“Let’s see how long the body can hold on”: precarious work and subjective precariousness in women who are mothers and university professors

Abstract

Objective  To understand the experiences of female professors who are mothers in the face of job insecurity in public universities, seeking to investigate the relationship between subjective precariousness and social gender markers.

Methods  In a phenomenological study with an empirical slant, seven mother-professors from different age groups, areas of knowledge, and institutions were interviewed.

Results  The main findings were that they faced challenges in reconciling motherhood and work, an overload of activities, gender injustice, and a lack of an institutional support network. As a result, some felt stagnant in their careers, frustrated, and/or emotionally exhausted. Despite this, they recognized the flexibility of the profession as a privilege for dedicating time to their children, bringing them to work, having the support of their partner/other women, and giving priority to caring for the family.

Conclusion  The precariousness of these professors’ work is favored by structural gender inequalities, which have a negative impact on their mental health, well-being, and quality of life, since the public universities where they work perpetuate these inequalities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for public policies that change the context of knowledge production in Brazilian universities, to favor these women with conditions of gender equity at work and that promote health.

Keywords
Gender Studies; Women, Working; Occupational Risks; Occupational Health; Universities

Resumo

Objetivo  Compreender experiências de docentes mulheres mães diante da precarização do trabalho em universidades públicas, buscando investigar relações entre precariedade subjetiva e marcadores sociais de gênero.

Métodos  Em um estudo fenomenológico de tendência empírica, entrevistaram-se sete docentes mães de diferentes faixas etárias, áreas de saber e instituições.

Resultados  Compreendeu-se, principalmente, que elas enfrentavam desafios para conciliar maternidade e trabalho, sobrecarga de atividades, injustiça de gênero e falta de rede de apoio institucional. Diante disso, algumas sentiam-se estagnadas na carreira, frustravam-se e/ou desgastavam-se emocionalmente. Apesar disso, reconheceram a flexibilidade de tempo da profissão como privilégio para dedicação aos filhos, levavam-nos para o ambiente de trabalho, tinham apoio do companheiro/outras mulheres e davam prioridade ao cuidado da família.

Conclusão  A precarização do trabalho dessas docentes é favorecida pelas desigualdades estruturais de gênero, que têm impactos negativos na saúde mental, no bem-estar e na qualidade de vida delas, pois as universidades públicas em que trabalham perpetuam essas desigualdades. Portanto, há necessidade urgente de políticas públicas que mudem o contexto da produção de conhecimento nas universidades brasileiras, no sentido de favorecer essas mulheres com condições de equidade de gênero no trabalho e que promovam saúde.

Palavras-chave
Estudos de Gênero; Mulheres Trabalhadoras; Trabalho Precário; Saúde do Trabalhador; Universidades

Introduction

Neoliberalism is not just a political and economic doctrine, but a social process that guides ways of feeling, thinking, and acting, and has a wide impact on people’s mental health¹-⁴. It has brought about drastic changes in the world, among which the precariousness of working conditions and relationships and subjective precariousness stand out.

The precariousness of work is characterized, among other things, by work contexts that are unfavorable to the worker, due to control mechanisms aimed at increasing production. It involves strict evaluation criteria, a focus on productivity indicators and meritocracy², in addition to establishing a culture of high performance in contemporary society. This culture is imbued with values such as fierce competitiveness, exacerbated individualism, high performance, failure of bonds, lack of solidarity, and individual isolation among work collectives, which can trigger suffering and/or psychological illness¹,⁴,⁵.

The high incidence of intense suffering and/or mental illness in the contemporary world of work permeates what Linhart⁶ has called subjective precariousness: a feeling of strangeness on the part of the worker, who feels isolated, abandoned, and disbelieving in their own potential to master their productive work. This process can be understood as a rupture in the way workers experience their work⁷. However, suffering related to subjective precariousness is a social and not an individual experience, as it results from the social and cultural logic of neoliberalism¹. As a result, everyone in the society of tiredness⁸ is forced to perform to the maximum but still feels like a failure.

