Funding boost for women who put their lives on hold
Women academics offered help to get their groundbreaking research back on track in the wake of Covid-19. Sandra Dick reports
FACED with home schooling, two young children and juggling a whole new way of working, Dr Rachel Mcpherson had no alternative but to put what promises to be groundbreaking research to one side.
A criminal law lecturer at the University of Glasgow, she was hoping to better understand domestic abuse cases in which women kill – particularly relevant as the Scottish Law Commission reviews homicide and defences to murder.
But with demands on her time soaring as the pandemic struck, her lectures shifted online, and her children’s education needs fell to her, meaning her important research could not carry on at the same pace.
Now though, she and more than two dozen other academics – most of them women – are set to pick up where they left off after receiving help to kick start their research projects.
According to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), of the 29 academics to receive a share of the organisation’s new £470,000 support package for researchers adversely impacted by the pandemic, 79 per cent were women.
Many of the 129 who applied for the organisation’s support told similar stories of having to drop research projects to deal with caring responsibilities and new ways of working – in some cases, having to abandon their work and laboratory based trials completely.
In one case, a researcher carrying out a medical-based project had to stop to provide support on the A&E frontline.
Others told of the struggle to continue important research after falling ill with Covid-19 and in some cases suffering the lingering impact of long Covid.
The RSE numbers appear to reflect Uk-wide research which has suggested women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic due to caring responsibilities, lost earnings, job losses and broken careers.
Women’s earnings are said to have declined by 12.9 per cent during the pandemic – nearly double the reduction for men – while research last year carried out by Exeter University claimed women were almost twice as likely to have lost their job due to the pandemic.
Of those who applied for RSE support, 58% identified as being in the early stages of their career, while 67% said they took on extra caring duties due to the pandemic.
Professor Sarah Skerratt, director of programmes at RSE, said the challenges faced by some researchers who appealed for support was distressing. “We had people with multiple caring responsibilities for children under five, they were home schooling and many were primary carers. They used annual leave or unpaid parental leave for childcare and home schooling.”
The national response to the pandemic meant the immediate closure of laboratories, libraries and archival centres, leaving many academics unable to carry out basic research and secure funding. The ban on international travel also meant that academic exchanges stopped, and the shipping of lab samples and other research materials also often ceased.
Dr Skerratt said some researchers faced losing a year or more of career progress, affecting their confidence and leaving them trailing colleagues who were able to continue research work.
“When you lose a year of your career and you’re working in a competitive area, those steps on the ladder are hard to get back,” she added.
Researchers supported by the grant will pick up projects spanning a variety of topics, including medical and environmental research, and others which examine issues such as disadvantages faced by ethnic minority enterprises in Scotland.
Dr Mcpherson’s research, which could go on to inform future policy on criminal defences in domestic abuse-related homicides, is set to continue after being shelved for most of last year.
“A lot of my time went into preparation for work, the children and there were a lot of interruptions which meant there were just not as many hours in the day to do what I needed,” she said.
She has identified around 62 cases involving women who have killed following a domestic abuse situation over a 28-year period. As well as examining cases from a legal perspective, she is exploring how they have been viewed by the public and the media’s approach to reporting them.
Her research is the first of its kind and comes as the Scottish Law Commission has begun reviewing homicide and defences to murder.
The RSE Research Reboot
Grant, which is supported by the Scottish Funding Council, includes peer support and mentoring to help researchers pick up their studies.
Dr Rebekah Widdowfield, chief executive of the RSE, said: “The Research Reboot funding awards have created a ‘window of opportunity’ for awardees to reconnect with their research, regaining precious time and resources lost to Covid-19.”