Women and Work are two interrelated concepts that have been explored extensively as they evolve across decades. The relationship between the two is impacted by the macro factors surrounding the two which include region, religion, caste, race, class, and ethnicity as well as other systemic changes (political, socioeconomic, and health). The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 blurred the boundaries between paid and unpaid work for women even further. Lessons from the HIV/AIDS, Ebola, or Zika crises have shown that when health systems are overwhelmed, an even greater care burden falls on women’s shoulders at home (Azcona et al. 2020).
Lockdowns and curfews across nations resulted in increased care- work for women – looking after elders, children, and family members with long-term illnesses and disabilities, in addition to their regular work and household responsibilities. The fear of contagion withdrew the existing help they got from other women/daycare facilities/social contacts. Work and care-work had to be done simultaneously in confined physical spaces. Experiencing the ebbing of the zone of production and expansion of care work led to distress and anxiety among such informal, home-based workers and increased gender-based violence (Razavi et.al, 2022).
The need to continue to work in paid activities to sustain households was another stressor for women as workplaces changed and became more difficult to negotiate. This panel seeks to provide a space for papers dealing with psychosocial distress that women faced as a result of changes in their working environment (paid and unpaid). The expansion of State controls and shrinking of supportive spaces for women further threatened their existence in marginal spaces. An intersectional approach to women’s lives, transformed workspaces and consequent heightened psychosocial stressors across the social contexts due to the pandemic would be the focus of this panel.
