Volunteer COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment Makers: Third Sphere Labor, Caring Masculinities, and Redoing Gender

Abstract

In the opening months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., thousands of volunteer makers stepped up to produce PPE through third sphere labor, volunteer work that emphasizes community maintenance. Drawing on 78 semi-structured interviews and 662 open-ended questionnaires, we consider how third sphere carework could destabilize hierarchies between public, private, and third sphere labor and in the valuation of feminized versus masculinized work. We find women and men makers differed in what they made, but not in their motivations for producing PPE or how they valued the work of other makers. Makers rejected the idea that they should perform such work without any appreciation from third sphere recipients, but private sphere demands limited women makers more than men. Throughout men makers’ efforts, we find ample evidence of caring masculinities as a response to disaster. We conclude with a consideration of what these trends mean for redoing gender and third sphere carework.

He Does (Not) Care: COVID-19 Volunteers’ Assessments of Donald Trump’s Responses to the Pandemic

“…Hands-on acts of caring for others in the domestic sphere of households are strongly associated with femininities (Tronto 2013), but masculinities in many Western contexts have increasingly incorporated caring into their configurations of practice (Elliot 2016; Jordan 2020). This has the potential to undermine hegemonic gender orders (Elliot 2016), but caring can be included in masculinities in ways that help to reproduce and even strengthen inequitable gender orders (Jordan 2020; Kelly et al 2023; Randles 2018; Tronto 2013).…”