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Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden
Gender, Work & Organization
Abstract
While there is a substantial scholarly literature depicting the abuses and exploitation of domestic workers in the informal cleaning sector, there is virtually no work that examines conditions in the formal market. This is not an oversight. For many, commodifying domestic labour entrenches gender and economic inequalities; we all should simply clean up after ourselves. We seek to offer a fresh approach: the vital question for those concerned with the women performing this work for pay is not whether to commodify reproductive labour, but rather what form the market will take and what conditions might render it a decent job. In order to make such an assessment, we need to look beyond worst-case scenarios in the informal sector, and study instead the evolution of the formal market. Only by also examining the content and terms of the work can we address how not to perpetuate inequalities such as the gendered division of labour and its intersection with nationality, race and class. In this article, we analyse the market for household services in Sweden's gender egalitarian social democracy, where a recent tax policy fostered the rapid expansion of a formal market for domestic cleaning. We conclude that domestic cleaning can be a decent job and that there is no inherent contradiction between a market for household services and a social democratic political economy.
... The included countries represent four World Health Organization (WHO) regions-Africa [67], Europe [68][69][70], South-East Asia [71][72][73], and Western Pacific Region [74][75][76][77]-and a combination of low [67], lower-middle [72][73][74]77], upper-middle [71,76], and high-income countries [68][69][70]75]. Except for one institutional report [67] and one book chapter [74], all other studies were published as academic journal articles; these had a range of study designs, including five qualitative [67,70,71,75,77], one randomized controlled trial [69], one non-randomized [73], three quantitative descriptive [68,74,76], and one mixed methods [72]. ...
... The included countries represent four World Health Organization (WHO) regions-Africa [67], Europe [68][69][70], South-East Asia [71][72][73], and Western Pacific Region [74][75][76][77]-and a combination of low [67], lower-middle [72][73][74]77], upper-middle [71,76], and high-income countries [68][69][70]75]. Except for one institutional report [67] and one book chapter [74], all other studies were published as academic journal articles; these had a range of study designs, including five qualitative [67,70,71,75,77], one randomized controlled trial [69], one non-randomized [73], three quantitative descriptive [68,74,76], and one mixed methods [72]. ...
... The included countries represent four World Health Organization (WHO) regions-Africa [67], Europe [68][69][70], South-East Asia [71][72][73], and Western Pacific Region [74][75][76][77]-and a combination of low [67], lower-middle [72][73][74]77], upper-middle [71,76], and high-income countries [68][69][70]75]. Except for one institutional report [67] and one book chapter [74], all other studies were published as academic journal articles; these had a range of study designs, including five qualitative [67,70,71,75,77], one randomized controlled trial [69], one non-randomized [73], three quantitative descriptive [68,74,76], and one mixed methods [72]. This categorization of study designs uses the categories included in the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, 2018 version [63]. ...
The prevalence of precarious employment has increased in recent decades and aspects such as employment insecurity and income inadequacy have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify, appraise, and synthesise existing evidence pertaining to implemented initiatives addressing precarious employment that have evaluated and reported health and well-being outcomes. We used the PRISMA framework to guide this review and identified 11 relevant initiatives through searches in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and three sources of grey literature. We found very few evaluated interventions addressing precarious employment and its impact on the health and well-being of workers globally. Ten out of 11 initiatives were not purposefully designed to address precarious employment in general, nor specific dimensions of it. Seven out of 11 initiatives evaluated outcomes related to the occupational health and safety of precariously employed workers and six out of 11 evaluated worker health and well-being outcomes. Most initiatives showed the potential to improve the health of workers, although the evaluation component was often described with less detail than the initiative itself. Given the heterogeneity of the 11 initiatives regarding study design, sample size, implementation, evaluation, economic and political contexts, and target population, we found insufficient evidence to compare outcomes across types of initiatives, generalize findings, or make specific recommendations for the adoption of initiatives.
... From women's point of view, being seen as an aspirational and independent entrepreneur can lead to the breakaway from established social norms and loss of legitimacy (Kistruck et al., 2015;Lince, 2011;Viswanathan et al., 2014). This gendered societal context explains why even successful women entrepreneurs may choose to leverage their gendered role identity as a homemaker, caregiver, wife and/or mother to pursue their business informally and present it as a household activity (Agergaard and Thao, 2011;Frank and Olsson, 2014;Bowman and Cole, 2014). ...
