Mulheres em territórios de conflitos e violência: a docente universitária e o sofrimento mental antes e durante a pandemia

Abstract

Given the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impacts on global health, this research aims to analyze mental health and gender conflicts in university teaching before and after the start of the pandemic in public universities of Minas Gerais. In order to collect data that could contribute to possible correlations with mental suffering, teaching work and gender, we took a medical anthropological perspective. The study approach was qualitative, descriptive and based on fieldwork. Six professors from public universities of Minas Gerais – with knowledge, experience and academic engagement – were interviewed on mental health, gender differences, work, and pandemic. This research exposes the conflicts experienced by these professors before and during the pandemic. The identified categories are work overload; the context of the teaching profession and the emergency of the remote teaching; gender relations, pandemic and mental suffering. Among them, the work overload stands out in view of the multiple nature of the teacher's tasks – management, teaching, research and extension; conflicting relations in home, work, and pandemic; precariousness, intensification, and extensification in teaching; the context of the teaching profession and the emergency of the remote teaching; gender relations; motherhood and teaching. Besides, mental distress appears before the pandemic and has increased so far. The results showed that promotion of mental health of women-researchers mothers-daughters in a micro dimension points to practical actions of physical and mental care, friendship, and interaction between peers and students. On the other hand, in a macro dimension, it raises more structuring actions related to the organization of teaching work in the universities in the pursuit of reframing sexism, that is still in force, as well as the relation between productivism and professional competence. This context disregards the constituent sphere of public universities, that is, being a place of knowledge production and social transformation.