Compounded Caregiving: Mexican Women in Migrant-Sending Families During COVID-19.

ABSTRACT

Based on qualitative interviews conducted remotely with twenty-five women heads of migrant-sending households in rural Mexico, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender inequities in caregiving and social reproduction. Taking medical anthropology's call to attend to the disparate impacts of the pandemic along lines of existing social inequities and vulnerabilities, we describe how women navigated interruptions to remittance flows, social distancing and stay-at-home orders, and the shift to remote schooling for their children, and how all of these transformations compounded women's caregiving responsibilities and negatively impacted their health and well-being.