... To illustrate, women entrepreneurs, in response to gender-biased and deficient formal institutions, tend to be proactive in negotiating access to key resources (such as land, property and finance accounts) belonging to their husbands and other male relatives (Langevang et al., 2018;Xheneti and Thapa Karki, 2017; In general, bringing on board and partnering with husbands and male family members consistently emerges across many studies as a key connectivity strategy for informal women entrepreneurs to bridge the gap with gender biased formal institutional structures, as well as to secure acceptance for their engagement in business activities by family, community and broader society (Agergaard and Thao, 2011;Biernacka et al., 2018;Bowman and Cole, 2014;. In patriarchal societies, the latter is often achieved by women entrepreneurs explicitly emphasising their 'primary' roles as wives, sisters, daughters, etc., running businesses from family homes, devaluing their business success and inflating their male partner's status. ...
... Such preconceived notions demarcate roles and professions and pursuing entrepreneurship on a formal scale for women, therefore, means loss of legitimacy and non-alignment with societal medians (Kistruck et al., 2015;Lince, 2011;Viswanathan et al., 2014). It may explain why successful women entrepreneurs limit their ventures close to home and restrict their prime responsibilities under the banner of informal entrepreneurship (Agergaard and Thao, 2011;Frank and Olsson, 2014;Bowman and Cole, 2014;Williams and Gurtoo, 2011). ...
The purpose of this research is to study why and how informal women entrepreneurship unfolds in economies that are riddled with gendered and concurrent institutional voids. It consists of three distinct research papers. The first paper integrates the institutional voids perspective with the institutional logics approach to conceptualize how informal women entrepreneurs may strategize when facing both enabling and constraining conditions arising from gendered and concurrent institutional voids, and across different institutional orders. By bridging the discourses on institutional orders, institutional voids and institutional logics, it strengthens the conceptual sensitivity of the developed framework, extends prior work on complexity of institutional environment that influences women entrepreneurs in the informal sector and their response strategies, and presents a research agenda for advancement of knowledge to other socio-spatial and cultural contexts. The second paper qualitatively explores the conflicting influences of the institutional order of family on the motivations to pursue informal entrepreneurship and on the response strategies informal women entrepreneurs devise to resolve the conflicting and contending logics. It focuses on the impact of enabling, orienting or constraining family logics on decision making; hence rendering visible the reflective and pre-reflective agency of informal women entrepreneurs. This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the engagement of micro-process such as strategy formulation with existing meso and macro-institutional structures. It expands the theory of vi institutional logics prespective by taking into account the unexplored environmental dimension of gendered and concurrent institutional voids. The third paper explores the role of digital space in enabling informal women entrepreneurship in developing economies, characterized by gendered and concurrent institutional voids. It discovers the unique mechanisms of interaction between societal and digital logics which result in transposing and diffusing entrepreneurial practices across societal and digital contexts. This study advances the understanding of the role of digitisation as a contemporary, and emerging institutional logic. It also addresses institutional complexity in developing economies in stimulating digital entrepreneurship opportunities for women entrepreneurs operating in the informal sector.
... Second, the labor wages of domestic workers are paid by domestic enterprises, which is beneficial for them to avoid the occurrence of unauthorized deductions from domestic workers' paychecks by clients (17,18). Third, domestic workers employed by domestic enterprises are more likely to resist abuse and harassment by clients because they receive support from colleagues, ask for help from domestic enterprises, continue working by changing clients, etc., (19)(20)(21). Fourth, domestic enterprises provide trainings and other services to build domestic workers' confidence in the labor market. Usually, domestic workers also expect to earn higher wages after completing the trainings from domestic enterprises (22,23). ...
