Narrative encounters: women researchers amidst the pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a serious rupture in everyday life, subjecting people to social distancing and isolation, demanding performances of several occupational roles in the same environment. Thus, eleven women from two federal universities came together to do science and produce mutual virtual support groups for the population for six different target-groups. In this article, we present a reflection on the authors’ stories from similar and singular aspects, difficulties and privileges identified that permeate our lives. We used cartography to develop this article due to the possibility of breaking the academic positivist logic and expressing feelings and subjectivities. Understanding this experience as irreproducible by its technique, narratives were built from the question: “How does my history as a woman affect my participation in this research activity?”. After the readings, eight categories of analysis were listed and it was inferred that gender, race/ethnicity, and class may be privileges or obstacles depending on their expression: male/female, white/
black, high/low. For women, the sexual division of labor, double working hours, and motherhood amplify the disadvantage caused by gender.