Relating two unique ethnographic studies of women’s economic behaviour during Australia’s COVID-19 crisis, Women’s Work in the Pandemic Economy tells a tale of two economies. The first relates to female workers staffing the ‘care frontline’ of the pandemic and the second, details women’s unpaid labour in ‘hyperlocal digital sharing networks’ across the same period.

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In the pandemic ‘businesses of care’ we see extreme workload pressures and deteriorating work conditions drive a high incidence of workplace bullying, with a shockingly high prevalence of women bullying other women: something the author argues is inevitable in an advanced neoliberal market economy which routinely devalues women’s work.

 

By contrast, in the micro ‘gift economies’ of online neighbourhood groups, we instead see women more typically engaging in ‘care-full’ practices – ‘economic behaviours’ – of gift giving, collective provisioning, and ‘hivemind’ problem solving, which takes place in convivial collaboration and without expectation of reward or recognition.

 

Utilising degrowth, gift economy, and decolonial feminist theories, the book makes a strong argument that the gifting behaviours of women workers during COVID are not only subversive, but potentially offer humanity a blueprint for moving beyond the destructive hierarchies of modern capitalism towards a degrowth future.

 

This book will be of interest to scholars in gender studies, sociology, and economics, particularly those interested in care work, the gift economy, and women’s labour.