Anales del Congreso ALAP
Anales del X Congreso ALAP

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted inequalities in the world of work in different spheres. In Latin America, it brought attention to the central role of care and domestic work on life's sustainability and female employment. The global crisis points out to a "care crisis", which in Brazil is anchored on structural aspects related to the organization of care and domestic work.
This background shows vulnerabilities that already existed and contributed to deepening gender, race, and occupational inequalities in the Brazilian labour market. Within the care economy, the effects of the pandemic were heterogeneous. Paid domestic work had an expressive retraction in 2020, putting women, especially black women at risk of poverty or more exposed to health risks. Paid care work, for instance, increased even during the crisis. However, vulnerabilities remain considering the lack of regulation of these occupations, which is even more relevant for the caregivers that work in the domestic sphere.
A survey on the impact of COVID-19 on domestic workers in 14 Latin American countries reveals massive employment and social crisis, with high unemployment and no access to social protection for about half of the respondents (Acciari; Britez & Pérez, 2021). The pandemic has created the conditions of a new crisis of social reproduction, with strong long-term effects for women and families. In Brazil, pre-existing vulnerabilities related to domestic work have deepened. First because of the nature and conditions of this work, which exposed workers to the virus during the pandemic. And second, these activities in Brazil are historically related to the lack of social protection (Pinheiro; Tokarski & Vasconcelos, 2021). These vulnerabilities affect both domestic workers and caregivers, in multiple and heterogeneous ways.
This paper analyses the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on care and domestic work in Brazil, from a gender and race perspective. Based on descriptive and longitudinal data analysis, it brings reflections on long-term effects and the need for specific actions and public policies. We use data from household surveys of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics from 2019 to 2021.