Gender equality expertise under (emotional) COVID-19 pressure

The COVID-19 pandemic led - among other things - to a number of legislative regulations and the need for ideally simultaneous reflection on their potential undesired effects. One of the most important regulatory acts in Czechia was a school lockdown which resulted – among other things – in the need to design financial allowances for parents who could not go to work as they took care of their children and the conditions of the allowances. Another important agenda was the restriction of the operation of small businesses which also resulted in a specific design of financial compensations. As it was suggested already in the first weeks of 2020 lockdown and as it has been soundly documented by numerous studies, women as a group are dramatically affected both by the pandemic itself and by the related restrictions (as health care workers, social care workers, teachers, care-givers, precarious workers). The aim of my paper is to present the establishment and the way of operation of the “Working Group on the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Gender Equality” (WG) – established within the Government Council for Gender Equality, an advisory body to the Czech government. Using the depiction and analysis of how the WG was established, the conditions under which it worked and communicated, and how it ended its work, I would like to capture the emotional layer of expertise that was part of the feedback that individual members as a collective body provided to the government. The interim results of my research show that for the members of the group, there was an emotional tension present in their activities resulting from the clash of several sources: (a) a desire to help with expertise in a challenging situation and in an area of gender equality which they considered important; (b) doubts about the importance of gender equality agenda face-to-face to a disaster of an overloaded health care system and tens of thousands deads; (c) doubts about the group's set-up and its outcomes, in the broader context of the government's long-term reserved approach to gender equality; and (d) doubts about whether investing the time and efforts was worth it in the context of personal challenges caused by the pandemic, where it was difficult to reconcile work, personal and professional life. The dataset will consist of interviews with experts from the WG, with administrative staff at the Cabinet Office, with a government commissioner who was able to attend government meetings, with the former Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. Another important part will be the communication between members of the WG and the outputs of their work. The findings will be interpreted in a broader context of governance and expertise and particularly role of emotions in this relationship.