... Since subsidy policy is often demand-driven, its goal is to make it easier for households to hire domestic workers, and the policy beneficiaries are often first those households that are able to pay for services. While reducing the burden of housework for dualearner households, such policy also exacerbates gender inequality in housework, shifting housework from wealthier women to less wealthy women (3,21,26). Based on the empirical research of Belgium, France, Switzerland and Brazil, Tomei (29) found that working conditions for domestic workers improved slightly after governments offered an incentive to increase the number of licensed domestic enterprises, but the quality of domestic services remained uneven. Jokela (25) argued that relevant policies reflected the underestimation of paid domestic work in the regulation of visa restrictions and residency requirements and that practices such as limiting hours of service and failing to distinguish between different types of domestic work exacerbated the disadvantage of domestic workers' employment insecurity. ...
Since China entered the aging society, the surging demand for elderly care and the industrial upgrading of “silver economy” has forced the domestic service industry to face endogenous challenges. Among them, the formalization of the domestic service industry can effectively reduce the transaction costs and risks of actors, innovate the endogenous vitality of the industry, and promote the improvement of elderly care quality through a triangular employment relationship. By constructing a tripartite asymmetric evolutionary game model of clients, domestic enterprises and governmental departments, this study uses the stability theorem of differential equations to explore the influencing factors and action paths of the system's evolutionary stable strategies (ESS), and uses the research data collected from China to assign values to models for simulation analysis. This study finds that the ratio of the initial ideal strategy, the difference between profits and costs, subsidies to clients, and subsidies or punishments for breach of contract to domestic enterprises are the key factors affecting the formalization of the domestic service industry. Subsidy policy programs can be divided into long-term and periodic programs, and there are differences in the influence paths and effects of the key factors in different situations. Increasing domestic enterprises' market share with employee management systems, formulating subsidy programs for clients, and setting up evaluation and supervision mechanisms are efficient ways through which to promote the formalization of the domestic service industry in China. Subsidy policy of governmental departments should focus on improving the professional skills and quality of elderly care domestic workers, and also encourage domestic enterprises with employee management systems at the same time, to expand the scope of service beneficiaries by running nutrition restaurants in communities, cooperating with elderly care institutions, etc.
... In 2007, following the heated "maid debate," Sweden introduced a tax credit of 50% for the cost of hiring services of domestic workers. This tax credit is mainly used to purchase cleaning services from formal cleaning businesses (Bowman and Alyson 2014). At the time, the cleaning industry comprised many small firms; however, from 2007 onward, several large cleaning firms started business (Bowman and Alyson 2014). ...
... This tax credit is mainly used to purchase cleaning services from formal cleaning businesses (Bowman and Alyson 2014). At the time, the cleaning industry comprised many small firms; however, from 2007 onward, several large cleaning firms started business (Bowman and Alyson 2014). After the enactment of the scheme, it is reported that cleaning remains a feminized and ethnically segregated low-income and low-status occupation; the employment is often part-time, not because workers have chosen this, but because of the schedules demanded by the clients (Abbasian and Hellgren 2012, 165). ...
... In 2007, following the heated "maid debate," Sweden introduced a tax credit of 50% for the cost of hiring services of domestic workers. This tax credit is mainly used to purchase cleaning services from formal cleaning businesses (Bowman and Alyson 2014). At the time, the cleaning industry comprised many small firms; however, from 2007 onward, several large cleaning firms started business (Bowman and Alyson 2014). ...
... This tax credit is mainly used to purchase cleaning services from formal cleaning businesses (Bowman and Alyson 2014). At the time, the cleaning industry comprised many small firms; however, from 2007 onward, several large cleaning firms started business (Bowman and Alyson 2014). After the enactment of the scheme, it is reported that cleaning remains a feminized and ethnically segregated low-income and low-status occupation; the employment is often part-time, not because workers have chosen this, but because of the schedules demanded by the clients (Abbasian and Hellgren 2012, 165). ...
Gender inequality, caused by the unequal distribution of unpaid care and domestic work between genders, has been a major feminist issue for a long time. This article demonstrates that so-called gender equality policies, which aim to reduce the burden of women’s unpaid care and domestic work through the state-supported marketization of these services, create a vulnerable group of under-paid care and domestic workers. Such policies widen income gap between women who can purchase these services and those who cannot. I will propose feminist initiatives for gender equality that address these problems
... Employment through companies is not necessarily sufficient to protect workers from exploitation, but it is argued to be crucial in improving job quality for domestic workers (Dussuet 2005;Bailly et al. 2013). Previous studies show that in case of workplace violations, direct employees are dissuaded from complaining out of fear of losing their job, while in the case of agency employees, they can more easily turn to their employer for help (Bowman and Cole 2014). Bowman and Cole also found that in bigger companies especially, collective bargaining was better organized and wages of company employees were higher than those of self-employed workers. ...
