Towards a ‘virtual’ world: Social isolation and struggles during the COVID‐19 pandemic as single women living alone

Gao, Grace and Sai, Linna (2020) Towards a ‘virtual’ world: Social isolation and struggles during the COVID‐19 pandemic as single women living alone. Gender, Work & Organization, 27 (5). pp. 754-762. ISSN 0968-6673

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Abstract

This article is a personal reflection of how the current COVID‐19 pandemic affects our working lives and wellbeing, as single female academics who live alone in the UK. We offer a dialogue of our daily lives of being confined at home with lockdown measures extended. In particular, we focus on the experience of, and coping with, isolation and loneliness. Is isolation making us more socially connected? Through ‘virtual’ working and changing learning environments for us as teachers and learners, we explore changes in our working life and subsequent changes in the domestic environment. By capturing our lived experiences, we create an intellectual and safe space to voice our emotional struggles — as ‘invisible’ isolated individuals containing and consuming loneliness on our own. We foster alternative conversations as to how we might engender new perspectives from single female academics to combat social isolation in the workplace.

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