Subjective precariousness, therefore, is the result of neoliberal modes of subjectivation, based on performance, goals, achievements, and overcoming, whose attributes are full availability for work, hyper productivity, instant communication, competition, and social, digital, and mental acceleration. In this sense, there is a tendency for people in this context to become economists of their own health, to take individual responsibility for it and to remain socially adjusted to productive conditions¹.

This process is a norm of neoliberal rationality, which affects the different social classes unequally. Specifically regarding gender issues, women have long experienced precariousness, since precarious female work long predates the collapse of Fordism. Moreover, the sexual division of labor is something that has always been present in history, defining what constitutes the place of men and women in the domestic sphere and compromising the female gender’s balance between life and work⁹.

Thus, the forms of precarious work are highly marked by gender, since the sexual division of labor and the social/cultural discrimination faced by women in industrial and post-industrial societies predates productive restructuring and neoliberalism, and they have been unassisted for many years in terms of their social and labor rights⁹.

Furthermore, the sexual division of precarious work cannot be understood without looking at the extra-work dimension. The indicators of precarious work are anchored in social issues, with women being assigned a lower number of hours worked and lower levels on the professional qualification scale, which is correlated to a gendered composition, as they are socially subordinated to decision-making bodies and assigned male responsibilities¹⁰. In this sense, there is continuity in the social relations of sex at work and outside of work. This dynamic also contributes to clarifying the reproduction over the centuries of an invariable: the hierarchy between the sexes, which is characterized by the supremacy of the male².

When it comes to the work context in Brazilian public universities, considering that they began to incorporate the logic of flexible capitalism and adopt the generalist management model from the 1990s onwards, workers were affected by meritocratic evaluation systems, the accumulation of functions, and academic productivism, and were not exempt from the precariousness of working conditions and relations. Therefore, these subjects have been drastically impregnated by the process of subjective precariousness. Furthermore, as institutions that reproduce what happens beyond their walls, these organizations also reproduce gender asymmetry, making women’s work much more precarious⁴,¹¹-¹⁴.

In the scientific communities that make up these universities, especially in the context of postgraduate studies, there are inequalities, discrimination, and limitations imposed on women’s trajectories. Women’s expertise is even delegitimized by professors and students¹⁴. Patriarchy has conditioned women to subalternity, as well as to disputes. Therefore, objectivity, abstraction, rationality, logic, and universality are valued, characteristics culturally associated with the male sex, and which are present in the university environment, which shows an intense asymmetry between women and men¹⁵.

In view of the above, the problem of this research was contextualized based on the following questions: what are the experiences of female professors in the face of precarious work in public universities? Are there possibilities of subjective precariousness and the relationship between it and gender markers in these professors?

With this in mind, the aim of this study was to understand the experiences of female professors who are mothers in the face of job insecurity in public universities, seeking to investigate the relationship between subjective insecurity and gender-related social markers.

Methods

Type of study

This was a qualitative phenomenological study with an empirical slant, in which: the subjectivity of the researcher is taken into account in the dialogue with the research subject; and it is up to the researcher to understand the meanings of human experience, privileging singular manifestations of phenomena in order to analyze the experiences of everyday and concrete situations¹⁶-²¹.

Participant recruitment and selection

In qualitative-phenomenological research, the researcher favors an intentional sample, made up of a small number of subjects, because the aim is an accurate description of experiences lived in a certain time, space and place²²-²⁴. To reach potential participants, the study was publicized on social networks and by e-mail to the course coordinators of the institutions involved, informing them of the objectives, target audience, and details of the data collection.

Seven professors who were interested in taking part in the study voluntarily signed up, and who met the study’s inclusion criteria: being a female mother; teaching in face-to-face undergraduate courses; regardless of age, marital status, race, number of children, length of service, course, and degree; and who were tenured professors working 40 hours a week.

