Money & society · 2021
Why did volunteer care feel like an obligation for some people during Denmark’s COVID-19 lockdown?
Case studies pointed to gendered expectations and a sense of personal obligation as pressures that made new care responsibilities feel less than voluntary for some women and men. During Denmark’s COVID-19 lockdown, some care shifted from professionals to volunteers. A nationally representative survey found that women did more voluntary care work than men, but it did not establish how widespread the feeling of being pressured was.
Details
When public welfare provision was shut down during the lockdown, some care work moved from professionals to volunteers. The researchers examined how these responsibilities were distributed and how people experienced taking them on.
The survey found that women did more voluntary care work than men and were more likely to organise it through informal personal networks rather than formal civil society organisations. Qualitative case studies explored what the researchers called “imposed volunteering”: feeling coerced into accepting new care responsibilities. These accounts highlighted gendered expectations and a sense of personal obligation, showing how relationships and institutions could make apparently voluntary work feel obligatory.
This was observational research, not an experiment. The abstract does not report the size of the gender differences or how common imposed volunteering was. Its account includes some men as well as women; it does not suggest that every volunteer felt pressured. The authors argue that efforts to recruit care volunteers need to consider gender inequalities and support the people providing care.
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