... The heterogeneity of the sector puts workers in very different positions in terms of precariousness. Generally, part-time work and short-term contracts are common in the domestic work sector, which usually makes it difficult to develop stable jobs and decent work opportunities (Tomei 2011;Bowman and Cole 2014;Shire 2015). ...
... Furthermore, the continuous struggles experienced in social-reproductive work (Dowling, 2016;Federici, 2019;Ferguson, 2019;Hearn, 2019), unprecedented domestic maintenance challenges, the public and private patriarchal structures exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic (Boncori, 2020;Docka-Filipek & Stone, 2021;Ozkazanc-Pan & Pullen, 2021), and the burgeoning number of vulnerable workers engaged in precarious workincluding maintenance (Bowman & Cole, 2014;Valenzuela et al., 2023)-are a timely reminder that these boundaries have merely been blurred yet not broken. The broader picture remains dishearteningly problematic and, thus, the analysis of Ukeles's work is well suited to expanding our theorizing of maintenance in the context of Management and Organization Studies (MOS). ...
This paper proposes an alternative feminist understanding of maintenance by investigating the artistic practices and lived experiences of feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939). Our main theoretical and empirical focus lies on maintenance, and we show how art and motherhood as productive connection points proffer different ways of perceiving, understanding, and practicing maintenance. By contextualizing our case within the historical backdrop of New York between the late 1960s and 1980s, we demonstrate how Ukeles's maintenance art proposes novel ways of perceiving the value of maintenance, from the maintenance performed by mothers to considerations of the broader societal implications of maintenance. Such alternative political understanding aligns with critiques of postfeminist societal discourse. We contend that Ukeles's art inspires a political shift in our thinking about maintenance, where maintenance is valued not solely for its indispensable and utilitarian attributes but also it's relational, emotional, and embodied qualities. This nuanced understanding requests visibility for maintenance and foregrounds “more‐than‐I,” agency, and continuity of life, thereby acknowledging the inherent value of the political dimensions of maintenance.
... In our precarious work composite, we excluded employment via an agency in measuring the temporary work dimension since such employment may significantly reduce job insecurity vis-à-vis other nonpermanent forms of employment (Bowman & Cole, 2014). However, given that agency workers made up the majority of all nonpermanent employees within our sample, for robustness, we re-estimated the key models using three different specifications of the composite and controls: (1) including agency workers in the temporary work dimension, as well as in the dimensions of wage and representation (Appendix E); 2) excluding agency workers from all three measures (temporary work, wages, and representation) (Appendix E); and (3) adding a control variable for the share of agency workers (Appendix F). ...
Precarious work, or employment that is associated with temporary contracts, low earnings and limited or no employee representation, is on the rise. From an operations perspective, these practices should enable flexibility and reduce costs. However, from the perspective of most other social sciences, precarious work harms workers and should harm firm performance. The objective of this research is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the performance implications of precarious work. We collected survey data in the UK from multiple respondents (operations and human resource managers) along with secondary data to explore how the use of precarious work affects a company's financial, operational and occupational health & safety performance. The results were mixed. Precarious work did not have a significant influence on occupational health & safety performance and had a negative relationship with cost performance. We also established an inverted u‐shaped relationship between precarious work and flexibility and financial performance; low levels of precarious work improve flexibility and financial performance and high levels of precarious work harm both. Finally, we explored if high‐performance work practices could moderate these relationships, but the results were mostly insignificant. The results suggest that firms only benefit from relatively low levels of adoption of precarious work.
... Similarly, in Sweden, the Social Democrats that had initially strongly objected the tax breaks for domestic services could not simply abolish the scheme when back in office, because of its acquired popularity (Morel and Carbonnier 2015, 18;Bowman and Cole 2014 (Hellgren 2015;Hobson, Hellgren, and Serrano 2018). ...
