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      Merging the public and private spheres of women's work: Narratives from women street food vendors during Covid‐19 crisis

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          Abstract

          Feminist economists have long questioned the dichotomy between the “private” versus “public” spheres of women's work and have argued for a more nuanced understanding of the marketable paid work and the unpaid work of household caregiving. This paper focuses on women street food vendors' (SFVs) experiences before and during Covid‐19 pandemic to understand how street food vending as a livelihood activity interacts with social dimensions like gender and division of labor. Through multiple in‐depth interviews with 23 women street vendors in Bengaluru, India, before and during the pandemic, we show that there is a blurring of the dichotomy between the work done in the private and public spaces before the pandemic, which is disrupted by Covid‐19 crisis. The first half of the paper explores the household labor dynamics in the context of paid and unpaid work of women and explains how the women SFVs, capitalizing on their existing skills of “ cooking,” were able to gain agency and recognition for themselves within the households. The second half of the paper focuses on the narratives of the same women SFVs during the first wave of the Covid pandemic and the subsequent lockdown. We find that the Covid crisis brought back the dichotomy between private and public spheres, making it more pronounced, with women losing their control over the public sphere and their work being restricted only to the private sphere.

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          Most cited references48

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          Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                puja.guha@apu.edu.in
                Journal
                Gend Work Organ
                Gend Work Organ
                10.1111/(ISSN)1468-0432
                GWAO
                Gender, Work, and Organization
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                0968-6673
                1468-0432
                16 November 2021
                16 November 2021
                : 10.1111/gwao.12772
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] Azim Premji University Bangalore India
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence

                Puja Guha, Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India.

                Email: puja.guha@ 123456apu.edu.in

                Article
                GWAO12772
                10.1111/gwao.12772
                8652982
                00d6bfd2-f619-419b-818b-b11843951ee7
                © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

                This article is being made freely available through PubMed Central as part of the COVID-19 public health emergency response. It can be used for unrestricted research re-use and analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source, for the duration of the public health emergency.

                History
                : 20 October 2021
                : 03 March 2021
                : 23 October 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 0, Tables: 1, Pages: 0, Words: 9822
                Funding
                Funded by: Azim Premji University
                Categories
                Original Article
                Original Article
                Article
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                corrected-proof
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_JATSPMC version:6.0.9 mode:remove_FC converted:08.12.2021

                covid crisis,household labor,india,informal enterprises,paid work,street food vendors,unpaid work,women's work

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