There is increasing recognition that COVID-19 has exposed and entrenched racial, gender, and class inequalities that have long been neglected across the globe (Ahmed et al., 2020). The intersecting effects of power hierarchies and identities affect women’s paid, unpaid, and underpaid labor—particularly their role in providing care—during COVID-19. This includes women’s labor in the home, women’s roles in the health and social care sectors, and women’s role in informal, precarious work including domestic work.

The evidence of women’s care labor is unequivocal: globally, women are responsible for the majority (76.2%) of unpaid care work, spending an average of 201 days on unpaid work during a year, compared to 63 days spent on unpaid work by men (International Labour Organization, 2018a). Worldwide, the International Labour Organization (2020a) reports that of the 136 million workers in the health and social care sectors, 70% are women. Around 80% of the world’s domestic workers are women (International Labour Organization, 2018b). Migrant domestic workers in particular face additional challenges due to their often-uncertain legal status and limited labor rights.