“If I die,just pray for me”: Low-income working women,precarity,and the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

How did women in the Global South manage work and family responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and what can we learn from their experiences about how precarity intersects with gender inequality and crises? This article investigates low-income Indonesian women’s narratives of how they navigated work and family responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, examining how they turned to religious faith for support; increased their income earning; and undertook pivots to new economic initiatives. Women’s income-earning made their families more secure, but they remained primarily responsible for the domestic work in their households. A weak social safety net, work precarity, and gender inequalities intersect in ways that compel low-income women in Indonesia to engage in both paid work and unpaid caregiving. While women are increasingly important as income earners in Indonesia and globally, in the absence of societal support for care, their income-earning does not necessarily challenge gender inequalities.