Data collection procedure and technique

Given their interest, a meeting was scheduled with each professor in the office of a psychology school, to guarantee the secrecy and confidentiality of the data. The instrument used was an open-ended individual interview with a triggering question, intended to bring the subject into immediate contact with the experience. This instrument allows the researcher to understand not only the singular meanings of the experience, but also how different people experience situations in common¹⁶,¹⁷,²⁵, and was not used to saturate the data, but to share the meanings experienced by people who live in the same social reality²⁴, in this case, being a female professor at a public university.

The triggering question to open the dialog was “How do you experience being a professor, a woman, and a mother at the university where you work, considering your working conditions and relationships?”. The researcher gave priority to the participant’s free account, but to achieve the study’s objective, they also inserted questions throughout the interview, which lasted an average of 20 to 50 minutes, was recorded, and later transcribed for the purpose of analyzing the results.

Data analysis procedure

The interview reports were analyzed using the steps proposed for empirical phenomenological research¹⁶,²⁶,²⁷: a) integral contact with the interview as a whole (each member of the research team read each interview individually in order to grasp the meanings of the experience being investigated); b) encounter with significant elements of the experience (the research team discussed what each member had grasped and reached a dialogical consensus on the meanings grasped that related to the research objective); c) synthesis of the individual report (the previous dialogue led to the drafting of a text constituting a preliminary analysis which was sent by e-mail to the interviewee, so that she could validate or not the preliminary analysis of her report - there was no disagreement on the analysis, but two professors proposed some changes in terms); d) Presenting the experience in 13 Meaning Units (MU), after receiving feedback from the preliminary analyses (the research team made generalizations about the common meanings identified about the experience investigated, considering factors that characterized the precariousness of work situations - MU 1 to 5, possibilities of subjective precariousness - MU 6 to 8, and strategies used by professors in the face of precarious work processes and/or subjective precariousness - MU 9 to 13).

Ethical considerations

The research protocol was registered in the Brazil Platform (CAAE 81331224.8.0000.0282), and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of the Federal University of the São Francisco Valley (CEP HU-Univasf, under opinion No. 7.048.782, dated September 2, 2024.

To take part in the research voluntarily, each participant, after having all their doubts clarified, signed the Free and Informed Consent Form and the Authorization Form for the Use of Voice Sound for Research Purposes before the individual interview.

Results and discussion

To preserve the identity of the participating professors, pseudonyms were established referring to women who have stood out throughout Brazilian history for their mastery of knowledge, bravery, courage, innovation, and/or determination, namely: Ana Nery, Bárbara, Celina, Dulce, Nise, Nísia, and Raquel.

Table 1 shows the sociodemographic data of the participants, which will serve to enrich the discussion of the results as they relate to the meanings of their experiences. The professors were aged between 35 and 42, i.e. they were of productive and reproductive age. Most of them were mothers of one or two school-age children, which requires a more intense routine of attending to the needs of these children, although most of them were married or in a stable union, which indicates the possibility of sharing duties in relation to children and domestic activities. Moreover, most of them had been working in the health or human sciences fields and at federal institutions for more than 10 years (which demonstrates a long academic career in teaching, research, and extension activities).

Table 1
Sociodemographic data of the research participants

Name	Age	Marital status	Number of children	Age of children (years)	Degree	Field of work*	Teaching time (years)	Public sector
Ana Nery	39	Married	3	17, 10 and 12	PhD	Human Sciences	12	State
Barbara	35	Married	1	2	PhD	Linguistics, Literature and Arts	13	State
Celina	41	Single	1	10	PhD	Human Sciences	14	Federal
Dulce	43	Married	1	14	PhD	Biological Sciences	14	Federal
Nise	37	Stable union	1	< 1	Doctor	Health Sciences	10	Federal
Nísia	42	Married	2	12 and 9	PhD	Health Sciences	16	Federal
Raquel	39	Stable union	2	8 and 4	Doctor	Health Sciences	5	Federal

• *According to the Capes classification of major areas.
• Source: own elaboration (2025).

