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The data on women's education and labour force participation in India suggests that though the gender gap in education (particularly higher education) has almost disappeared, the gender gap in employment remains significant. The paper links the burden of double responsibility (paid work plus unpaid 'care work') with the low labour force participation rates among the highly educated women in urban India. Based on primary and secondary sources, the paper analyses the lived experiences of women who had to either leave their careers or who continued by managing to balance the two sets of responsibilities. Interrogating the care diamond in India, the essay examines two recent provisions of the government of India for working mothers - an increase in Maternity Leave and the provision of Childcare Leave. It finds that though these provisions seem to be in the right direction as they bring recognition to the care burden of employees, given the prevailing social norms on gender roles, they are insufficient (in their present form) to bring gender parity in the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the common ways of thinking about genealogical reproduction are influenced by colonialism and capitalism, which emphasize the importance of the nuclear family, heterosexuality and reproducing future citizens. Under colonialism and capitalism, Samoan women are disciplined into good reproductive laborers who reproduce the moral family and also wider society. This paper looks to Indigenous feminist discourse of regeneration to place Samoan reproductive labor outside of capitalism and within Indigenous feminist genealogies of world-building, asking what other promiscuous possibilities there are for Samoan regeneration. Here, we present a theoretical exploration: thinking with Indigenous feminism offers a decolonial intervention into Samoan reproduction, placing Samoan women's labor into an alternative genealogy of Indigenous feminist world-building and outside of colonially imposed genealogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the experience of emotional labour by women in Indian NGOs. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 11 women across four anti-trafficking organisations in Kolkata, this paper highlights how emotional labour has been rationalised as women's work. It shares the emotional distress and vulnerability women encounter due to the under-recognition of their labour. Despite the overwhelming nature of their work, women consider it a trade-off for the empowerment they experience due to their memberships with NGOs. Concluding remarks entail the need for NGOs to support the well-being of their workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how home is produced by women under conditions of violence. It contends why domestic violence (DV) is not a disruption, but a 'condition of possibility' in the production of the ideal home. Drawing on cultural aphorisms the paper highlights the role of gender norms in simultaneously idealizing the mother and normalizing DV in Sri Lanka. The veneration of the mother in all ethno-religious communities, the paper argues, is conditioned upon a woman's capacity for nurture and her absorption of violence through the embodiment of feminine virtues: selflessness, forbearance, and long-suffering. The paper contributes to discussions of home and domestic violence in three ways. First, it illuminates cross-cultural meanings of home and the gendered labour that produces it. Second, it describes how women dwell with DV by embodying gender norms through acts of care and repair. Finally, the paper aims to underscore the materiality of gender norms in creating a 'moral-economy of care'; that is, the ways by which cultural truisms – in postulating a triumvirate of woman-home-suffering – emotionally tethers woman to home compelling her to produce it under conditions of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how dignity is articulated and pursued by care workers in two currently prominent policy initiatives seeking to reform Danish care services for older people. Based on ethnographic case studies of 'reablement' practices and the use of 'welfare technologies', the paper shows how these attempts to create dignified care services transform interactions between care recipients and care workers. The analysis is inspired by a socio-material perspective on dignity as 'crafted' and 'co-laboured' in daily practices, in an interplay between multiple human and non-human actors. In the cases studied, dignity is articulated as closely related to older people's increasing autonomy and independence of formal care, and is pursued through enhancing care recipients' self-care ability, and through technological automation of care tasks. However, these articulations and pursuits of dignity do not stand alone. When everyday care practices are closely examined, dignity is also pursued by care workers as increased co-operation and equality between care workers and care recipients, as de-objectification, and as promotion of enjoyment and quality of life. In these practices, care is ambivalently positioned as both a potential threat to dignity, and as a prerequisite to achieving it. The paper concludes by discussing the risks of policy agendas pursuing a narrow understanding of dignity as simply independence of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper reviews the literature on migrants in elderly care regarding their involvement in the host country's labour market. The study aimed to find the most commonly used research methods and what topics are popular when studying this phenomenon. It is needed because of the ageing of the population, particularly in Europe, and the growing interest in employing migrants in senior care. Design/methodology/approach: Fifty-seven articles selected from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases were analysed. I took only articles published in English into account. They were selected based on an analysis of abstracts. The MAXQDA software was used. Findings: The literature review showed that there are three main themes concerning migrants in senior care: labour market and institutional aspects, qualification aspects, and individual aspects. Very little is known about the long-term impacts of using migrant workers in elderly care, including how it may affect the local community. We know