The pandemic has shown how essential care labour is to the functioning of the global economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a key truth of human society; at some time or another we all need to be cared for. To visualize this reality, imagine the COVID-19 pandemic is the Titanic and the economy is the iceberg. The collision between the two has revealed what feminist and Marxist scholars have long argued, that below the water line of the formal economy resides social reproduction. This is where essential often invisible or low and unpaid work occurs that supports the structures of the capitalist economy.
Walton-Roberts, Margaret. (2020). “If COVID-19 Is the Titanic, the Economy Is the Iceberg.” OpenDemocracy, 22 Apr. 2020.