Room for independence
During the Covid-19 era, the popular media have often encouraged women to deal with their stress by transforming their interiors. This illustrates the continuation of the prescribed and perceived role of women as carers (Molinier 2021: 30) and homemakers. Combining paid work with the other responsibilities assigned to them, they are expected to find fulfilment in these tasks. This observation encouraged us to renew our interest in the interior, the privileged space not only of invisible labour and inequalities, but also of an essentialist vision of feminine independence. However, from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (Woolf 1929: 4) to Mona Chollet’s Chez-soi (Chollet 2015: 9), feminist writers through the years have highlighted the emancipatory power of a familiar enclosed and controlled environment. The lockdowns and transformation of the rhythms of daily life that accompanied the Covid-19 era highlight the domestic sphere as both a space of independence and of resistance to gender domination patterns and as a space that perpetuates and enhances these gender inequalities. This chapter is based on the experiences of seven female home-workers, collected through semi-directed interviews. Long before the Covid-19 situation, they had been seduced by the opportunities offered by new technologies to become independent home-based workers.
HEAD - Genève
2023-02-23
London
9781350294219
312
87
99
NON-REVIEWED
EPFL