The feminist economic geographies of working from home and "digital by default" in Canada before, during, and after COVID-19.

Abstract

This paper builds on insights in feminist economic geography to critically review the literature on work in the home and provide a starting point for examining COVID‐19 pandemic‐imposed work from home measures for tertiary and quaternary sector firms and organizations. It critically reviews literature on the pandemic, working from home, and work in general, to examine lockdown‐related workplace disruptions in relation to the various forms of work that took place in the home prior to the pandemic. It argues that feminist economic geography provides a starting point for examinations of working from home during and after COVID‐19. This situates writing on social reproduction, and informal and unpaid work in the home, within the purview of our understanding of pandemic response. Following this review, the paper demonstrates this argument by interrogating Canada's “telework capacity” discourse and the decisions by white‐collar offices regarding the continuation and abatement of “digital by default” policies. The pandemic will radically shift our understanding of the meanings of both home and work, and this paper, through a critical review of key literature, suggests that feminist economic geography provides one starting point for theorizing the implications of that shift in the Canadian context.