Table 2 shows the sequenced descriptions of the 13 MU in common found in four or more of the professors’ reports. The first MU identified was the various challenges of reconciling motherhood and work, which cause emotional distress, especially when the children are younger or neurodivergent. All the participants reported difficulties in working double or triple shifts to concurrently carry out various activities and cope with the duties of motherhood and teaching, especially in the first months/years of their children’s lives; especially in the case of neurodivergent children, whose demands on their mothers generate overload and doubts, corroborating what Silva et al.²⁸ advocate. For example:

Table 2
Description of the Meaning Units (MU) and the respective participants in which they were identified

Meaning Unit	Description	Collaborator
MU1: Various challenges in reconciling motherhood and work cause emotional strain, especially when the children are younger or neurodivergent.	All the participants, especially the mothers of younger or neurodivergent children (who require more care and attention), revealed that they faced various challenges in trying to simultaneously combine teaching and motherhood: taking on various commitments and demands at the same time, mental fatigue from the struggles of working double or triple shifts, internal pressure from academic productivity versus daily childcare, schedule clashes, or taking work home.	Ana Nery Barbara Celina Dulce Nise Nísia Raquel
MU2: Overburdened by work and motherhood, mainly because obligations regarding the children fall on the mother and not the father	All the participants revealed that they feel overburdened by the demands of teaching and motherhood, because, in addition to the strenuous routines in terms of the activities to be carried out, childcare is culturally attributed to women, which leads to the sexual division of labor, and their attributions of tasks are unequal to those of men.	Ana Nery Barbara Celina Dulce Nise Nísia Raquel
MU3: Lack of recognition, respect, and validation for female professors in the workplace	Most of the participants felt that, for society, academic life does not go hand in hand with motherhood, pointing out that some colleagues choose not to be mothers and that there are limitations in public policies that promote equity and guarantee fair conditions for mothers. They pointed to a lack of recognition, validation, and respect for professors who are mothers. Some of them even mentioned institutional limitations to taking on management positions.	Ana Nery Barbara Nise Nísia Raquel
MU4: Feelings of gender injustice due to the presence of structural and/or institutional sexism	Most of the participants noticed differences in treatment or opportunities in the academic environment between male and female professors, as they did not have the chance to compete on equal terms, nor did they have access to the same opportunities, highlighting how academia reproduces society’s structural sexism, as the pace of work and the career of the father professor do not change; they are not affected by the sexual division of labor and continue to be the majority in management positions at public universities.	Bárbara Dulce Nise Nísia Raquel
MU5: Lack of institutional and/or family support network	Most of the participants revealed that they did not have an institutional and/or family support network, which made their day-to-day work difficult, as they had to cope alone with all the demands and meet the requirements imposed by the roles of professor and mother, especially when their children were younger or neurodivergent. They also stressed the importance of the university providing a space to enable the mother professor to dedicate herself better to her work.	Ana Nery Barbara Celina Nise Nísia Raquel
MU6: Internal conflicts in managing time to devote to children and work	Most of the participants reported internal conflicts when faced with the need to manage their time to take care of their children and their work activities, such as: meeting academic deadlines, teaching activities and scientific productivity, keeping up with the pace of their colleagues, and worrying about their children when they are carrying out professional activities.	Bárbara Dulce Nise Nísia Raquel
MU7: Career stagnation due to not keeping up with the pace of scientific productivity in teaching, which leads to comparisons, self-blame, and frustration	Some of the participants felt stagnant in their careers after having children, because they no longer had the same pace of academic productivity as before, such as coordinating projects and advising students. They were also unable to take advantage of opportunities for scientific production (participation in events or invitations to write articles), which led to self-blame and frustration when compared to other colleagues.	Barbara Nise Nísia Raquel
MU8: Emotional exhaustion, intense suffering, and/or mental illness	All the participants, faced with their various work and childcare responsibilities, expressed symptoms of emotional exhaustion, intense suffering, and/or psychological illness as a result of trying to reconcile motherhood and teaching. Some of them said they felt lonely and/or guilty. While some gave up caring for their own health due to lack of time, a few others underwent psychotherapy and/or used psychotropic drugs.	Ana Nery Barbara Celina Dulce Nise Nísia Raquel
MU9: Taking children to work in the face of limited support networks	Some participants revealed that, due to the lack of a support network for their children, they took them to work as a strategy to reconcile teaching with motherhood, including a few who said they relied on the support of colleagues and students as a way of coping with the demands of academic life.	Ana Nery Barbara Nise Raquel
MU10: Privilege of the profession to look after children	Some of the participants acknowledged that it was a privilege to be a professor in a public institution because, unlike other professions, there are advantages such as flexible working hours and vacation time, which makes it easier to organize time to devote to their children. Some of them even referred to the salary, which allows them to pay someone to look after them.	Celina Nise Nísia Raquel
MU11: Support network with other women and/or division of tasks with partner	Most of the participants highlighted the importance of support from other women who recognize the implications of being a working mother, as well as partnership in the division of tasks with their partner at home as fundamental strategies for reconciling the duties of professor and mother.	Ana Nery Barbara Dulce Nísia Raquel
MU12: Timed and productive time management	Most of the participants pointed out that one of their coping strategies for dealing with the demands and separating the roles of professor and mother is to manage their schedules so that they are productive at all times, so that they rigidly plan the time they devote to caring for their children and to work (even if they are off the clock and at home).	Ana Nery Barbara Dulce Nísia Raquel
MU13: Prioritizing family and children	Most of the participants said that they prioritized time with their families and caring for their children, to the detriment of the demands of teaching.	Ana Nery Barbara Dulce Nise Raquel

