The pandemic of ‘the other half’: Patriarchy, capitalism and technology during COVID-19

Abstract

This essay explores how patriarchy, capitalism and technology intersected during the COVID-19 pandemic: an ‘extreme contest’, thus able to provide especially sharp insights into empirical phenomena as well as theoretical conversations. Conceptualising patriarchy and capitalism as two dominant, intersecting societal logics, I consider their embedment into gendered processes of digital technology production, use and distribution, and how these specifically played out during the pandemic crisis. The essay starts with a set of vignettes capturing the heterogenous experiences of digital gender-based violence survivors, female tech workers and women lacking access to digital resources in COVID-19 times. I then move on to consider the extent to which existing theoretical accounts of the relationship between gender, technology and capitalism can illuminate such developments, and propose an original conceptualisation of how patriarchal and capitalistic injustices shape technological interactions. In so doing, I contribute to trans-disciplinary debates on oppressive societal logics, feminist and critical approaches to digital capitalism and techno-feminist perspectives on digital processes.