Reposted with permission from Fundación Carolina. Publications in the series “Análisis Carolina” focus on current affairs, seeking to unravel their key issues and offer policy recommendations.
Countless analyses have been written about the pandemic in many disciplines, including in the natural and social sciences. We therefore have sufficient information about how the pandemic has affected the most important indicators of the economy, such as GDP growth rates or the number of jobs that have been lost. We also know that the pandemic has placed enormous pressure on health services, pushing their professionals into a state of physical and mental exhaustion. We even know that women have suffered more from the pandemic, since they carry the weight of care work and have faced increasing rates of domestic violence. The pandemic has also shone a spotlight on the emotional problems caused by COVID-19, and this has enabled us to speak more openly about mental (ill) health stemming from conditions of isolation, anxiety and uncertainty about the future that a vast proportion of the world’s population share at present.
In this piece Francisco Cos Montiel shares reflections about the pandemic impacts for two fundamental aspects of human life: work and care. In doing this he addresses two seminal questions: ‘who does what?’ and ‘in exchange for what?’. He answers these questions from an affective dimension that, he asserts, is needed in responses to COVID-19, and in this way aims to offer some suggestions for public policies from a new angle.
Read this piece in
Spanish,
English and
French.
Francisco Cos-Montiel has a doctorate in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the Coordinator of UNRISD's Gender Justice and Development Programme.
The translation of this analysis, originally published in Spanish, has been prepared by UNRISD.