Foodwork in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: The emotional experience among upper- and middle-class women in Brazil

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that middle- and upper-class, primarily white, women can relieve their workload and resolve family conflicts by relying on the labor of poor and/or racialized women or accessing services that facilitate their foodwork. However, the spreading of COVID-19 and the necessity of social distancing have temporarily made the access of these facilitators difficult or impossible. Since women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic consequences on the sexual division of labor, this paper examines how the pandemic affects women's emotional experience with domestic foodwork in Brazil. Drawing from the 588 upper- and middle-class women's responses to an online survey, we have identified six emotional experiences influenced by the pandemic: (1) obligation, (2) overload, (3) fear, (4) safety, (5) relaxation, and (6) family time appreciation. However, the changes caused by the sanitary crises do not explain alone the new emotions experienced with domestic foodwork. Class and gender can interfere or potentialize how women feel about it during the pandemic. Obligation, overload, and fear were enhanced when the participants could not access services that were used to relieve their foodwork burden, especially when faced with an unequal sexual division of labor. In turn, safety, relaxation, and family time appreciation were facilitated by a better dynamic of domestic tasks sharing alongside the certainty to access good quality food. By analyzing these factors, this paper enhances the theoretical understanding of contextual and situational domestic foodwork emotional experience because it observes the outcomes of critical reduction of networks that used to sustain this practice involvement.