The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on everyone. But imagine if you were impoverished, a migrant, or living in close quarters with no way to socially isolate. What if you were a prostituted woman? A domestic worker? What if you were trapped in an abusive relationship, with nowhere to go? How have the pandemic and the lockdowns impacted the most marginalized among us? And how have exploitative industries — like the porn industry — profited? How have women, in particular, been impacted? How could we better support these women? Can we really continue to pretend as though sex is a social construct, rather than a material reality, considering the different ways males and females are impacted by coronavirus?

This week, I talk to Anna Zobnina, coordinator of the European Network of Migrant Women, a migrant-women led platform of NGOs that works, in the spirit of intersectional feminism, for the rights of migrant women in Europe; a member of the executive committee of the European Women’s Lobby; a former research analyst with the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies; and a selected expert with the European Institute for Gender Equality.

Read her article, “Global Feminist Perspective on the Pandemic: What ‘normal’ do we expect when the crisis is over?” at migrantwomennetwork.org