too little on the impact of migration restriction and immigration policies on the elderly care workforce. There is a gap in knowledge in relation to economic aspects of migrant work in elderly care. Research limitations/implications: The literature review has limitations. First, there may be a lack of consistency in the methods and outcomes reported across studies, making it difficult to compare and synthesize the findings. Secondly, it’s time-limited and does not include the most recent studies, which can lead to an incomplete picture of the current state of research. Thirdly, the findings of literature reviews are not generalizable to other populations or contexts. Because policies towards migrants in elderly care vary from country to country. Originality/value: The literature review showed that there is a gap in knowledge, especially about economic aspects of migrant work in elderly care, regarding the presence of migrants in senior care in Central and East European Countries (CEE). The recommendation for future research is to look at how migrant workers in elderly care interact with local labour markets and to what extent they meet the demand for care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores mainstream print media depictions of women’s work during COVID-19 and associated lockdowns in India. Specifically, it aims to understand perceptions of educated upper- and middle-class women regarding remote working arrangements during the pandemic. It delineates two broad themes that emerge from an analysis of selected articles in four national dailies; first, many women regarded these arrangements as mutually beneficial for women employees as well as their workplaces, and its counternarrative characterised by women having to juggle paid and care work with little support from the family, market or state. The paper then unpacks the arrangement of work from home that emerges in the media analysis and offers a critique of the simplistic and binary understanding of flexibility, choice, and agency sustained by the neoliberal and postfeminist framing of pandemic work arrangements. Our analysis provides a feminist critique of these dominant perceptions that invisibilise the complexity and heterogeneity embedded within women’s experiences. Finally, the paper reiterates the urgent need to consider the structural factors that undermine gender equality across work and home; and pushes for a rethink of neoliberal and postfeminist notions of ‘flexibility’, ‘choice’ and ‘agency’ through the intersecting lenses of gender, labour, care work, and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an exploration of women's experiences of engaging in digitally mediated care work. Data for this article is drawn from qualitative interviews conducted with 15 young women in Australia to explore their experiences of securing care work through a digital platform. Importantly, we focus on both online and offline dimensions of securing work, thus contributing to the extant literature which has tended to focus on the online aspects of securing platform work. Through the complementary lenses of performativity and affective atmospheres, we examine the complexities of presenting an idealised self to obtain work opportunities from an online pool of diverse care-seekers, and the bodily performances and attributes required offline to secure actual work. We conclude by reflecting on how online and offline interactions explicate the normative performativity required by young women to successfully access digitally mediated service work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the United Kingdom and further afield, policy discourse has focused on the efficiencies technology will afford the care sector by increasing workforce capacity at a time when there are recruitment and retention issues. Previous research has explored the impact of telecare and other technologies on roles within the care sector, but issues related to job quality and the consequences of newer digital technologies that are increasingly being deployed in care settings are under researched. Through an exploration of the literature on robotics and empirical studies of telecare and mainstream 'smart' digital technology use in UK adult social care, this paper examines how these technologies are generating new forms of work and their implications for job quality, arguing the tendency to prioritise technology results in the creation 'machine babysitters' and 'fauxtomatons'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland has become an international exemplar in the use of citizens' assemblies to determine policy. Globally, deliberative fora seek to mitigate concerns of a democratic crisis, but they also may address the 'care crisis', where politics-as-normal seems unable, or unwilling, to address citizens' care needs. Drawing on Tronto's (2013) call for a caring democracy in which citizens take their responsibilities to care with one another, this paper examines the potential for deliberative processes to deliberate 'with' as well as 'about' care and to expand current care work debates. Using Barnes' (2012) 'care full' deliberation as an analytic framework, we document and interrogate the process and outcomes of Ireland's Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality (CAGE) (2020–21), particularly how it understood care work and responded to care workers' needs. We then reflect on the potential for citizen deliberation to realise better caring outcomes for all citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of studies have examined the impact of migration on reconciling familial care obligations with demanding paid care work. However, much of this research focuses on women who employ migrant care workers and ignores the experiences of migrant care workers balancing their jobs with their own familial responsibilities. As a result, little is known about how migrant care workers navigate local contexts, form families, and manage work and childcare in destination countries while maintaining commitments at home. This paper explores the family dynamics and transnational lives of Zimbabwean migrant care workers in the UK. It draws on qualitative interviews with 10 participants to elaborate on the additional challenges they face in reconciling paid care work with localized and transnational family care. The analysis highlights that migrant workers must simultaneously respond to