On the 25th of March 2021, about one year after the economic downturn that followed the imposition of public sanitary measures to reduce viral contacts, the recovery plan of Quebec’s government was eagerly awaited. It was marked by an absence of any specificity in regard to the economic policies framework of the last 3 years. The actual effects of the downturn of particular sectors on specific populations did not seem to have been taken into account. Yet, about one week before the deposit of the budget, a movement had taken form on social media where women from everywhere in the Province were posting pictures of themselves with the hashtag #Maplaceautravail (#MyPlaceAtWork) and stories about the emotional and financial struggle they were living because the lack of childcare services prevented them from getting back to work.

While the public budget planned a great renewal of investment in almost all public infrastructure, the childcare physical infrastructure was the only left out. This lack of government interest in the specific effects of the economic crisis drove me into a short research project. In this presentation, I will talk about the way the concept of she-cession was used to grasp some issues lived by women but reveals itself as a double blade sword in regard of the previous literature concerning the gender and racial issues of economic crisis and in regard of the history of economic crisis theories and policies. By contrasting the recovery plan of Quebec government with an intersectional socioeconomic analysis, I try to grasp the limits of a Keynesian-based framework for the formulation of a feminist response to economic crisis.

Myriam Lavoie-Moore is a postdoctoral fellow at The Australian National University. She works on various issues related to the care economy and the data industry. She is also a researcher at the Research and Information Institute of socioeconomic in Quebec and a lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). She works on various issues related to the care economy and data industry, mostly from a critical approach to political economy of communication.