#35 COVIDCalls 5.1.2020 – Labor, Gender, and Essential Work

Dr. Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Feminist Studies at University of California - Santa Barbara, Dr. Silvia Federici, a professor at Hofstra University, and Juliana Feliciano Reyes, a journalist for the the Philadelphia Inquirer, all discuss the intersections of labor, gender, and a pandemic that has forced many workers into new forms of precarity. Dr. Boris and Dr. Federici both talk about working from home during the pandemic, both for people who have been thrust into remote work and those who were already doing work at home and reproductive work, like mothers and domestic workers. Reyes discusses her recent labor reporting that examines new forms of worker precarity and organized resistance brought about by the pandemic in Philadelphia. They all talk about the simultaneous valorization and devaluation of “essential work” during the pandemic and talk about how we could move towards a more just valuation of work and human life. For further reading: “When the Home Is a Worklplace” Patriarchy of the Wage: Notes on Marx, Gender, and Feminism “The Coronavirus Shines Light on a Dark Side of Subcontracting”