the care demands of their families and employers, often causing tensions as gendered care expectations are challenged. To manage these difficulties in balancing work and family, Zimbabwean care workers employ various strategies that sometimes strain familial relationships. This study provides insight into the intersection of migrant care workers' paid labour and familial care obligations across borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, emerging from a community-university research partnership, examines community concerns around diamond mine closure in the Northwest Territories, Canada, and Dene visions of post-extractive futures. The Northwest Territories is a region of the sub-arctic characterized by a political economy that combines settler and Indigenous modes of governance, production, and social reproduction, with an outsized settler engagement in resource extraction. In this article, we turn our attention to the under-examined social processes of mine closure in this region. In taking a feminist political economy approach to mine closure, we attend to the multiple labours of the northern mixed economy. We aim to unsettle the settler preoccupation with the mine itself, and rather, to centre the social reproduction of mining affected communities. Responding to calls for greater attention to the social aspects of mine closure, this paper brings together feminist imaginaries of care and reproduction with place-based insights regarding the gender of settler colonialism and Indigenous women's transgressive caring labours in northern Canada. It draws upon community-based interviews and talking circles, analyzing mine closure as both a site of ongoing settler colonial dispossession and as a space of resistance to ongoing colonialism through the assertion of Dene modes of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special section "Does Work Have a Future?" begins by reviewing the main ways work stands at the crossroads today. We identify three core disputes with the potential to disrupt the future of work but which also harbor resources for affirmative futures of work: the precariousness of work and lives under existing economic arrangements; the emergence of care work as a source of social and environmental value; and technological change. We then consider the demands for new meanings and new valuings that the manifold disputed status of work formulates. Finally, we highlight the contributions the four pieces making up this special section give to that momentous question of whether work has a future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to show how Adorno's thought can illuminate our reflections on the future of work. It does so by situating Adorno's conception of genuine activity in relation to his negativist critical epistemology and his subtle account of the distinction between true and false needs. What emerges is an understanding of work that can guide our aspirations for the future of work, and one we illustrate via discussions of creative work and care work. These are types of work which cater to persistent human needs, albeit ones that are distorted under present social conditions. Adorno's thought helps us to understand why this is the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology use is a socially embedded process, especially when it comes to older adults and care. However, the restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have limited social contact to protect vulnerable groups in care homes, and even if technology use has increased in other areas, there is little known about the potential uptake of communication technology and changes in social interaction in the care context during a lasting crisis. This paper explores changes in communication technology use triggered by the pandemic at two care homes, using a qualitative diary study, online interviews and observations, and in-situ interviews within the care home with residents and workers. Our findings point to increasing use of tablets and video conference software triggered by COVID-related experiences, with implications for living and working in care homes. We also characterise the isolation experience of the residents, the workers' concerns about the residents and changes in social interaction. We observed new areas of technology usage, associated changing work practices, technical affinity issues and context-specific attitudes towards future technologies. While the pandemic has triggered the use of communication technology in care homes on a small scale, this has also caused increasing workload and in particular articulation work, which requires support structures and the re-definition of work roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current historical time is characterized by many crises that are deeply affecting bodies and their politics, amongst which feminist movements have highlighted an urgent "crisis of care". This paper discusses how this crisis permeates all realms, affecting the art world as well, and suggests that a historical perspective on the intersections between care work and creative work in the context of body politics can provide efficient investigative tools to address specific contemporary art field-related labor issues. The role and number of intermediaries involved in the process of artistic and cultural production tend to be all the more invisible, unrecognized, and exploited as the art world becomes an increasingly important and complex economic market. Under capitalist relations of production, the work of many is deemed economically unproductive although it is essential in sustaining the economy as such. This is an important, urgent, and growing cultural debate, which needs expanding within interdisciplinary research fields, as this paper suggests and demonstrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What motivates people to enter health care occupations? What are the rewards of these jobs? What are the paths of mobility from low‐paid, low‐prestige, health care jobs to higher paid, more professional ones? This paper attends to these questions through interviews and ethnographic observations among West African immigrant nurses and disability support professionals in the US. I find that extrinsic motivations, (racial discrimination in other segments of the labor market), and the quest for extrinsic rewards, (wages, immigration status benefits), played a role in the