Womens Work in the Pandemic Economy

This book explores two unique studies of womens economic behaviour during Australias 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 Australias advanced neoliberal economy, where a patri-colonial legacy continues to devalue and under-resource womens 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. This book will interest scholars in gender studies, sociology, and economics, particularly those interested in care work, the gift economy, and womens labor.