Abstract

Canada and Australia, two liberal welfare states whose market-based ECEC systems consistently rank poorly on international measures, embraced similar short-term childcare policy responses to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: widespread closures, reduced capacity of centers, establishment of publicly funded emergency childcare programs for essential workers, and short-term wage subsidies for essential workers (sometimes including educators). Rooted in a feminist political economy (FPE) theoretical framework and using a what-is-the-problem-represented-to-be (WPR) methodological approach, this article explores the extent to which the first and second “waves” of the COVID-19 pandemic policy responses in Canada and Australia framed childcare as a concern about gendered, reproductive labor within political representations of the policy problems to be solved.