decision‐making of West African immigrant health care workers. I show how West African immigrants were able to parlay low‐wage, entry level positions in the health care industry into more professional, highly paid, and secure ones. These workers also reaped material benefits, and developed intrinsic rewards (love/affection, job satisfaction), and the desire to help others after being immersed in their jobs. I posit an understanding of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of care, as complex, layered, and intersecting. I prove that a mélange of motivations is in play, intrinsic and extrinsic rewards work in tandem, and one can enter health care for money and remain for money and for love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Japan's long-term foreign residents have continued to increase; and among the communities that have settled, Filipinos constitute one of several aging groups of migrants. This paper focuses on how aging Filipina migrants reflect upon and negotiate their observations on how they age in Japan. It argues that their perceptions of aging arise from expectations of self-reliance and independence linked to a discourse of successful aging popular in current discussions on aging globally. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper shows how informants articulate their expectations through the management of finances, personal health, and the practice of transnational retirement. It ultimately shows that within a shifting neoliberal discourse that pressures citizens to age proactively, alleviating the burden on the Japanese state, Filipinas express counter-narratives through their personal worries, desires, and practices. These have implications for the discussion on aging migrants in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an improved method to assess the economic value of unpaid housework and childcare. Existing literature has typically assigned a minimum, generalist or specialist's wage, or the performer's opportunity cost to the hourly value of these activities. Then it was used to calculate macro-level value based on the number of hours spent in this work. In this paper, instead of imputing an average or minimum wage for housework and childcare to determine a value to the work, we use the actual local wage rate requested for these services from providers on online platforms. Applying this method to Austrian Time Use Survey data shows that the value of unpaid childcare and housework, had it been paid, would be equivalent to about 22% of the 2018 GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As policymakers globally recognize aging in place as the preferred option for most adults, there is a growing need to supplement family or informal caregiving for frail older adults with formal homecare services, particularly for those who require 24/7 care due to significant physical and/or cognitive impairment. The core objective of this qualitative study was to explore family members' experiences in employing live-in care workers, particularly the nature of their engagement and the quality of their relationships with these care workers. Our analysis of semi-structured interviews with 35 family caregivers revealed four themes: 1) challenges in acquiring support and developing dependency; 2) negotiation of roles, responsibilities, and moral dilemmas; 3) shifting emotions between trust and suspicion; and 4) role confusion, expectations, and disappointments. The study suggests that families might benefit from formal guidance regarding fostering and maintaining positive relationships in the homecare environment. This paper provides nuanced knowledge that may inform the development of such interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community health workers (CHWs) are central to the global health response to crises like the AIDS epidemic. Yet community health work remains undervalued and undercompensated worldwide owing in large part to the gendered and racialized contexts of care work. This paper investigates the possibility of occupational security for CHWs by comparing two cases from South Africa's response to AIDS. The first draws on ethnographic research (2007–2009) in rural KwaZulu‐Natal province and documents the fraught formation of a union representing CHWs. The second examines legal action in the Free State province for a group of CHWs known as the Bophelo House 94, who were arrested and criminally charged in June 2014 after protesting their sudden dismissal by the government. This case comparison finds that collective action has thus far had limited effects on CHWs' position as a nascent occupation. The South African Ministry of Health has obstructed CHW professionalization, and non‐state actors' involvement has been a mixture of benefit and impediment: some social justice agencies have facilitated CHW advocacy, while many AIDS service organizations have cooperated with the state and exacerbated the precarity of CHWs' working conditions. However, the consolidation of CHW work roles—owing to advances in AIDS prevention and treatment—holds promise for future CHW collective organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few years, the proliferation of digital labour platforms has led to the transformation of business models and labour relations in an increasing number of economic activities, including highly feminized and informal traditional sectors, such as care and domestic work. Drawing on an analysis of 37 digital care platforms in Spain, this research compares the distinctive features and structural power dynamics they engender, and it constructs a taxonomy of business models of these care platforms. By analysing the main features of their operational models, we are capable of distinguishing three main types of platforms: marketplace, on‐demand, and digital placement agencies. First, the paper argues that the distinctive features of each digital platform business model have differentiated impacts on working conditions in terms of access to tasks, remuneration, flexibility and means of control. This differentiation allows us to understand what is transformative and what is continuous in platforms' precarization or formalisation of care work and working conditions of carers, mainly women and migrants. Each business model has its differentiated outcomes in terms of labour control and reorganization of women's and migrants' reproductive work. Second, more