I have a daughter who has learning disorders, diagnosed with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder], dyslexia. My attention to her [...] drains me more as a mother [...]. Her demands, when you add them to the university demands and other demands I have from my other children, it all takes up a lot of time (Ana Nery).

It’s very difficult to reconcile day to day [...] And we end up giving up a lot of things, in our own work, to cope [...]. My son is about to turn two and he’s at a stage where he still needs a lot from me, and he’s going to be like this for many years (Bárbara).

They also revealed that the overload of work and motherhood activities occurs mainly because the obligations regarding the children fall on the mother and not the father (MU2). This expresses how culturally strong the sexual division still is in our society² when it comes to women’s obligations in terms of housework and childcare, considering that most of the interviewees were married or living in a stable union.

Studies show that many married women and mothers are responsible for looking after their children and that they experience difficulties and limits in teaching due to the demands of domestic tasks, such as academic production²⁹. Therefore, it is understood that the mental health of these professors was affected by the gendered facet of psychological distress³⁰, since stereotypes sustain inequality, reaffirm social values, and define binary behavioral patterns between men and women, expressing regularities shaped by a social configuration³¹ that seems to influence their interpretation of themselves and their partners, in terms of their responsibility for their children. See:

I have a girl who has ADHD, and she needs to do a million activities [...]. I’m the one who takes her to all the activities, to all the doctor’s appointments, to therapy, because the father doesn’t take part in anything at all. It’s very onerous!” (Celina).

As far as maternal responsibility is concerned, when it comes to weight, all the decisions usually come from me [...]. I’m here, but I’m thinking about the school, if they’re doing their homework. When the school calls, they don’t call the father, they call the mother (Dulce).

After I became a mother, if I go to a congress, my life must stop a month beforehand to organize the school, who’s coming, who’s going. I leave it to my husband, he’ll do everything, but he can’t handle the mental load [...], because he’s used me knowing it all (Nísia).

