Women in Turbulent Times

The last two decades have been marked by economic and social turmoil — 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. This succession of crises 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. Against this backdrop, this volume offers a long-term perspective on turbulence, grounded on comparative and country evidence from Europe, the USA, Australia, and the Global South. The chapters trace how acute shocks, chronic crises and systemic transformations reverberate through labour markets, households and state policies, reshaping gender inequalities and vulnerabilities and their intersections. The concluding discussion argues 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. By introducing a gender perspective into the polycrisis debate, this volume speaks to scholars in socioeconomics and gender studies; policy experts and advisors on gender equality; and activists, educators and the general public seeking to understand and address the challenges to gender equality in turbulent times.

Jill Rubery is Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Executive Director of the Work and Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK. She is an international expert on gender and employment and has worked extensively as consultant for the ILO and the EU. Her research focuses on wages, working time, precarious work and the gendered impact of crises and she has edited books on Women and Recession and Women and Austerity (published by Routledge). She is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Núria Sánchez-Mira is Professor of Sociology at University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). Her research focuses on gender inequalities at the work–family interface and across the life course, using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches. She has worked on the gendered impacts of crises on labour markets and household divisions of labour, precarious work in female-dominated sectors, and the digital transformation of work. She currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Swiss Journal of Sociology.

Valeria Insarauto is Lecturer in Work and Employment, Centre for Decent Work, Sheffield University Management School, UK, and Affiliated Researcher, Institute of Labour Economics and Industrial Sociology (LEST), Aix-Marseille University, France. Her research focuses on gender inequalities in the labour market from an international comparative and quantitative perspective, particularly around socio-economic vulnerability among marginal workers, discrimination and sexual harassment, and the work-family interface. She serves on the editorial boards of Work, Employment and Society and of Papers. Revista de Sociologia.