broadly, while digital care platforms may have contributed to facilitating workers' access to jobs, reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work and to increased market pressures. Therefore, this study contributes to existing research addressing the degree of formalization of labour relations in digital platform work through a nuanced analysis of their business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Maguaré is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Departamento de Antropologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Temas y Debates is the property of Temas y Debates and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The United States occupies a unique position among OECD countries because the US provides little policy support for working parents. Despite the resulting extreme time scarcity, US fathers perform similar amounts of child care as European fathers under more family-friendly policy conditions. Using recent national time use survey data, this paper examines whether time scarcity among American working parents, coupled with limited access to affordable child care and traditional masculine identity ideas, is associated with American fathers' involvement in the daily care of their young children. Results show that fathers do one third of all care activities, contribute one third of the care time, and perform over one half of the 10 activities analyzed here daily. Multivariate analysis indicates that time scarcity, lack of alternative child care options, and traditional masculine identity affect the degree of fathers' involvement in daily care activities with their under five year olds. Implications for the development of caring masculinities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how to organize care in degrowth societies that call for social and ecological sustainability, as well as gender and environmental justice, without prioritizing one over the other. By building on degrowth scholarship, feminist economics, the commons, and decolonial feminisms, we rebut the strategy of shifting yet more unpaid care work to the monetized economy, thereby reinforcing the separation structure in economics. A feminist degrowth imaginary implies destabilizing prevalent dichotomies and overcoming the (inherent hierarchization in the) boundary between the monetized economy and the invisibilized economy of socio-ecological provisioning. The paper proposes an incremental, emancipatory decommodification and a commonization of care in a sphere beyond the public/private divide, namely the sphere of communitarian and transformative caring commons, as they persist at the margins of capitalism and are (re-)created by social movements around the world. HIGHLIGHTS Degrowth aims at creating human flourishing within planetary boundaries. As feminist degrowth scholarship, this study discusses degrowth visions for care work. It problematizes the shifting of yet more unpaid care work to the monetized economy. Instead, it proposes collective (re)organization in the sphere of the commons. Caring commons are no automatism for a gender-just redistribution of care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workers' experiences in Italian social cooperatives expose the tension between the goal of desirable change that these social economy organisations pursue and the demanding working conditions shouldered by staff. Born from the radical movements of the 1970s, social cooperatives deliver care and community services that seek to counter inequalities and marginalisation. This important work fuses employment with activism. Yet, cooperatives often rely on casualised labour practices that normalise overwork. A noble mission does not guarantee cooperatives will also be sustainable work environments. Based on extensive qualitative research conducted in Milan, this paper explores how, since 2013, a collective of social economy workers has been mobilising to challenge poor working conditions, query the ways workers participate in them, and connect labour demands with broader struggles against austerity and impoverishment. These organising efforts pursue social recomposition: a form of labour struggle that exceeds the workplace and embraces the sphere of social reproduction. Combining a workerist framework of class composition with feminist insights, this paper invites attention to the ways workers inhabit and struggle within, against and beyond their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two purposes. The first is theoretical: to revise use of the concept of moral economy in migration studies, and the related concept of deservingness. I will identify different versions and meanings, showing their significant contribution to the understanding of migration issues, but discussing their lack of consideration of a particular aspect: the conflict between competing moral economies. The second and related purpose will be to apply the concept of moral economy to an analysis of the public debate on the recent measure, related to the COVID-19 pandemic, enacted to regularise unauthorised immigrants in Italy (May–August 2020). The measure, almost unique in Europe and in the Global North, has involved only workers, and workers employed in two sectors: agriculture and domestic/care services. This decision can be seen as a choice in terms of moral economy: some sectors and some immigrant workers have deserved more consideration than other workers. The empirical material is constituted by declarations and statements by social and political actors who took part in the debate, using moral-economic arguments to support their position. I will review this debate through the lens of competing moral economies and different notions of deservingness. In the conclusion I argue that in migration policies, relevant moral and political values are involved: human rights and national sovereignty, the right to mobility and citizens' rights, the right of asylum and social cohesion. I wish for a more subtle use of the concept of moral economy to feed a better discussion of these crucial topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gendered distribution of trips linked to the domestic sphere and to care work have been highlighted by a range of feminist geographers and sociologists since the 1980s. Yet, little research has shed light on how class relations intersect with this gendered mobility. The study on intersection