Navigating Motherhood and Work: Caribbean State Responses in a Global Health Crisis

Abstract

Women’s care work sustains families and underpins economies. This was especially evident during the COVID-19 pandemic as states’ protocols and strategies to curb the spread of this virus relied primarily on women’s paid and unpaid care work. While women’s paid care work was categorised as ‘essential work’ during the pandemic, women’s unpaid care work remained mostly invisible and undervalued. In fact, state policies exploited women’s ‘resilience’ or ability to ‘survive’ beyond the absence of public/state service as schools and day cares temporarily closed and then transitioned to an online platform. The unequal gendered expectation of women as caregivers responsible for social reproduction exacerbated the childcare burden and fatigue of women during the pandemic as they navigated motherhood and work. In this chapter I interrogate the approach to women’s unpaid care work during the pandemic, demonstrating how state strategies invoked flawed gendered ideologies. Using Barbados as a case study, I argue that state policies do not account for the social reproduction essential to the economy, but rather narrowly focus on the economy as a site of production and market-based activities. State therefore absolves any responsibility for social reproduction as it focuses on economic recovery and public health management (Gromada et al. 2020, 1). Thus, during a global pandemic that has disrupted the ‘norm’ as we navigate lockdowns, curfews, remote work, online work, and school, “Caribbean women continue to raise future generations of workers, taxpayers, and citizens, even as the basic support services are being cut” (Barriteau 1996, 151).