Working From Home and the Triple Role of Women in the Context of COVID-19-Induced Lockdowns in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Based on the analysis of 20 in-depth interviews held with employed women in Zimbabwe, this paper uses Moser’s ‘triple role framework’ to make sense of how they juggled production, reproduction and community roles while working from home during the COVID-19-induced lockdowns. It finds that although the enmeshing of the domestic and work spaces yielded different gendered dynamics for women, like ‘role overload’ and the ‘confusion of priorities’, destabilised gender relations and other challenges they faced were primarily perpetuated by patriarchy, hegemony and other dominant gender cultures. Men and women are, therefore, each differently associated with and differently valued in space.