of class and gender is particularly relevant in Global cities as places that concentrate both highly-skilled and low-skilled female workers, connected to intertwined migration flows. This paper will use the Domestic Mobility Work as a conceptual framework to highlight how in a 'small global city' – Brussels – highly qualified female workers and mothers manage their gendered spatial constraints, mostly by calling on the services of lower class women. Through semi-structured interviews with high-profile female workers with children, it shows that delegating mobility workload is crucial for them to fulfill their career and to maintain an ideal of gender equality within the couple. But the interviewees also shed light on the challenge delegating care work poses to their identity as mothers. They also show the gendered relevance of mobility services offered by care and educational institutions, set up exclusively for the benefit of employees in the international sector. The article calls for further research on the intersections of class, gender and migration in global cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the experiences of the world's largest all‐women community health workforce through the lens of liminality. Originally used to describe transition from one state to the other, the concept of liminality in the study of work and organizations can frame workers' experiences of being in‐between established structures and roles in varying degrees, times, and/or places. India's ASHAs, or Accredited Social Health Activists, are community women at the frontlines of the state's health care provisioning. But the state does not categorize them as workers or employees. ASHAs are considered volunteers. Instead of salaries, they are paid task‐based incentives. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, including 80 interviews, I find that ASHAs' liminal occupational status as 'paid volunteers' produces conditions of chronic underpayment and control for them, further lowering their already low wages. This has implications for how we understand the gender wage gap. I argue that we need to consider not just how much women are paid, but how the payment is structured, and how that places marginalized women workers in relation to others in the workplace. Moving beyond whether liminality is a negative or positive experience, future research should delineate the conditions under which liminality is negative or positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Hungarian stay-at-home father—working-mother families from a point of view of how the distribution of unpaid domestic work develops during the period when the father stays at home with his child(ren). It answers the question of what principles and implemented practices govern the division of household labour in these families. According to the perception of the traditional parental role, unpaid domestic work, such as family duties, routine housework, and care work are the responsibility of mothers, while fathers are responsible for the financial stability of the family. In addition to the once prevailing breadwinner father role, nowadays the egalitarian model is becoming increasingly prominent. In parallel, a new father type appears according to which a good father wants to be more involved in the everyday life of the child. An extreme case of this type of involvement is when the father stays at home with his child(ren) and becomes the primary caregiver, and the mother assumes the role of breadwinner. The ratio of such families is growing around the world, but we still know relatively little about them. Our gap-filling, qualitative research is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 31 Hungarian stay-at-home fathers supplemented by a short questionnaire with their partners. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis method. As a main conclusion we could identify two clearly distinguishable groups among the examined couples: families with a rather traditional approach, and families having more egalitarian values concerning gender roles. However, the findings suggest that all of these families can be characterised by egalitarian sharing practices of duties, and at the same time by undoing gender. The distribution of routine housework and care work is based on a time availability perspective, which does not specify any masculine or feminine family duty or work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Soziale Passagen is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Doulas are non‐medical support persons, paid for privatively by clients, who offer emotional support during pregnancy and childbirth. While doulas work alongside clinical care providers, such as physicians, midwives, and nurses, they are unregulated and typically have no formal standing in hospitals. As with other types of care work, doula practice is shaped by gendered assumptions about women's "natural" and boundless capacity to provide care. In this paper, I draw on interviews with 26 doulas practicing in Toronto, Canada, to explore the nature of doulas' caring dilemma―the tension between an altruistic motivation to provide care and a desire for greater professional autonomy and control over working conditions among care workers. I show that doulas' self‐imposed obligation to provide a specific model of care, along with their desire to fill gaps in maternity care, results in a caring dilemma that places their own needs in opposition to those of their clients. In response to their significant caring demands, some doulas attempt to alter their work to improve their working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship remains divided about whether emotional labor is 'skilled'. Interrogating gendered skill constructs that render emotions in work invisible, I examine two organizational contexts in the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector: family and center-based care. I draw from 43 interviews, primarily with Latina and White women workers, reflecting feminized and racialized workplaces. I also draw from ethnographic and observational data. Challenging the particular devaluation of family-based care, findings reveal that the practice of skill in emotional labor is organizationally shaped across less and more institutionalized forms of ECEC. Examining worker critiques of professionalization norms and credential-based skill metrics, autonomy is