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Research Article

Balancing act: a socialist feminist perspective of rural low-income mothers’ experiences navigating the COVID-19 pandemic

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Pages 519-542 | Received 25 Aug 2021, Accepted 03 Mar 2022, Published online: 21 Mar 2022
 

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected rural low-income mothers due to intersecting and compounding factors such as gender, race, income, and disability, among others. In this study, we utilized socialist feminist theory to explore the impacts COVID-19 had on rural low-income mothers’ capacity to facilitate leisure and support their families’ well-being. Through semi-structured interviews with 29 rural low-income mothers, our findings indicated that these women were uniquely challenged with having to balance paid and unpaid work and entertaining children at home while dealing with pandemic-related employment insecurity. These mothers were disadvantaged due to inaccessible personal leisure resources, intensified by the closure of public parks and trails.

Résumé

La pandémie de COVID-19 a touché de façon disproportionnée les mères à faible revenu en milieu rural en raison d’une conjonction de facteurs aggravants, notamment le genre, la race, le revenu et le handicap. Cette étude se base sur la théorie féministe socialiste pour étudier les effets de la COVID-19 sur la capacité des mères à faible revenu en milieu rural à favoriser la pratique des loisirs tout en veillant au bien-être des membres de leur famille. Dans le cadre d’entrevues semi-structurées menées auprès de 29 mères à faible revenu en milieu rural, nous avons pu dégager que ces femmes sont particulièrement confrontées au défi d’équilibrer travail rémunéré et non rémunéré, tout en assumant la tâche de divertir les enfants à la maison, le tout dans le contexte de la précarité d’emploi liée à la pandémie. Ces mères sont désavantagées en raison de la déficience des ressources locales en matière de loisirs, une situation intensifiée par la fermeture des parcs et sentiers publics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [1008-2020-0183].

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