Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Crises and the (Re)Organizing of Gender and Work

Abstract

This introduction develops a feminist framework for analyzing crises by synthesizing seven articles in the Gender, Work & Organization Special Issue, “Crises and the (Re)Organizing of Gender and Work.” Drawing on intersectional, assemblage, and decolonial feminist perspectives, we conceptualize crisis as an enduring condition produced through structural inequalities and the governance of labor, migration, and care. The articles—spanning Chile, India, Lebanon, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States—show how crisis reorganizes gendered work through interconnected dynamics of precarity, care, embodiment, and institutional power. At the same time, they illuminate feminist practices that emerge within crisis, including mutual aid, deep care, insurgent social reproduction, collective action, and institutional critique. We synthesize these contributions through a comparative analytic that clarifies how crises are framed and where change is pursued, advancing a practice-grounded feminist framework for understanding and contesting contemporary crises.