also identified as a pre-requisite for embodied, tacit and discretionary skills in the emotional labor of ECEC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic and care sector continues to display some problematic aspects due to its complexity, especially in terms of regulation. Italy represents a unique and peculiar case, where domestic and care work remains firmly under the purview of family management, and the work itself is entrusted mainly to immigrant workers. This paper aims to investigate, through in-depth interviews with representatives of both unions and employers' associations, how the key actors involved in regulating domestic and care work intervene, understanding what kind of measures they take and what systems of relations/exchange exist among the different players involved in this process. The research sought to map strategies at a more macro level. While some of the actions undertaken by the social partners seem promising, there is still a lack of full responsibility for care at the public level, with marked asymmetries with respect to both services provided and working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Scandinavian countries, reablement has become a principle permeating all parts of elderly care, hence potentially transforming care and care work. This article explores the advent of new knowledge paradigms and practices of physiotherapists and occupational therapists transforming reabling care in particular ways, leading to what we term a logic of training emerging in the field. These professional groups have obtained a dominant position as reablement specialists in Norway and Denmark, where our extensive fieldwork was performed as part of a 3‐year research project. Taking inspiration from Annemarie Mol's concept of logic, we study how professional practices are organised and infused with specific values, meanings and ideals in situated contexts. We hence explore the logic of training, its abstracted image of the body and rational goal‐oriented model for progress measurement and its ramifications when addressing ageing bodies in a complex field marked by the unpredictabilities of the social and lived bodies, administrative rules and temporalities and the quest for empowering and involving clients. The paper concludes by pointing at new contradictions arising when practicing reabling care and particularly points out the tensions arising in care relations, where ambitions on empowering and disciplining the client and the elderly body may collide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of rights‐based advocacy for people with disabilities have transitioned long‐term care in the United States from institutional settings to home‐based care provided by interdependent care networks. This paper argues that policies and practices within these home‐based care systems unintentionally produce and often perpetuate unrecognized structural violence on the recipients of care and the caregivers. Understanding the caregivers' experiences through a case study of a Facebook feeding tube family support group exposes the geographic realities and ableist underpinnings of the home‐based care model that undergird this violence. Further, I illustrate the contradictions of "home is best" ideology by focusing on three interwoven themes: structural dependency on unpaid mother‐experts, spatio‐temporal erasure through decentralization, and invasive surveillance structures. This research attends to how home‐based care, as a practice and a place, reflects broader patriarchal, gendered, and neoliberal concepts of autonomy and individual rights as expressed through policies like "person‐centered" care and the medical home model. While this analysis has theoretical, methodological, and policy implications, more important is the contextualization of family experiences that sometimes impacts life and death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates opportunities and obstacles refugee women face in establishment in rural areas. Drawing on ethnographic research in three rural municipalities in northern Sweden, including interviews with refugee women, local employers and educational staff, I analyse the women's space for agency and opportunities to use and capitalise on different resources in relation to the local labour market and belonging. Applying Bourdieu's conceptualisation of cultural capital, as read by Skeggs, I show that the women can capitalise on embodied cultural capital of feminine and ethnic caregiving. However, due to lack of the 'right' institutional cultural capital of educational certificates from Swedish institutions, and devaluation of foreign credentials and experiences, this is mainly in difficult-to-fill, unsecure jobs in the elder care or early childhood education and care sectors. The women's limited options and opportunities to 'enterprise themselves up' contribute to ethnicisation of care work in rural labour markets. Moreover, lack of mobility and key cultural capital (cars and driving licences) for work, education and belonging in both the local masculine culture of the remote rural areas and national gender equality culture further limit the women's space for agency and establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Gender & Development is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper sheds light on preschool teachers' experiences with the plethora of parents' WhatsApp groups in Israel. Using a social constructivist approach, we conducted discussions with twenty-five preschool teachers. We argue that WhatsApp as a social medium contributes to the de-skilling of the preschool teachers' labour. We identified three types of ambivalence in the teachers' comments regarding interactions with and among parents: (a) instrumental ambivalence celebrates technology's efficiency while witnessing a shift in long working hours and a need to justify their pedagogical decisions; (b) substantive ambivalence indicates the intensified tendency to hold teachers in a need to engage in public relations; (c) critical ambivalence demonstrates a turn from a professional discourse between parents and teachers to a surveillance and accountability discourse. We conclude that the intense supervision by parents afforded by WhatsApp groups contributes to the de-skilling of preschool teachers' labour by turning a caring profession to a managerial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]