Abstract:

Gender is a crucial aspect in revealing how social practice is ordered. The COVID-19 pandemic has become this century’s unprecedented global public health crisis, which has had a huge impact on people's daily lives and challenged many aspects of our predominant perceptions and expectations about our society and family. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than 20 Chinese university faculty members who have experienced quarantine at different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is argued that returning to jia (Chinese term of family) physically and emotionally becomes a contingent solution for emplaced Chinese university teachers to cope with prolonged physical isolation under the strict anti-pandemic measures. The extensive stress, anxiety, and torment of burnout amid the temporal suspension associated with threat of the coronavirus and rigid anti-epidemic policy has generated an internal force for family members to rediscover the complex value of the family, reshape their family relationships and renegotiate the gender-role job division at home in times of crisis.

Speaker's Biography:

Dr. Wai-wan Vivien Chan is a sociologist. Currently she is Research Professor at Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology. She completed her PhD at School of International Studies, University of Technology Sydney and her research was funded by the Australian Government, under the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research （DIISR） for persons of exceptional research potential undertaking a higher degree by research. Two of her co-authored Chinese books on entrepreneurs and professionals have been selected to be part of ‘The Hong Kong Oral History Special Collection’ by the Hong Kong Central Library. Chan’s latest books include Female Chinese Bankers in the Asia Pacific: Gender, Mobility and Opportunity by Routledge (London, 2020) and Return Migration in Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel: Choices, Stresses and Coping by Springer (New York, 2021). Her current research interests are: Transnational migration, urban study (focus on Greater Bay Area), comparative study on the coping strategy of covid-19 crisis.