people’s struggles.

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We wanted to include the voices of more marginalised women, but we would have needed ethics approval for this, which would have taken months, and we wanted to get the book published as soon as possible.

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Olivia: We hear you! We wanted to include the voices of more marginalised women, but we would have needed ethics approval for this, which would have taken months, and we wanted to get the book published as soon as possible. So, we decided to go with a creative writing project, where the authors wrote their own stories, without someone else interviewing them (ethics approval not required). My PhD title is Intersectionality of working mothers in South Africa, and one of my chapters/papers will be “The well-being of migrant working mothers from other African countries”. The aim of my PhD is to examine multiple dimensions of inequality faced by working mothers in South Africa – inequality when compared with men, and when compared with women who are not mothers, as well as the intersectionality of inequalities based on race, class, citizenship and geography (spatial discrimination). Working mothers from other African countries face additional discrimination and inequalities based on their citizenship. My chapter on “Migrant working mothers” will be based on interviews of such mothers, and through this I hope to give voice to their experiences, and to tell their stories through my PhD.

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The aim of my PhD is to examine multiple dimensions of inequality faced by working mothers in South Africa – inequality when compared with men, and when compared with women who are not mothers, as well as the intersectionality of inequalities based on race, class, citizenship and geography (spatial discrimination). Working mothers from other African countries face additional discrimination and inequalities based on their citizenship.

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The diary of Anne Frank – I thought about this diary while reading your diary and the contributors’ diaries. Brilliant diary, Anne Frank’s. A slice of life, and a wonderful social commentary, as well. We know the ending to Anne Frank’s diary. All we know, so far, regarding the pandemic, is that life will not go back to how it used to be. Do you agree? Can you predict “The end”?

Olivia: I agree with you: life will never be the same. Yes, I can predict the end, of course. Not! But seriously, I had hoped that the suffering seen during COVID and the resulting lockdowns, would lead to a kinder and more equal society – but I am yet to see evidence of this. I expected (and still expect) a revolution of sorts; the widening inequality is unsustainable – our society and world is fragile in its inequality.

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