Performing Gender in View of the Outbreak

The project focuses on the political and cultural implications of SARS-CoV-2 and responds to the paradoxical (in)visibility that women are currently confronted with in the face of the current crisis. On the one hand, women play an extremely dominant role as "system maintainers" and "everyday heroines" within the discursive staging of the current health and economic crisis. On the other hand, they are remarkably underrepresented as politicians and experts at the moment. Based on this observation, Silke Felber examines the performance of the Austrian federal government with regard to COVID-19 and asks which gender-specific role models and stereotypes are implemented or reactualized in this context. The results of this dramaturgical and discourse-analytical, thus transdisciplinary study are placed in a historical and global context together with international cooperation partners.