A special employment regulation excludes domestic workers in the Netherlands from most social and employment protection. Using a process tracing method, this article assesses why such an exclusionary policy has persisted in an otherwise inclusive welfare state. Going beyond the narrow class-based focus of dualization research, the article develops a framework for understanding the politics of differentiation by taking into account how intersecting social divisions based on class, gender, and citizenship shape political representation and ideas about legitimate inequalities. These intersecting social divisions explain why even potential political allies have not given priority to improving domestic workers' rights. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
... The norm of support for equality is manifested as high support for the welfare state (Svallfors 2011) as well as in policy decisions. As an example, a proposal to tax relieve the purchase of household services was actively opposed with the argument that it would fundamentally damage Sweden's egalitarian society (Bowman and Cole 2014). In a similar way, studies indicate that institutionally conditioned norms influence governance and attitudes to social marginalisation. ...
This article situates the phenomenon of visible begging in the context of the welfare state, exploring the relationship between welfare institutions and social marginalisation. Combining survey data with 26 interviews, the article explores what Swedes think about the proposal to ban begging. The results confirm earlier studies emphasising the norms of egalitarianism and insider privilege in universal welfare states. However, the results identify pragmatism, non-materialist egalitarianism, and non-coercion as complementary frames in individual reasoning about begging. Finally, the results indicate a blurred distinction between vulnerability and deviance in reasoning about begging, nuancing previous ideas about social policy preferences.
... Other studies find that women enact gender roles by hiding or devaluing their own economic activities, as a way of maintaining their traditional social positions as mothers and carers rather than successful business women (Bowman and Cole 2014). Franck and Olsson (2014) observe that women strategically label their activities as housework in order to gain access to work, but still comply with different social norms so as to avoid destabilizing the household. ...
The informal economy (IE) has attracted the attention of policy makers, practitioners and academics alike, reflected both in the growing number of publications spanning different disciplinary foci and in the recent policy emphasis on the formalisation of IE (ILO 2014, Sepulveda and Syrett 2007, Williams and Nadin 2014). The emphasis on formalisation reflects the move beyond traditional explanations of IE as lacking sustainability and stability associated with being a remnant of economic development (Webb et al. 2009) to appreciate its permanence and significance, and its links with, and interdependencies on, the formal economy (Castells and Portes 1989, Meagher 2013, Chen 2007). The IE, broadly accepted as ‘the diversified set of economic activities, enterprises, jobs, and workers that are not regulated or protected by the state’ (Chen 2012: 8), contributes substantially to national GDPs of countries at different developmental stages, accounting as much as 40-60% of the GDPs of developing countries (Godfrey 2011, Schneider 2002). The IE also attracts a disproportionately high number of women, whose participation in these often vulnerable forms of (self)employment is frequently portrayed as motivated by poverty or ‘involuntary exclusion’ from the formal labour market and concerned with sustaining their family’s livelihood (Franck 2012, Bushell 2008, Williams and Gurtoo 2011). These views often ignore the gendered constraints on women’s entrepreneurial activities and their reproduction through social norms, codes of behaviour and practices in specific socio-cultural contexts and the barriers to women’s sustainable economic activity through formalisation.
Background
Housecleaning work has been characterized as precarious employment with unstable work hours, arbitrary and low pay and benefits, and exposures to chemical, physical, and psychosocial stressors. Understanding how interpersonal power dynamics between workers and clients, a component of precarious work, contributes to work exposures can inform and improve prevention programs.
Methods
We used reflexive thematic analysis of data from seven focus groups with Latinx immigrant housecleaners in New York City to explore workers' experience of interpersonal power dynamics with their clients—whom they referred to as their “employers”—and its influences on working conditions.
Results
Employer direction and monitoring varied and mostly reduced workers' autonomy to choose products, sometimes leading workers to complete tasks in more hazardous ways. Housecleaners reported using larger quantities of products, products with stronger scents, and more physical exertion to increase the efficiency of their cleaning, to complete tasks quickly, and to please their clients. Allotted time, tasks, and pay were interconnected, often resulting in negative reports about health and well‐being. As immigrants, they also experienced discrimination and intimidation, which compounded their anxiety due to their employment insecurity. Nevertheless, participants learned and navigated high variance in employers' cleaning preferences and attempted to take control over the conduct of their work, when possible, and sometimes expressed self‐advocacy.
