Social reproduction in crisis: Gendered labour regimes in agro-export sectors in Ecuador and Chile

Abstract

The pandemic lays bare the centrality of social reproduction in upholding global commodity networks. Capitalism's reliance on gendered and racialized systems of social reproduction has deepened structural contradictions and socio-economic divides across agro-export sectors and agrarian communities. We analyse how COVID-19 policies and responses in Ecuador and Chile are reshaping systems of social and labour protection in feminized agro-export sectors. We integrate labour regime and gender regime frameworks, showing how they are (1) co-constituted via global forces, national policies, institutional pressures and local practices; (2) intertwined in neoliberal and social-democratic development models; and (3) forged through control, consent and resistance. We analyse national legal frameworks and policy responses to COVID-19, as well as industry, union and worker reactions, illustrating how ‘neutral’ policies have gendered outcomes, (re)creating false binaries between production and reproduction and paid and unpaid work. We find that the pandemic has reshaped gendered labour regimes in agro-exports: in Ecuador, undermining the fragile commitment to a social-democratic gendered labour regime and in Chile, strengthening social-democratic supports and promises of a more equitable gendered labour regime. In both cases, states and firms have neglected to include social reproduction in the ‘costs’ of development, thus threatening national development models grounded in the exploitation of cheap female labour in agro-export sectors.