Introduction
2023 brought my third year as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy to a close. This also marks the passing of almost 4 years since the onset of COVID-19 in the United States. It began in January 2020 according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and in March 2020, the majority of academia entered the virtual environment in protection of administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
Early in the pandemic I coordinated a research team in response to the reports (i.e., not factual research) that scholarly productivity from womxn (x = inclusion of trans and non-binary individuals) was on the decline as a result of COVID-19. With 15 fellow women located around the globe and across disciplines, we formed COVID GAP (Gendered Academic Productivity) to specifically look at the gendered impact of the pandemic on scholarship. While exploring this, a function of our own collaboration increased the scholarly output for each of the team members. We understand this to have occurred as a result of our collaboration (Brown et al., Citation2022; Brown et al., Citation2022) and the support we provided to each other based on our shared identity as academic women. Beyond support, we published articles and book chapters, engaged in presentations, and created scholarly partnerships and friendships that continue today. Though COVID GAP confirmed the impacts of the pandemic on academic women (Bender et al., Citation2022; Brown et al., Citation2021; Chance et al., Citation2022; Lambrechts et al., Citation2021) by not only my research team but also others (e.g., Blackburn, Citation2023; Clancy, Citation2020), it is within my role as Editor-in-Chief that I have felt this change.
I share this story as a reminder not only for myself but also for all of us.
We are not alone.
It takes a village
This is a call for help for the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy (JFFT). We need our village! We have experienced a steady decline in submissions including interviews, book/movie reviews, and Feminist Voices pieces and especially peer-reviewed articles – empirical and non-empirical. With many pieces stretching over a calendar year during their journey from submission to acceptance (or rejection), and with several accepted (i.e., major revisions) manuscripts never being returned due to COVID complications ranging from their own diagnosis to life changes due to the pandemic, the ultimate result has been the need to combine several issues and delay publications.
With the launching of the Feminist Voices section, we have had an increase in first-person pieces such as Women, Life, Freedom: The New Unveiling of Feminism by Manijeh Daneshpour and Sima Hassandokht Firooz (Daneshpour & Firooz, Citation2022), Talking about Race with Children by Ebonyse Mead and Jen Neitzel (Mead & Neitzel, Citation2021), and Beyond the Numbers: A Demand for a Post-Rape Age by Markie L.C. Twist (Twist, Citation2021). The goal of this new section was to create a space consistent with our feminist tenets including questioning neutrality, researcher as participant, insider/outsider status, amplifying voice, absent voices, and awareness of power (Harvey et al., Citation2016). Additionally, we have featured interviews with some amazing feminists in our field (in alphabetical order) – Dr. Katherine Hertlein (Marroquin, Citation2022), Dr. Evan Imber-Black (Tawfiq, Citation2022), Dr. Carmen Knudson-Martin (Eddy, Citation2022), Dr. Candice Maier (Holmes, Citation2023), Dr. Susan McDaniel (Gebel, Citation2022), Dr. Joan C. Williams (Veasey, Citation2022), and Dr. Andrea Wittenborn (Ilkmen, Citation2023).
If you are in this field and have given a conference presentation in the last few years, you may have received an e-mail from me encouraging you to consider writing up your presentation for submission. We also had a special call for papers about COVID that only yielded a few submissions. Here is where I am reaching out to our village.
Please consider:
– Submitting your feminist research for consideration,
– Encouraging colleagues and students to submit their work for consideration,
– Becoming a reviewer, and/or suggesting colleagues, especially those new to the field, to be reviewers.
Not only are we still experiencing COVID, but we will be experiencing the effects and impact across our personal and professional identities for many years to come.
