Introduction

Over recent decades, the nature of work, social organisation, and daily life has undergone significant and rapid change. Amongst these shifts, paid work has become more precarious and a far weaker source of economic security. At the same time, states have tended to withdraw social supports in the name of austerity, including by diminishing social housing stocks, lowering income benefits, and tightening eligibility for these (and other) economic safety nets. These transformations have been further compounded by global crises, such as pandemics and climate change, which continue to bring into sharper relief longer-standing fractures in our modes of economic organising that distribute the burdens and benefits of paid and unpaid work unevenly across populations. This was particularly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, where renewed attention was directed towards women's disproportionate responsibility for caregiving, and the way that this inflected not only their economic (in)security but also their risk of falling ill—particularly as frontline workers across typically feminised professions (nursing, teaching, childcare, aged care). However, this is not new.