Conclusions
Housecleaners' precarious employment arrangements affect how they navigate interpersonal relationships with employers, which impairs their working conditions and occupational exposures. Improvements in labor and social protections, such as designing supportive policies and training for workers and employers, are needed to improve working conditions.
Fehlende formale Qualifikationen wirken sich negativ auf Erwerbschancen aus, insbesondere für Frauen. Während die Forschung bisher vor allem makrostrukturelle Faktoren beleuchtete, nimmt dieser Beitrag die Mesoebene in den Blick und fragt danach, wie die Erwerbschancen Geringqualifizierter durch branchenspezifische Formen der Beschäftigung und Arbeitsorganisation beeinflusst werden. Durch den Vergleich zweier geschlechtersegregierter Branchen, dem Bau- und Reinigungsgewerbe in der Schweiz, wird aufgezeigt, wie Systeme der kollektiven Lohnverhandlung, Strategien des Personaleinsatzes sowie Regeln und Praktiken der Beförderung und Weiterbildung zu ungleichen Erwerbschancen beitragen. Analytisch knüpft der Artikel an die Theorie der Unterschätzung von Frauenarbeit an und konzipiert Erwerbschancen als Resultat unterschiedlicher Konstruktionen des Werts von Arbeit. Als empirische Grundlage dienen qualitative Interviews mit Arbeitgebenden, geringqualifizierten Arbeitskräften und Gewerkschaftsvertretern. Zudem wurden die Kollektivverträge der beiden Branchen analysiert. Der Fokus liegt auf Generalunternehmen der Baubranche und auf der Unterhaltsreinigung. Während sich Erstere durch hohe Mindestlöhne sowie institutionalisierte Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten auszeichnen, ist Letztere durch niedrige Löhne, Unterbeschäftigung und mangelnde Möglichkeiten der beruflichen Weiterentwicklung geprägt. Der Beitrag belegt die Vielschichtigkeit der Faktoren, die auf der Ebene von Branchen und Betrieben die Erwerbschancen von Geringqualifizierten beeinflussen.
Despite years of growth in the number of women in paid work, gender roles in unpaid housework have remained remarkably rigid. Unpaid housework can be outsourced to non-care household service providers, such as cleaners or housekeepers, however, high prices, a substantial tax burden and a lack of easy access impose barriers to greater formalisation of the household service sector. With the aim of increasing work-life balance for households, in particular for women in employment, and reducing the wide-ranging practice of undeclared employment, a number of OECD countries have implemented policies to formalise and boost the provision of non-care household services. This report illustrates the importance of the non-care household service sector and reviews international approaches in formalising the non-care household service market, ranging from providing tax incentives or granting social vouchers, to identify good practice. To highlight the potential economic gains that could follow from easing the housework burden, the report also estimates the economic value of unpaid housework provided by men and women
Taking off from the ILO's initiative on carework, this article reconsiders the Marxist dichotomy between productive and reproductive labor and asks what work has care performed within global capitalism? As a theoretical intervention, it aligns itself with those who see reproduction as productive, making people and subsequently the labor power necessary for other forms of production to occur. As a historical intervention, it rethinks literature on reproductive labors along four dimensions: first, pregnancy and birth as a form of work in itself; second, the quotidian activities of daily life performed for oneself and household members, including cooking, maintenance around the domicile, caring, and nurturing, as also work; third, paid household and carework, such as home health aides and domestic cleaners, as commodified reproductive labor in intimate settings; and fourth, public reproduction through social services and infrastructure, such as clinics, schools, and water systems. To illustrate the variety of ways that reproduction is production over time and space, I will draw on a capricious body of scholarship, as well as my own empirical research on wageless and low‐waged household labors, their relationship to exchange and use value, and their circulation within relations of power between nations as well as gender and class.