Despite all the physical and mental effort put in by these women to cope with their duties, most of them seemed to feel a lack of recognition, respect, and validation as a mother-professor in the workplace (MU3). Being immersed in a competitive career occupation, based on the logic of productivity³²,³³, they recalled that many of their teaching colleagues postpone motherhood or do not opt for it.

In addition, they revealed difficulties for mothers to take on management positions, corroborating how gender relations still interfere in the context of public universities, where the majority of management positions, especially those at the top of the hierarchy, are held by men, even though the number of women teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate courses has increased in recent decades in some Brazilian states³⁴.

Men and women are distinguished here [...]. In this management, you can see that, in a way, ever since I arrived at the university, I’ve noticed this: they’re either men or people who already have adult children and are generally divorced (Nísia).

Many of them decide, even though they still want to. They say: “I’ve always wanted to, but I don’t see how I could. And I need to survive, I need to work, so my job is my priority at the moment. If I have to give up this desire to be a mother, so be it, because I chose this profession” (Raquel).

It was thus understood that the professors investigated did not have public policies that guaranteed their rights to gender equality and fair conditions in the exercise of their profession, which made their working realities even more precarious. It is possible to reflect on how university daycare, flexible working hours, and exclusive monitoring notices for subjects taught by these professors could help them to guarantee better working conditions and even act as protective factors for their mental health.

Furthermore, the precarious conditions to which they were exposed led them to experience feelings of gender injustice due to the presence of structural and/or institutional sexism (MU4) and a lack of an institutional or family support network (MU5), since most of them not only felt treated differently from male professors at the universities where they worked, but also had no institutional or family support network, which made their daily work and private life difficult. In this sense, it is possible to say that even though these women worked in well-paid jobs, they were subordinated to a structural patriarchy that not only exploits and dominates their bodies but also reproduces neoliberal productivism and the sexual division of labor²⁹.

We also have to think not only about the family support network, but also about the support network at work [...]. If workplaces thought more and more about this idea of having spaces for children, to be able to help mothers at certain times, it would be very valuable (Ana Nery).

There’s also an imbrication of gender, because I have a daughter, I’m separated [...]. Men are one father when they’re with their wives and they’re quite another when they’re not with their wives. So, it’s hard to support this burden, which is also a gender burden (Celina).

Moreover, it was noticed that, being of productive and reproductive age, some of these professors repeated ways of being at work/at home that had already been seen in other studies, as they intensified their work, childcare, and child-rearing activities as a way of fulfilling their professional duties, as the public sphere invaded the private sphere³³, and vice versa, as they could not count on a family support network because they were far from their families of origin²⁸; nor institutional support, given the lack of spaces in public universities such as crèches to care for younger children³⁵. Take a look:

We have that feeling: “My God, am I going to handle it? I won’t be able to handle it? We end up handling, because we don’t have a choice [...]. Am I going to leave my daughter unattended? Who’s going to look after her? Am I going to give up my job? (Celina).

Unless we create a daycare. A place for professors and students to leave their children. But to say that this is a place for children, it is not. We don’t have the structure for it [...]. For me, this is where the university is most at fault. It doesn’t consider me as a mother (Nísia).

In view of the factors that make work precarious, it can be understood that there were possibilities of subjective precariousness among some professors, given that most of them had internal conflicts to manage the time they had to dedicate to their children and their work (MU6); in addition, some felt they were facing career stagnation because they were not keeping up with the pace of scientific productivity among professors, which leads to comparisons, self-blame, and frustration (MU7), and emotional exhaustion, intense suffering, and/or psychological illness (MU8). It can therefore be said that these MU are directly related to the compromised mental health of some of these professors. Raquel revealed: “I have a lot of projects, a lot of things I want to do. So, to think that I might not be able to do it because I’m the mother of a small child. That it doesn’t demand as much, that’s very frustrating”. As Nise said:

Sometimes you get that feeling that you’ve done a lot looking after the child, but it seems like the day has come and gone and you’ve done nothing productive, defining productive as work stuff [...]. It’s as if you had an inner burden [...]. I see that similar things are coming out and I’m falling behind.

