Covid, Crisis, Care, and Change?: International Gender Perspectives on Re/Production, State and Feminist Transitions

The authors analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated social inequalities in labor, care work, and state regulation, particularly in the service sector and healthcare. While there has been increased social recognition of these activities, material recognition is still lacking. They explore how processes of recognition and appropriation in system-relevant professions change during social crises and the role of gender relations in these changes.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 300 pages
Publication date: 04 April 2022
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich

The Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated pre-existing social disparities across various domains. The authors delve into the extent to which the social transformations brought about by the corona pandemic are fundamental and enduring at the social levels of labor, care work, and state regulation, considering their gender dimensions. The contradictory organization of work and life under capitalist conditions and their gender relations become particularly apparent in the service sector, as well as in health, care, and childcare. Since the onset of the pandemic, the social recognition of these previously devalued activities has reached unprecedented heights. Nevertheless, symbolic gestures of acknowledgment fall short of comprehensive material recognition. Thus, the question arises: How (strongly) do processes of recognition and appropriation in system-relevant professions evolve during social crises, and what role do gender relations play in this transformation?

The Covid-19 crisis has intensified already existing social inequalities in different spheres.

The authors examine how fundamental and sustainable the social changes over the course of the corona pandemic are at the social levels of labor, care work, and state regulation in their gender dimensions.

The contradictory organization of labor and life under capitalist conditions and their gender relations are particularly visible in the service sector as well as in the sectors of health, care, and childcare. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the social recognition of these previously devalued activities has risen to new heights. However, gestures of symbolic acknowledgements do not meet with comprehensive material recognition.

So how (strongly) do processes of recognition and appropriation in system-relevant professions actually change in times of social crisis and what role do gender relations play?

Dimension: 210 x 148 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783847425410