The Gendered Pandemic: The Ethics of Caring (Too Much)

Abstract

Exploring the intersectional experiences of women during the coronavirus pandemic, this article utilizes the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 creative archive to portray the diverse, lived realities experienced by women. Drawing on feminist ethics of care, this article investigates how women within the domestic and professional realms pivoted to meet unexpected challenges. As women acceded to the “honorable feminine” stereotype and principle of self-sacrifice during the pandemic, women’s overall well-being and economic realities declined precipitously, and society lost critical perspectives. Visual artworks and creative writing narratives in Viral Imaginations provide documentation of, provoke empathy for, and create an understanding of the gendered imbalances of care work. Taking the form of women’s invisible, unacknowledged, and expected labor of care and nurturing, these inequities demand a societal reevaluation.