Women’s Economic Empowerment: Insights from Africa and South Asia

Abstract

were hidden in part by those trained in EU countries for whom, thanks to the hostile Brexit environment and even having to pay for their own health care in the hospitals where they work, 1 per cent was the final straw. But then, ‘[n]eoliberal policies have taken care work for granted, reassured by its longstanding provision through patriarchal channels’ (pp. 208–9). Worse, many who didn’t even qualify as ‘frontline staff’, and were not entitled to furlough pay, were exposed to a far higher risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19: bus and taxi drivers, supermarket workers, those delivering groceries or Amazon packages to online consumers, refuse collectors, ‘suffered from poor protections against infection and lack of hazard pay’ (p. 222), if indeed they had any personal protection at all. In the end, Nancy Folbre sees cause for hope, but never for complacency. So many derive benefit from the status quo of layered systems of exploitation, or can be convinced they do, and will defend these to the hilt. They are in a position to shape ideas and aspirations: for the UK government, sciences are ‘in’, the arts (anthropology, archaeology, history, languages ancient and modern, literature, philosophy, political science, the performing arts, and even economics) are ‘out’. They can deflect blame for the harmful consequences of such choices on whatever scapegoat comes to mind. The post-pandemic world will not usher in a new and compassionate normal unless enough of us believe ‘that political rights must be accompanied not only by economic rights but also by obligations to care for one another and for the generations to come’ (p. 229). Count me in.