Gender and the Covid-19 Crisis: Maintaining Old Inequalities, Creating New Opportunities?

The Covid-19 pandemic has produced substantive impacts on gender and sexual inequalities as well as negatively affected a range of other groups across social divisions. The pandemic gave a new salience to care and reproductive work carried out in the home, but also by essential workers, many of whom women, in low paid jobs. It also brought to the fore issues of environmental and global justice and ways that migration and climate change intersect with the current health crisis to produce unequal effects across the globe and in our societies. The long-lasting effects of the pandemic are difficult to discern, but it is already clear that in the short term it has reinforced the structural and systemic conditions of gender and other inequalities. Yet, the political, economic and social crises generated by the pandemic could also offer new opportunities to feminist actors and movements to secure political gains as well as foster greater solidarity and (transnational) collaboration across social justice struggles. Taken together, Covid-19 poses theoretical, empirical and normative questions to the study of gender and politics. This section aims to address these questions by looking at how the pandemic entrenched existing gender, sexual and intersecting inequalities, and the opportunities it offers for gender+ equality politics and policies. We welcome panel and paper proposals that explore, but are not limited to, the following questions: What have been the impacts of Covid-19 on gender relations broadly understood? What have been the responses and strategies adopted by individuals, social movements, political parties and international organizations? What continuities do we observe across countries and regions, and which new processes are at work? What is the value of the established analytical frameworks and theories to understand the gender+ effects of the current health crisis? Proposals addressing topics related to the broad theme of this section can adopt a variety of methods including quantitative large N methods, comparative studies, experimental research, qualitative in-depth studies as well as new and innovative approaches. Our section aims at ensuring that panels (comprising chairs and discussants) reflect a diversity of participants with regard to career stages, background and regions.