These results corroborate previous studies with mothers, as guilt seems to be omnipresent, either because they dedicate themselves to their careers or to working outside to the detriment of caring for their children/family, or the other way around, which makes it difficult for them to relax³³, especially when some of them are unable to be fully available for their children³⁵ or decrease their academic productivity due to motherhood/domestic duties²⁹,³³,³⁶.

The reports of these professors, therefore, not only demonstrate the internalization of the values in force in society regarding the role of mother, but also seem to indicate the internalization of the culture of academic productivism, which can lead to harmful effects on the mental health of these workers, especially considering the time they still have ahead of them as professors and the abdication of many in terms of caring for their own health due to lack of time. See:

Because I had to be a teacher to my children [...]. I was at the stage of writing my thesis and everything, and still attending some classes, and exercising this role of mother and educator of children [...]. I felt symptoms of anxiety, of being suffocated, those little twitches in my eye. I could feel my mind racing in my body (Ana Nery).

I also find myself frustrated by rejection, and then my mind goes into a loop: “gee, you’re missing an opportunity, aren’t you?” Then there’s another little voice: “no, it’s okay, your child will grow up, then there will be other opportunities and so on”. But at the same time: “What if other opportunities don’t come along? What if I’m being left behind?”. And I feel very tired, having to be a thousand versions of myself, overwhelmed, in fact (Bárbara).

I’ve had sinusitis for about three weeks. We can’t even look after ourselves, because if I stop to go to the hospital, it’s a lost day. First of all, how do I leave my children? If my husband has school, there’s no way (Raquel).

In terms of coping strategies, it was possible to list: taking children to work in the face of limited support networks (MU9), privileging their profession because they can look after their children (MU10), support networks with other women and/or sharing tasks with their partner (MU11), timed and productive time management (MU12) and prioritizing family and children (MU13). These strategies helped them reconcile teaching with motherhood, as well as allowing them to manage their time better in the face of so many academic and childcare duties. See:

And other strategies I use are to organize my schedule, to have everything written down, timed. Because when you have a lot of demands, if you don’t have an organized schedule, you get lost (Ana Nery).

The practical issue is organizing your schedule. I’m very strict with my timetable. This rigidity benefits me in the sense that I have to set a rhythm to fulfill my domestic, maternal, personal, and work activities [...]. Not only me, but other colleagues have already had to take the child with them to meetings, so as not to miss work (Bárbara).

I see that I have a privilege, because as my timetable as a professor is flexible, I can still bring him here for a series of appointments, where I can make some adjustments, things that I think if I had a CLT [Consolidation of Labor Laws] job I wouldn’t be able to do (Nise).

University gives me the chance to have lunch with my boys every day, to put them to bed and read them a story before bed every day. Many jobs don’t allow mothers to do that. So, although it’s very demanding, we have this flexibility of time [...]. It’s a privilege (Raquel).

However, authors argue that, faced with a job that allows for professional fulfillment, being able to rely on third parties, while benefiting professors, can also generate guilt in women from higher economic backgrounds²⁸. Others, however, recognize that the profession of teaching in higher education makes it possible to pay someone to look after their children, favoring scientific productivity³², while others emphasize the more active participation of these workers in raising children, due to the possibility of flexible demands³⁶.

Nevertheless, it is understood that taking children to work may not allow a greater focus on teaching, research, and extension activities, which require a lot of concentration from the professional, as well as making the worker involved with multiple demands at the same time. As interviewee Nise said: “my strategy is to bring him, but I don’t know to what extent, because with him here, I can’t help the students as I used to”.

