Don't Let Another Crisis Go to Waste: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Imperative for a Paradigm shift

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how globalized, market-based economies critically depend on a foundation of nonmarket goods, services, and productive activities that interact with capitalist institutions and impact market economies. These findings, long argued by feminist economists, have profound implications for how we think about our economic futures. This paper shows how lessons from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic can inform how people think about the future of our economies and, specifically, how to address a trio of interlocking crises: care work, environmental degradation, and macroeconomic consequences. Drawing on these lessons, this paper argues for a necessary paradigm shift and discusses the implications of such a shift for social and economic policies.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The pandemic highlights the interlocking crises of care, the environment, and macroeconomics.

• COVID-19 underscores the centrality of care in our economies.

• The intensifying environmental crisis illustrates the neglect of nonmarket processes in dominant policy approaches.

• The biggest contradictions in our economic systems result from the interactions between capitalist institutions and the nonmarket sphere.

KEYWORDS:

• Crisis
• care economy
• sustainability
• macroeconomics

JEL CODES:

• E0
• J1
• Q5

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2020.1867762.

Notes

1 A full review of the emerging survey data is beyond the scope of this paper; for a selection of references see the supplemental references supplied online.

2 See references in the supplemental material supplied online.

3 See UNDP and UN Women COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker: https://data.undp.org/gendertracker/.

4 There are exceptions, for example the Women’s Budget Group has engaged in these debates from a feminist perspective. See Maeve Cohen and Sherilyn MacGregor (2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Heintz

James Heintz is Andrew Glyn Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Silke Staab

Silke Staab is Research Specialist at UN Women, New York.

Laura Turquet

Laura Turquet is Policy Advisor at UN Women, New York.