“When the baby sleeps, I work” – neoliberal motherhood in Latin America during the Covid-19 lockdown

• Date: 02 May 2023
• Pages: 1087-1106
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-04-2022-0081
• Published date: 02 May 2023
• Author: Mariana I. Paludi,Isabella Krysa,Marke Kivijärvi

“When the baby sleeps, I work”

–neoliberal motherhood

in Latin America during

the Covid-19 lockdown

Mariana I. Paludi

Departamento de Ingenier



ıa Comercial, Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria,

Santiago, Chile

Isabella Krysa

Department of Management, Fairleigh Dickinson University–Vancouver,

Vancouver, Canada, and

Marke Kivij€

arvi

School of Business and Economics, University of Jyv€

askyl€

a, Jyvaskyla, Finland

Abstract

Purpose –This paper explores working mothers’coping strategies concerning paid and unpaid work in Chile

and Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper aimed to understand the influence of cultural norms

on motherhood and neoliberal workplace practices on mothers’sensemaking processes and coping strategies.

This study focuses on mothers living in Chile and Argentina where governments established mandatory

lockdowns between March and September 2020. Drawing on the notion of neoliberal motherhood, women’s

demands were analyzed when paid work and mothering duties collide in time and space.

Design/methodology/approach –Open-ended interviews were conducted with 17 women in Chile and

Argentina. All interviewees had at least 1 child below the age of 6 and were working from home during the

lockdown.

Findings –Neoliberal workplace demands, and disadvantageous government policies greatly heightened the

dual burdens of working mothers. Women were expected to fulfill the discourses of the neoliberal worker and

the good mother, while also adopting additional strategies in the wake of the lockdown. The data highlights

mothers’strategies to cope with care and work duties by adjusting to new routines involving their partners,

relatives and the wider community.

Research limitations/implications –The generalizability of the results is limited by the small sample of 17

interviewees, all from middle to middle-upper class. The changing scenario due to Covid-19 makes the collected

data not sufficient to grasp the impact of the pandemic, as during the interviews (December 2020 and January

2021) the process was still ongoing.

Practical implications –Organizations should assess their role in the management of paid and unpaid work

for both genders, as the neoliberal discourse views the worker as masculine, full-time, always available and

productive, ignoring women’s additional care duties outside of the workplace.

Originality/value –The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to reflect on care work and

gender, collective versus individual responses to care and work demands and the idea of organizing.

Keywords Sense making, Covid-19 pandemic, Gendered work practices, Neoliberal motherhood

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

As the advice goes, “try to sleep when the baby sleeps”. Getting rest when having newborns

and infants is recommended by pediatricians to reduce levels of stress. Working mothers

during the pandemic expressed the opposite, “when the baby sleeps, I work”. This paper

explores the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on mothers with young children by looking at

their sensemaking process (Weick, 1995), and coping strategies during mandatory

lockdowns in Argentina and Chile. Both Chile and Argentina constitute a particularly

Work in Latin

America

during

Covid-19

1087

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 1 April 2022

Revised 20 October 2022

6 March 2023

Accepted 23 March 2023

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 42 No. 8, 2023

pp. 1087-1106

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-04-2022-0081

interesting case as both countries have introduced some of the strictest measures in the Latin

American region in response to the Covid-19 pandemic (BBC News Mundo, 2020, April 27).

In March 2020, Chile declared an emergency state in which confinement became

mandatory for Santiago (capital city) and most of the cities around the country (Biblioteca del

Congreso Nacional de Chile, 2020). The closure of childcare facilities due to the pandemic was

one of such emergency measures (IFC, 2020). In response, an emergency parental leave was

introduced which allowed both men and women with children under the age of 6 to apply for a

paid parental leave of at least three months for the duration of the state of emergency (Senado,

2020a). Another important change has been the implementation of the law N821.220 (Ley de

teletrabajo) which regulates remote work. This change in the labor law specifies how

employers must provide their employees with all the tools, security and safety measures to

conduct paid work from home. Equally in March 2020, the government of Argentina

introduced various emergency measures in response to the Covid-19 crisis. These pandemic-

related regulations included mandatory confinement, the closure of national borders for

flights from overseas and 14 days of mandatory quarantine for those infected with Covid-19

(Argentina Gobierno, 2020). Due to the pandemic, different feminist groups and politicians

recommended the introduction of leaves of absence under extraordinary circumstances for

mothers and fathers since schools, kindergarten and day-care facilities have been closed.

According to a UNICEF (2020) Covid-19 survey, 51% of women in Argentina perceived an

overload of domestic and care work. Similar to Chile, the Argentinian government discussed

regulations concerning working from home during the pandemic. Some of the points under

the new regulations included the right of digital disconnection (by establishing office hours

from home that are compatible with care work of children under 14 years of age), the

provision of infrastructure (of hardware and software according to the needs of the job),

health and safety measures and privacy regulations (Infobae, 2020). The government further

established the regulation of telecommuting that came into effect in April 2021.

Since the onset of the pandemic, studies on the Covid-19 pandemic focused on countries

such as the US (Collins et al., 2020), Australia (Craig and Churchill, 2020), Spain (Farre et al.,

2020), Italy (Del Boca et al., 2020) and others (e.g. Fisher and Ryan, 2021;G€

uney-Frahm, 2020;

Hennekam and Shymko, 2020;McLaren et al., 2020). With this research, we add to the

discussion on how the Covid-19 pandemic affects women, and particularly mothers of young

children, by providing some voices of mothers within the Latin American context. Both Chile

and Argentina have experienced unique circumstances during the global Covid-19 crisis.

Therefore, the interviews collected for this study offer a particularly compelling testimony

and insights of mothers’sense making processes during crisis situations and the coping

strategies they developed as a result of the crisis.

On a global scale, the Covid-19 pandemic forced men and women to be confined to the

home sphere, confronting them with the gender division of care and household duties, while

at the same time engaging in paid work. We draw on the notions of neoliberal motherhood to

capture the dual normative prescriptions posed upon women; to perform as workers as well

as satisfy the cultural motherhood expectations (Ashman et al., 2022;G€

uney-Frahm, 2020;

Whiley et al., 2021). Also within the Latin American context, cultural images of womanhood

prescribe motherhood as a cultural ideal (

Alvarez Minte et al., 2021;Barrancos, 2007) within a

neoliberal paradigm. This is further exacerbated during a crisis like the pandemic, which

forces women to adopt new coping strategies brought about by work and care occurring

simultaneously within the same location (Fisher and Ryan, 2021;Hennekam and Shymko,

2020;McLaren et al., 2020).

At the same time, the experiences of such “once in a lifetime”global phenomenon is

personal and revealing of the complexity of individuals’socio-political and personal contexts.

For example, in Latin American countries women spend three times as long as men on unpaid

domestic and childcare work each day (CEPAL, 2020). Consequently, the closure of childcare

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