Household and Care Work, Crisis, and Gender-Unequal Economies: A Samoan Perspective

Small Island Development States’ (SIDS) natural features, relative isolation, typical dependence on external resources and limited domestic capacity to absorb shocks make many of them especially vulnerable to crises, including climate-change related environmental disasters and health emergencies. This policy brief argues that one such crisis, precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has amplified and perpetuated dynamics of gender inequality in Samoa, a Pacific SIDS. We posit that care and household work, the burden of which falls disproportionately on women, is a central nexus in these dynamics, which in turn affect Samoa’s ability to cope with and spring back from this crisis. Based on this Samoan experience, we argue that care and household work deserves special attention from policymakers, especially in SIDS, because of its potentially central importance for gender-equity as well as for crisis-resilience and recovery.