Under the Horizon 2020 SUPERA (Supporting the Promotion of Equality in Research and Academia) Project, a survey on working academic conditions, academic time usage perception and academic performance during the Covid-19 lock-down was conducted in June 2020 at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). It was distributed among the whole census of the faculty staff at the university, getting back more than 1500 responses, representing almost 25 % of the population. The results are very clear that female faculty staff experienced a much harder time during the lockdown than their male colleagues. Significant differences were found, and women experienced worse working conditions, and an increased time in both domestic/caring and academic work. Also gender roles were confirmed and aggravated during lockdown in academic time usage, and all these conditions and gender roles distribution in academia have consequences in academic performance and production.

This paper presents the main empirical results highlighting the gender differences in academic time usage perception, consisting of a reproduction of the gender roles even before the pandemic, and an aggravation of the gender roles differences during the confinement. These gender roles confirm two main ideas: That the emotional impact has been higher in women, and that female academics perceive they spent more time in teaching and students’ attention, while male academics did it in research, writing and publishing, with also significant differences especially in the academic production that is more relevant for an academic career, such as articles in peer-reviewed journals. These survey quantitative results are also explored in light of further qualitative analyses, and of the persistent structural inequalities that can be found at the university setting. Moreover, these qualitative results were enriched through a participatory process led by the Gender Equality Nodes Network in the different Faculties at the UCM.

In sum, this article aims at contributing to structural change projects by presenting possible institutional responses to be included in Gender Equality Plans at the University; not only mitigation measures, but also structural change ones that go beyond the pandemic and post pandemic and target gender inequalities that have been aggravated during the pandemic and post pandemic, but were already present before.