Career shock of female academics during Covid-19: can the transactional stress model offer coping strategies?
European Journal of Training and Development
ISSN: 2046-9012
Article publication date: 6 December 2022
Issue publication date: 14 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Through addressing female academics in four public universities in Egypt, the author of this paper aims to answer the question: How do female academics cope with the career shock resulting from the spread of COVID-19?
Design/methodology/approach
The author used a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 32 female academics from four public universities selected from among 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.
Findings
The findings assert that the following three strategies: heroism, cronyism and temporalism are used by female academics in the Egyptian context to cope with the career shocks they feel during the time of COVID-19. The findings assert that female academics try to reassert their professionalism in their academic duties and familial obligations even after the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, they tend to use forms of cronyism behaviour to alleviate the effect of the career shock, mostly via hypocritical phrases. Furthermore, the thought that COVID-19 is a temporary stage helps female academics to actively accept their challenging new work conditions.
Originality/value
This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management and higher education in which empirical studies on the career shock of female academics have been limited so far.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The project is funded under the program of the Minister of Education and Science titled “Regional Initiative of Excellence” in 2019-2023, project number 018/RID/2018/19, the amount of funding PLN 10 788 423,16.
Citation
Mousa, M. (2024), "Career shock of female academics during Covid-19: can the transactional stress model offer coping strategies?", European Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 48 No. 1/2, pp. 196-213. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-04-2022-0052
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited