Taking Care at Work: Gender, Coping, and Anti-Violence Work During COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 transformed frontline anti-violence workers’ organizational routines by transitioning to virtual formats, decreasing face-to-face interactions, and shifting client needs. To address ever-changing workplace stressors, service providers adapted and/or modified coping mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze interviews with 23 anti-violence workers in the US Great Plains region, focusing on tactics used to avoid burnout and meet client needs. We discuss how workplace pace, direct-action coping practices, and a lack of inter/intra-agency social support impact how workers do their necessary jobs. Though some challenges were pervasive pre-pandemic, anti-violence workers’ experiences also highlight how “post-COVID-19” workplaces must adequately support staffers.

Caught in the Neoliberal Churn: Pushing Back Against “Productivity” as a Measure of Impact

“…Yet this historical moment seems to have intensified dynamics driven into overdrive by a knotty web of white supremacy, neoliberal capitalism, and patriarchy.Heightened vulnerabilities and an eroding capacity to withstand unrelenting changes and acceleration have occupied many pages of journals, including ours (Kim et al, 2021). Critical feminist research showed us how the pandemic disproportionately threatened the lives and well-being of Latinx immigrants (Cross & Gonzalez Benson, 2021), Latina immigrants (Cleaveland & Waslin, 2021), sex workers (Bromfield et al, 2021), intimate partner violence survivors (Heward-Belle et al, 2022), student mothers (LaBrenz et al, 2023), trafficking survivors (Namy et al, 2023, and anti-violence workers (Welch & Schwarz, 2023). Social work scholars like Stephanie Lechuga-Peña (2022) showed us how pandemic conditions disproportionately impacted the "productivity" of pre-tenure BIPOC junior women faculty.…”