Thank you,
Kristina
References
- Bender, S., Brown, K. S., Kasitz, D., & Vega, O. (2022). Academic women and their children: Parenting during covid-19 and the impact on engagement in scholarship. Family Relations, 71(1), 46–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12632
- Blackburn, H. (2023). The status of women in STEM in higher education in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic: A literature review 2020–2022. Science & Technology Libraries, 42(2), 180–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/0194262X.2022.2082630
- Brown, K. S., Bender, S., Lambrechts, A., Boutelier, S., Farwell, T., Martinez-Suarez, A., & Larasatie, P. (2022). “Set your soul on fire”: A feminist-informed co-constructed autoethnography of sixteen multidiscipline, multicultural, and multilingual globally located academic women exploring gendered academic productivity during Covid-19. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 6(2), 242–264. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/12291
- Brown, K. S., Bender, S., Vega, O., & Kasitz, D.(2021). Academic womxn and their partners: Managing scholarly expectations within the couple relationship in quarantine. Family Relations, 70(4), 939–954. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12572
- Brown, K. S., Farwell, T., Bender, S., Leonoqicz-Bukala, S., Boutelier, I., Martinez-Suarez, A., Lariset, P., & Larasatie, P. (2022). “Part of something larger than myself”: Lessons learned from a multidisciplinary, multicultural, and multilingual international research team of academic women. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069211073209
- Chance, N., Farwell, T., & Hessmiller, J. (2022). Exploring scholarly productivity, supports, and challenges of multinational, female graduate students during a global pandemic. Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education, 14(3A), 69–87. https://doi.org/10.32674/jcihe.v14i3a.4168
- Clancy, A. (2020). On mothering and being mothered: A personal reflection on women’s productivity during COVID‐19. Gender, Work & Organization, 27(5), 857–859. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12486
- Daneshpour, M., & Firooz, S. H. (2022). Women, life, freedom: The new unveiling of feminism. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(3–4), 390–394. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2142450
- Eddy, H. E. (2022). “There is no such thing as neutrality”: An interview with Dr. Carmen Knudson-Martin, Ph.D. on feminism in academia/clinical practice. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(3–4), 280–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2137996
- Gebel, G. C. (2022). “Feminism is the idea of promoting women in every area of life”: Interview with Susan H. McDaniel, PhD on feminism and medical family therapy. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(1–2), 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2057121
- Harvey, R., Brown, K. S., Miller, B., Williams-Reade, J., Tyndall, L., & Murphy, M. (2016). Theory into research practice: Reflections and recommendations on collaborative feminist research. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 28(4), 136–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2016.1235410
- Holmes, J. (2023). “Feminism is the awareness of the inequities that exist within the intersections of identity”: An interview with Dr. Candice Maier. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 35(2), 199–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2023.2197698
- Ilkmen, N. (2023). Intersectional feminism: Interview with Dr. Andrea Wittenborn on feminism and its role in couple and family therapy. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 35(2), 206–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2023.2200991
- Lambrechts, A. A., Larasatie, P., Boutelier, S., Guta, H. A., Leonowicz-Bukała, I., MartinezSuarez, A., & Prashad, S. (2021, July 16). Why research productivity among women in academia suffered during the early stages of COVID-19 crisis: A qualitative analysis EdArXiv Preprints. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/3awdq
- Marroquin, C. (2022). “We don’t ever give up, we just find a different way in”: An interview with Dr. Katherine Hertlein, Ph.D. on feminism and women in academia. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(1–2), 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2066287
- Mead, E., & Neitzel, J. (2021). Talking about race with children. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 33(4), 378–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2021.1988525
- Tawfiq, D. (2022). “Feminism is intersectional”: Interview with Evan Imber-Black, PhD on feminism and marriage and family therapy. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(3–4), 395–403. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2106062
- Twist, M. L. C. (2021). Beyond the numbers: A demand for a post-rape age. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 33(2), 206–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2020.1848054
- Veasey, A. W. (2022). Dr. Joan C. Williams’ gender judo and feminist leadership: A follow-up interview. Journal of Feminist Family Therapy, 34(3–4), 269–279. https://doi.org/10.1080/08952833.2022.2136833