Women in turbulent times: the changing relationship of women’s employment to economic crises

Drawing on a recently published book on Women in Turbulent Times, this presentation will discuss two main themes.

First, it will locate the analysis in the changing nature of women’s relationship to employment and crises, reflecting on the changes that have occurred since the author started working in this area (from a book on Women and Recession in 1988, to a book on Women and Austerity in 2014 to the current volume). The transition in women’s role in wage work, from providing a potential flexible reserve to becoming a permanent part of the labour force, is found to have interacted first with changes in the expected impact of crises and transitions on restructuring within feminised employment segments (for example, the conversion of clerical work and parts of the public sector from protected to exposed segments to crises and transitions) and second with the changing nature and form of crises.

The second theme is the recent trend towards multiple crises, both acute crises and longer term unresolved crises and transitions, and how these issues were addressed in the current volume. The succession of crises over the last two decades - from the global financial crash and the austerity turn to the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by cost-of-living crises, geopolitical conflicts and heightened political divisions - has destabilised economic and political systems and risks undermining the hard-won, albeit slow, progress towards gender equality in contemporary societies. At the same time, the way we live and work is being challenged by rapidly developing AI and digital technologies, the imperative to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions, and unresolved pressures to transform care systems to support women’s sustained participation in waged work. The argument is made that turmoil is evolving into a polycrisis — an entanglement of economic, social, and ecological disruptions — while exposing a critical but neglected dimension of turbulence: the crisis of social reproduction and women’s pivotal role in managing the tensions between production and the social reproduction spheres.

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