This is the first quantitative comparative study that examines the relationship between paid domestic labor and precarious employment on the microlevel. Using the Luxembourg Income Study 2013/2014, it shows that across welfare regimes, domestic workers have a higher probability of working in precarious employment settings compared to other industries. Furthermore, the overlaps of two or more precarious employment settings are significantly more common in domestic work than among other industries in all countries examined. This is an important finding as it proves the high insecurity of the formal domestic labor industry even in countries with specific regulations regarding domestic work. © © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions.
In this article, I draw upon interviews with 30 Nepali returned women migrant workers to elucidate how the gendered institutional logics of both the Nepali state and for-profit manpower companies synergistically function to constrain women’s mobility. In particular, I focus on women migrant workers who migrate illegally to Gulf countries to work as domestic laborers, as this constitutes one of the largest channels of women’s labor migration from Nepal. To illuminate the particulars of Nepali women migrant workers’ experiences, I employ two theoretical frameworks, both developed by feminist political economists within the context of feminized workplaces broadly and global factory floors specifically. The first framework presents a logic of female disposability as shaping the feminized workforce of the global South. The second framework presents a logic of gendered control as doing the same. In this article, I show how these dual logics can be applied to women’s foreign labor migration in Nepal, and argue that these logics operate simultaneously through the various institutions that Nepali women navigate during migration. The Nepali case shows how both logics serve ultimately to limit women’s mobility and bolster the authority of institutions and organizations historically controlled by men—for example, the family, the state, transnational corporations—over women migrants. By bringing these two logics to bear on a case of women domestic workers’ migration from the global South, this article offers new insights into the functioning of institutions central to this large-scale, transnational movement of people.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of an empirical research on the leanness of the home services sector in the Czech Republic. The automotive sector provides reference to argue the numerical outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
The research uses a specifically designed assessment tool (Lean Index – LI) to determine the sector’s leanness level. Referring to the results from both sectors, the paper draws conclusions about the current leanness level of home services providers.
Findings
The proposed LI indicates a value of 69.50 per cent for home services providers, whereas the LI for the automotive industry suppliers is 82.88 per cent. This suggests that there are large opportunities for the implementation of lean management in the home services sector. However, the main challenge is to introduce a continuous improvement approach to these companies.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size limits the generalisation of the research results. However, this paper represents the first empirical attempt to implement a large-scale survey. The results are limited to the Czech Republic. However, parties from other countries have indicated interest to replicate the research.
Practical implications
This research provides first empirical findings on the possibilities of implementing lean in the home services sector. Future research projects in other sectors will have the opportunity to make use of the LI assessment tool.
Originality/value
The paper presents the first approach of lean management into the home services sector. It provides valuable information to specialised institutions in the sector about the possibilities of lean management in the sector. It also provides an overview of the sector for practitioners and academics willing to pioneer lean in the sector.
In Sweden — as in other European countries - the question of tax deduction of domestic services is being discussed. The argument is that the high taxes in Sweden hinder the growth of a märket for domestic services. By introducing tax deductions prices would be lowered and the demand for such services would increase. This would in turn enhance employment and transform "black märket work" into regular employment. It would also further gender equality since women who could buy domestic services would spend less time performing household work and more on paid work or a career. However, in all countries domestic services are usually performed outside the regular terms of employment, i.e. neither taxes nor social security is paid. This is true whether taxes are high as for example in Germany or low as in the U.S. But the people doing this kind of work probably differ between countries. In Germany it is common that "housewives" do domestic work for pay in other peoples' homes and in the U.S. such work is often done by unregistered immigrants. The number of unregistered immigrants performing domestic work is probably growing in European countries. The large märket for domestic services in Germany can not be seen as a sign of a high degree of gender equality, but rather the reverse. Since there have been limited employment opportunities for women on the regular labour märket, domestic work outside the regular labour märket has provided an alternative. In the U.S. a märket for domestic services is presumably a result of big income differences in general. Women in high-income households can employ a person in their home at a very low wage. But in the very top positions in the private sector there are hardly any women in the U.S. as in Sweden. It is possible however, that there is a greater proportion of women managers in the private sector on lower levels in the U.S. than in Sweden. The reason is not necessarily that there are more female managers in general in the U.S. than in Sweden, but rather that the work women do - for example in hospitals - in the U.S. is done in the private sector and in Sweden in the public sector. Tax deductions have been introduced in several European countries. However, besides France, this has had very little effect on employment and black märket labour. In France subsidies have transformed black märket jobs into regular employment, which means that these employees have become part of the social security system. But it also means that high-income groups are subsidised and the costs have been high for the taxpayers. The subsidies were lowered in 1998. In Sweden the black märket for domestic services is probably quite small compared to many other countries, but it is growing. One current proposal is tax deduction of domestic services performed in the home, another is also tax deductions of services provided outside the home such as restaurants, dry cleaners, etc. This second proposal would mean that not only people with high incomes, but also those with quite low incomes could benefit, since most people for example at least some times eat in a restaurant. However, it is debatable whether this is the best way to transform black märket jobs into regular employment, to further employment or gender equality.
