Maintaining productivity is possible with family assistance

Faculty of Law: Professor Usang Assim - Top Achiever

Professor Usang Assim is an Associate Professor of Law at UWC. Her expertise in the area of children’s rights in Africa has seen her gain a prominent voice on the continent, and she has written extensively about the circumstances children face – from Nigeria and the DRC to South Africa and more. As a female academic and a mother, the pandemic took a toll on her both physically and mentally. She noticed quickly how living through a pandemic placed a greater burden on women than men. “Women bear the heaviest share of responsibilities within the domestic space, including ‘housework’ and raising of children.

“The convergence of both the private space and workspace made it practically impossible to set boundaries.” These insights came from difficult first-hand experience. for at least six months of the first year of the pandemic, Prof Assim had charge over two school-aged children (8 and 11 years old). “It was very challenging juggling my own work with oversight over the demands of the children’s schoolwork, given the home-schooling scenario necessitated by the pandemic.

While this juggling is an art that many women/parents have been practising for several years and decades now, being thrust into the lockdown as a result of the pandemic, without prior expectations or plans in place, required significant shifts – emotionally, mentally, psychologically and otherwise; and it took a long while to get the shifts right.”

She freely admits that her productivity took a hit during this time and, as a result, affected her mental health and overall well-being. But she never gave up and found useful solutions. “It helped for the whole family, including the children, to acknowledge that we were in it together and to be committed to making things work for us all as a unit.”

Now things are slowly returning to normal, as evidenced by the fact that she is successfully juggling multiple projects at work again. for example, she is working on her normal teaching load, as well as on an advanced short course of Children’s rights in Africa, which the Dullah omar Institute (UWC) hosts annually, in partnership with the Centre for Human rights and the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria.

“It is a theoretical and practical course that usually brings together about 40 participants engaging with children’s rights and welfare concerns across the continent. The 2021 edition has been scheduled for June and we are organising a hybrid model that combines both physical and online learning.”But Prof Assim is determined to not take anything for granted.

The looming third wave of the pandemic makes any kind of planning difficult and might force some changes to the way she works, but the experience from 2020 has given her the resilience to find a way through it, if it happens again.