Research Group Session 2: Gender Equality Policies and Politics in the Post-pandemic Recovery (Invite Only)

Session Submission Type: Research Group

Abstract

The proposed workshop brings together the contributors for an edited book arising from panels at the International Conference of Public Policy, the Italian Political Science Association and from the recently held final conference of the gender, party politics and democracy in Europe (EUGenDem) project. While the workshop would take place after the book proposal stage, we would still proceed with an open call to present at the workshop panel either for joining the project or for future collaborations. While part of the sessions would take the form of an author workshop, a panel would be dedicated towards future prospects and collaborations. This would allow us to consider developing a grant proposal for a small conference on these themes to solidify an international community of scholars working from a gender perspective on fiscal policies, economic governance, and crisis responses.

Substantively, the workshop focuses on the gender equality politics and policies of the Covid-19 crisis and recovery. The Covid-19 crisis has contributed to widening gender gaps in employment, care responsibilities, incomes, and health outcomes. In parallel, the immediate policy responses to the health crisis as well as the recovery can contribute to mitigating or, conversely, further worsening the toll of the pandemic for women. Countries deployed highly heterogeneous response models differing in their gendered implications. A key example early in the crisis concerns the degree of reliance on policies such as childcare and school closures and assuming that the task of caring can simply be picked up by parents (in practice, mainly women). Cross-country differences in gendered containment measures cannot be fully attributed to differences in the severity of outbreaks, as some countries that were minimally impacted by certain waves enacted extensive school closures while for instance limiting workplace closures while others with high levels of contagion opted to keep schools open.

In this context, the unequal and gendered impact of the pandemic has received extensive attention and longstanding barriers to equality such as the availability of and access to child and eldercare have gained renewed centrality within the debate. At the same time, the heterogeneous implications for women and men of policy responses such as school closures play a fundamental role in shaping the cost of the pandemic for gender equality. The same logic applies to recovery policies. Indeed, recovery investment and reforms may address gender gaps through equality policies or amplify them by, for instance, privileging men dominated sectors. A case of particular interest is the European Union where the common recovery effort under Next Generation EU – mobilizing substantial resources to fund the post-pandemic reconstruction – is central for reforms and investments in the aftermath of the pandemic, raising the question of whether it promotes gender mainstreaming. From this perspective, the pandemic crisis challenges progress towards gender equality, while at the same time offering extensive opportunities for advocacy, investments, and reforms toward gender mainstreaming in the recovery.
The workshop aims to address the questions of gendered policies and politics in the response to the pandemic and recovery, welcoming papers on the gendered implications of national or supranational pandemic responses and recovery measures, both at single country and comparative level.

The scope of the panels includes all phases of policymaking in the aftermath of Covid-19, such as:
• gendering policy debates within the pandemic and recovery agenda
• gender sensitive crisis responses in the pandemic
• assessing success and failure in gender mainstreaming response and recovery policy output
• direct outcomes of gender equality policies and indirect gendered implications of response and recovery policies
• the politics of gender equality in the pandemic and recovery.

Themes of interest span factors that facilitate or hinder the promotion of gender equality structurally or within the policy-making process, the key actors responsible for gendering response and recovery policies and their strategies.

Sub Unit

• Research Groups / Gender Equality Policies and Politics in the Post-pandemic Recovery

Participants

• Vera Beloshitzkaya Paris Lodron University of Salzburg

• Allison Bugenis Binghamton University

• Sarah Fischer Marymount University

• Jennifer M. Piscopo Royal Holloway University of London

• Costanza Hermanin European University Institute

• Anna Elomäki Tampere University

• Matilde Ceron European University Institute

Session Organizers

• Anna M. Mahoney Dartmouth College

• Matilde Ceron European University Institute