But there seems to be an attempt by mother professors to plan their time to be superwomen involved in multitasking³⁵. It is understood that their flexibility to dedicate their time to their work allows for better time management, but also requires discipline, with other women and some partners providing support in the division of tasks, especially those who are also professors and understand the situation. However, as seen in MU2, for some interviewees, the division of tasks with their partner is not so equal. See:

I talk a lot with colleagues who are mothers, who have already spent more time in the wilderness of motherhood, reconciling motherhood and career [...]. Maintaining these healthy dialogues is also very important. This support network we form helps a lot (Bárbara).

I’ve always been surrounded by women. It’s easier for us to collaborate with each other. So, my new way of existing was to exist in a group. There is no longer the professor. There is the professor’s group. And it’s a group of mostly women who understand each other (Nísia).

The partnership I have with my husband has been fundamental. He’s also my work colleague. So, I’m able to help myself a lot with this academic thing too. He says: “Let’s do it. Don’t give up! Come on, you can do it! I’ll help you!” (Raquel).

It was also possible to understand that the time most of them dedicated to work, as observed in other studies³³, was conditioned by the time spent caring for their children and family. For example:

If I’m not as productive as I am today, I’ll still get my salary. I’ll be fulfilling my role as a professor. But if I’m absent as a mother, there won’t be anyone else to take my place (Ana Nery).

I police myself a lot when it comes to taking work home. I only give up this part of the family when I can’t manage here because of some problem with work. If I can’t sort it out at that moment, I leave it until I can do it again at work (Dulce).

Like participants in other studies³⁵, some of the professors interviewed had given up professional opportunities and were willing to sacrifice this for the sake of their children. We therefore recognize these women’s efforts to exercise care, because even though they are multi-skilled workers, they fight and resist a culture that gives centrality to productive work, and which increasingly makes people and institutions more precarious and sick.

Conclusion

The results presented make it possible to state that the objectives of the research were achieved, as it was possible to understand the experiences of female professors who are mothers in the face of precarious work in public universities, investigating the relationship between subjective precariousness and social gender markers. Describing the meanings of these experiences made it possible to identify factors that characterized job insecurity, discuss the possibilities of subjective insecurity in professors, and list their coping strategies in the face of job insecurity and/or subjective insecurity.

The results also point to the lack of an institutional support network for these mothers, who are constantly involved in work overload, which is often the reason for giving up the desire for motherhood and/or a feeling of career stagnation due to not being able to meet the pace of productivity required, leading to suffering and/or psychological illness. It can be said that this whole scenario is favored by structural gender inequalities, which have a negative impact on the mental health, well-being, and quality of life of these professors, since the public universities to which they belong unfortunately still perpetuate these inequalities in the workplace.

However, we recognize the need for other studies that investigate more professors or even graduate students who are mothers, in order to validate, through the description of concrete and situated experiences, the urgent need for public policies that change the context of knowledge production in Brazilian universities, in order to offer current or future university professors/researchers conditions of gender equity at work that favor health promotion.

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• Data availability:
  The study protocol approved by the Research Ethics Committee did not contemplate making the database available in open access, only allowing its use for the purposes foreseen in the approved protocol.
• Statement on the use of Artificial Intelligence:
  The authors declare that no artificial intelligence tools were used to prepare the article.
• Presentation at a scientific event:
  The results of this study were presented at the 18th Teaching, Research and Extension Week (SCIENTEX), held at UNIVASF between November 26 and 28, 2025, at the institution’s Centro campus in Petrolina-PE.
• Funding:
  CNPq-Univasf Institutional Program for Scientific Initiation Scholarships (PIBIC) 2024-2025.

Edited by

• Responsible editors:
  Camila Maria Cenzi
  Leila Posenato Garcia
  Lúcia Rotenberg
  Tânia Maria de Araújo

Data availability

The study protocol approved by the Research Ethics Committee did not contemplate making the database available in open access, only allowing its use for the purposes foreseen in the approved protocol.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  03 Apr 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  21 July 2025
• Reviewed
  22 Sept 2025
• Accepted
  24 Sept 2025