Women’s Work in the Pandemic Economy: The Unbearable Hazard of Hierarchy
Myfan Jordan, "Women’s Work in the Pandemic Economy: The Unbearable Hazard of Hierarchy"
English | ISBN: 3031401530 | 2023 | 183 pages | PDF | 4 MB
English | ISBN: 3031401530 | 2023 | 183 pages | PDF | 4 MB
This book explores two unique studies of women’s economic behaviour during Australia’s COVID-19 crisis. The first describes the care ‘frontline’ in the feminised labor sectors of healthcare and education, identifying extreme workload pressures, deteriorating conditions, and a shockingly high incidence of workplace bullying: including women targeting other women workers. The author argues workplace cultures are almost inevitable in Australia’s advanced neoliberal economy, where a patri-colonial legacy continues to devalue and under-resource women’s work.
In contrast, a second study of voluntary care provisioning taking place in ‘hyperlocal digital sharing networks’ over the same period identifies very different economic behaviours. Here, women – and occasionally men – instead engage in ‘care-full’ labors of gifting, collective provisioning, and hive mind problem-solving, that align with the gift economy models seen in degrowth theory.
Read more