Hidden Abodes in Plain Sight: the Social Reproduction of Households and Labor in the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

This article deploys a feminist political economy approach centered on social reproduction to analyze the reconfiguration and regeneration of multiple inequalities in households and the labor markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this approach, the analysis unpacks the multiple trajectories of fragility the current crisis is intervening on and reshaping in the home and in the world of work, and their gendered and racialized features across the world. It shows how the pandemic and the measures to contain it have further deepened the centrality of households and reproductive work in the functioning of capitalism and argues that the transformative potential of the crisis can only be harnessed by framing policy and political responses around social reproduction and its essential contributions to work and life.

HIGHLIGHTS

• A feminist social reproduction approach reveals the COVID-19 crisis as a crisis of work.

• The crisis is reshaping the organization of production and reproduction in households and global labor markets.

• This reorganization is exacerbating gender, class, and race inequalities.

• The pandemic has renewed the centrality of households in welfare provisioning and made social reproduction work visible.

• An internationalist feminist response would ensure access to services based on the centrality of social reproduction.

KEYWORDS:

• Social reproduction
• gender inequality
• labor market inequality
• intrahousehold inequality
• racial inequality
• work

JEL Codes:

• B54
• P16
• A13

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2020.1854478.

Notes

1 In many contexts, the retreat of the state occurred after a phase of capitalism based on the Fordist mode of production where the costs of social reproduction were in part taken up by the welfare state (Bakker 2007).

2 For example, in the UK the term “key worker” has been revived and adapted to characterize those low-paid workers in essential health, care, public, and social services as well as in food production and distribution. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-COVID-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision#critical-workers.

3 The COVID-19 crisis raises serious concerns for the protection and well-being of domestic workers; see for example this article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/05/for-the-lives-of-our-mothers-covid-19-sparks-fight-for-maids-rights-in-brazil-coronavirus. Also, see this one on the Aljazeera website: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/4/domestic-workers-in-middle-east-risk-abuse-amid-covid-19-crisis.

4 See article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/15/arcadia-group-cancels-over-100m-of-orders-as-garment-industry-faces-ruin.

5 See May Bulman in the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-food-banks-close-poverty-shortage-a9405351.html.

6 See this brief by Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO): https://www.wiego.org/waste-pickers-essential-service-providers-high-risk.

7 Many of the sources that inform this section are reported in the Online Appendix of Additional Sources, under the Supplemental Material tab.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara Stevano

Sara Stevano is Lecturer in Economics at SOAS University of London. She is a development and feminist political economist specializing in the study of the political economy of work, well-being (food and nutrition), households, social reproduction, and development policy. Working at the intersections between political economy, development economics, feminist economics and anthropology, Sara takes an interdisciplinary approach to theories and methods. Her work focuses on Africa, with primary research experience in Mozambique and Ghana.

Alessandra Mezzadri

Alessandra Mezzadri is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS University of London. Dr. Mezzadri is a feminist political economist. Her research and teaching interests focus on global commodity and value chains; informal labor; global labor standards and modern slavery; feminisms in development and social-reproduction approaches; the political economy of the global garment industry; and the political economy of India. She is the author of The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation, and Garments “Made in India” (Cambridge University Press: 2017, 2020), and the editor of Marx in the Field (Anthem: forthcoming).

Lorena Lombardozzi

Lorena Lombardozzi is Lecturer in Economics at the Open University, UK. She received her PhD in economics from SOAS University of London. Her research focuses on international political economy, global value chains, social reproduction and feminist political economy, the role of the state in structural transformations, transition economies, and labor and technological change. Before returning to academia, Lorena worked as a development economist in Latin America in 2014, in Uzbekistan for the regional office of UNODC in Central Asia from 2010 to 2012, and between 2007 and 2010 with the European Commission and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Hannah Bargawi

Hannah Bargawi is Senior Lecturer in Economics and co-Head of Department for Economics at SOAS University of London. Dr. Bargawi’s research spans macroeconomic policies and employment as well as gender and labor market issues, including the links between paid and unpaid work. Her research is focused on East Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe. She recently contributed the chapter “How Does Economics Address Gender?” to a textbook entitled Recharting the History of Economic Thought (edited by Kevin Deane and Elisa Van Waeyenberge, Macmillan: 2020).