Women in Turbulent Times: Crises, Transitions and Challenges for Gender Equality

The last two decades have been marked by economic and social turmoil — from the global financial crash and the austerity turn to the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by cost-of-living crises, geopolitical conflicts and heightened political divisions. This succession of crises has destabilised economic and political systems and risks undermining the hard-won, albeit slow, progress towards gender equality in contemporary societies. At the same time, the way we live and work is being challenged by rapidly developing AI and digital technologies, the imperative to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions, and unresolved pressures to transform care systems to support women’s sustained participation in waged work. Against this backdrop, this volume offers a long-term perspective on turbulence, grounded on comparative and country evidence from Europe, the USA, Australia, and the Global South. The chapters trace how acute shocks, chronic crises and systemic transformations reverberate through labour markets, households and state policies, reshaping gender inequalities and vulnerabilities and their intersections. The concluding discussion argues that turmoil is evolving into a polycrisis — an entanglement of economic, social, and ecological disruptions — while exposing a critical but neglected dimension of turbulence: the crisis of social reproduction and women’s pivotal role in managing the tensions between production and the social reproduction spheres. By introducing a gender perspective into the polycrisis debate, this volume speaks to scholars in socioeconomics and gender studies; policy experts and advisors on gender equality; and activists, educators and the general public seeking to understand and address the challenges to gender equality in turbulent times.