Imposed volunteering: Gender and caring responsibilities during the COVID-19 lockdown

Abstract

This article contributes to the sociology of care-relational justice by identifying, conceptualising and unpacking ‘imposed volunteering’ as a mechanism that shapes societal caring arrangements. Contemporary societies allocate care work disproportionately to women, ethnic minorities and working-class citizens, which exacerbates social inequalities. Distribution of caring responsibilities is a political question but often not recognised as such, because it is deeply immersed in everyday routines. Our study uses the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to dissect the distribution mechanisms that became unusually palpable when the lockdown of public welfare provision in Denmark relocated some forms of care work from professionals to volunteers. With the term imposed volunteering, we conceptualise the feeling of being coerced into taking on new caring responsibilities, which some women – and men – experienced during the lockdown. Drawing on a national, representative survey, we document that, compared to men, women carried out significantly more voluntary care work and organised voluntary work through informal personal networks rather than through formal civil society organisations to a significantly higher degree. We unpack the experience of imposed volunteering as it unfolded during the lockdown through qualitative case studies, and clarify how relational and institutional factors, such as gendered expectations and the sense of personal obligation, imposed volunteering. Our study illuminates the importance of public care, reciprocal caring relationships and care for carers, and demonstrates why the mobilisation of care work volunteers must take gendered implications into account if it is to be consistent with democratic commitments to justice, equality and freedom for all.

How did communities in North West England respond to the COVID-19 lockdown? Findings from a diary study

“…Research suggests that the burden of unpaid care work already disproportionately carried out by women was exacerbated by the pandemic in ways that have the potential to be detrimental to their well-being. 18 19 However, data from this study suggest that prepandemic volunteering experience and connections supported the participation of both male and female diarists in community responses during the pandemic. The extensive involvement reported by male diarists in community capacity building activities contrasts with other research which highlights the disproportionate contribution of women as voluntary care givers during the pandemic.…”

“… 16 One of the prominent themes was the diarists’ observations of and role in community responses to the pandemic. To explore this aspect of the data in a more structured and focused way, we conducted a deductive analysis 17 applying Chaskin’s framework 18 (FW) and narrative techniques to the analysis of data coded to all relevant themes in our data set (namely community support and responses; social networks and volunteering). To establish trustworthiness of the findings, 19 the research team met to discuss the analysis and diarists participated in a workshop to discuss preliminary findings.…”

Constructions of Families in the Legal Regulation of Care

“…Research also underlines the gendered division in the impacts felt, with women assuming a larger responsibility and receiving less support in private care arrangements (Hansen 2007(Hansen , 2019). 2 Women were also found to have carried out a much larger share of childcare and household work during the COVID-19 lockdown (Andersen et al 2022) This has spurred an increasing interest in welfare reforms that aim to redistribute caring responsibilities, such as non-transferable parental leave. Efforts, that have been spearheaded at the EU level.…”

“…While data is only beginning to trickle in, it is clear that within private care settings existing patterns of inequality, particularly women's disproportionate share of reproductive activities, have only become exacerbated (Charmes 2019;Sevilla & Smith 2020). This is particularly evident among working mothers with school age or younger children, who bore the brunt of additional unpaid care work -along with labour market penalties (OECD, 2020Lynch, Kalaitzake, & Crean, 2021Andersen et al, 2022). Despite the issue of unpaid care and domestic work having gained relevance in policymaking in the past decade, leading to a slew of policies aimed at providing better recognition and redistribution of unpaid labour, it is still predominantly women who step in to provide care in times of crisis and austerity.…”

Momentum lost or creating new constellations? Insights from an exercise-at-work project during the COVID-19 pandemic – a mixed methods approach

“…Volunteers do not play an important role in the provision of health care in Denmark. However, facing the pandemic, the Prime Minister called for “civic mindedness” [samfundssind] leading to a successful mobilisation of civil society, which had gendered implications ( Andersen et al, 2022 ). Danish women carried out significantly more unpaid voluntary care work and organised voluntary work through personal networks during Covid-19 lockdown than Danish men, and it was experienced by some as imposed volunteering due to lack of alternatives in the pandemic context ( Andersen et al, 2022 ).…”