Articulating the complexities of relational wellbeing can be challenging at the best of times, and even more complex during periods of heightened stress and uncertainty. Taking inspiration from feminist materialisms and recent writings on material methods, we explore the potential of object interviews to reveal the material-discursive dimensions of women’s experiences of wellbeing during the pandemic. In this paper we describe our research process conducting object interviews with 38 women living in Aotearoa New Zealand from a range of socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. We explore the potential and challenges of object interviews for surfacing new ways of knowing (theoretically, methodologically, and cross-culturally) wellbeing beyond human-oriented health, medical and social-constructionist models, and towards more multidimensional and relational understandings. This paper offers our reflections and learnings about the process of re-turning object interviews and the potential of such approaches for evoking complex ways of knowing wellbeing during and beyond pandemic times.

In this paper we build upon recent organizational research drawing upon the work of Henri Lefebvre, and feminist engagements with his theory of “Rhythmanalysis”, to examine how the COVID‐19 pandemic disrupted women's everyday lives and the impacts on their relationship with work. Drawing upon interviews with 38 women from diverse socio‐cultural backgrounds living in Aotearoa New Zealand, we describe the pandemic as an “arrhythmia”, a radical rupture to the familiar rhythms of their everyday social and working lives. We describe how the pandemic arrhythmia was felt in and through bodies (i.e., sleep, weight), and how women responded by creating counter rhythms (i.e., hobbies, exercise, food) as strategies to support their own and others wellbeing. Furthermore, radically disrupting linear repetitions of everyday work, social and family life, the pandemic prompted many to reflect differently upon how pre‐pandemic rhythms shaped by the social, economic and gendered structures of neoliberalism were causing various forms of alienation (i.e., from their own health and wellbeing, meaningful social connections, ethical and sustainable working practices, and from pleasure). For some women, the pandemic arrhythmia was a puncturing of their normalized time‐space gendered routines, leading to critique and transformation to their everyday work‐life patterns. Engaging a feminist reading of rhythmanalysis, this paper brings into focus how neoliberal gender regimes are reconstituted and disrupted in the rhythms and routines of women's everyday lives. In so doing, we highlight the potential in feminist engagement with arrhythmia to extend understandings of the gendered politics of everyday life during and beyond pandemic times, and the value in such approaches for organizational scholars interested in understanding the gendered rhythms of daily life and their effects on relationships with work.

Sports and physical activity organizations around the world have expressed concern that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted girls and young women’s participation, with relatively fewer young women returning to sport post-lockdowns than their male counterparts. The purpose of this research is to understand how young women’s experiences of sport and physical activity were impacted by extended and repeated lockdowns, considerable social disruption, and ongoing risks of contagion. Our research draws upon interviews and focus groups with 44 young women (16–24 years) living in Aotearoa New Zealand during the pandemic. Recognizing that young women’s opportunities and experiences of sport and fitness (before, during and after the pandemic) vary considerably based on a range of socio-cultural factors, our sample was intentionally diverse, inviting young women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, from rural and urban settings, and with a range of pre-pandemic sport and fitness experiences. Engaging an intersectional and affective sensibility, we reveal the complex ways that the pandemic impacted the young women’s embodied, relational and affective experiences of sport and fitness. Contrary to recent concerns about young women dropping out from sport and physical activity, our research reveals the varied ways the pandemic shifted young women’s relations with their own and others’ moving bodies, transforming their relationships with sport and fitness, with renewed understandings of the importance of physical activity for joy, connection, and wellbeing.