State social provision affects women's material situations, shapes gender relationships, structures political conflict and participation, and contributes to the formation and mobilization of identities and interests. Mainstream comparative research has neglected gender, while most feminist research on the welfare state has not been systematically comparative. I develop a conceptual framework for analyzing the gender content of social provision that draws on feminist and mainstream work. Three dimensions of qualitative variation suggested by power resources analysts are reconstructed to incorporate gender: (1) the state-market relations dimension is extended to consider the ways countries organize the provision of welfare through families as well as through states and markets; it is then termed the state-market-family relations dimension; (2) the stratification dimension is expanded to consider the effects of social provision by the state on gender relations, especially the treatment of paid and unpaid labor; (3) the social citizenship rights/decommodification dimension is criticized for implicit assumptions about the sexual division of caring and domestic labor and for ignoring the differential effects on men and women of benefits that decommodify labor. Two additional dimensions are proposed to capture the effects of state social provision on gender relations: access to paid work and capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household.
Volumes of collected essays have become coin of the realm in contemporary academic publishing. At their weakest, such volumes are little more than hasty hodge-podges--opportunistic attempts to address some vaguely defined theme. But at their best, they can offer space for the complex development of important concepts and analysis, allowing editors to balance rich empirical studies with sophisticated overviews. Who Cares? takes the second model and brings it to a new level. Co-editors/authors Jenson and Sineau, working with a group of country specialists, use a series of case studies of child care policy to examine the impact of welfare state restructuring on women and gender relations. By bracketing the empirical chapters with tightly-argued synthesis, the book achieves a level of coherence that is unusual in multi-authored works. The careful selection of cases — Sweden (by Daune-Richard and Mahon), Belgium (Marques-Pereira and Paye), France (Jenson and Sineau), and Italy (Bimbi and Della Sala) — provides variety, but the range is not so great as to bar identification of common patterns and even convergence over time. Each study covers the decades from the post-World War II era to the present. An interesting and quite productive addition to the mix is George Ross's discussion of the European Union, whose programs and policies potentially affect child care in all member states. The case studies reveal that in all four countries, general political differences notwithstanding, the postwar period was marked by a deep commitment to familial values, including hostility to female, and especially maternal employment, which in turn produced little or no support for public child care. Over the decades, at different rates in each case, these values began to crumble, in part due to feminist challenges, in part to shifting political configurations, but also to a great extent because of changing economic conditions. The child care policies that emerged varied from case to case, ranging from minimal to comprehensive and including paid maternity and parental leaves and care allowances as well as public provisions for group care. To understand the politics of such policies, Jenson and Sineau contend, analysts must look beyond feminist demands for gender equality to changing markets, employment needs, and overall levels of prosperity. From this perspective, they argue convincingly, it is clear that child care belongs as much to the domain of economic policy as to that of family and social policy.
This report investigates tax reductions for domestic services in terms of their effects on the Swedish domestic service sector. Based on a national survey with managers of domestic ser-vice companies, the report discusses the composition of the formally registered market for domestic services, different types of customers, working conditions as well as consequences from tax reductions. By highlighting perspectives from formally registered companies, the re-port complements earlier research on experiences among migrant domestic workers in infor-mal parts of the market (Gavanas 2010, 2011). It is argued that the domestic service market is undergoing segmentation, as opposed to the commonplace idea that a formal sector is replac-ing an informal sector. The report demonstrates continuing competition from informal actors, and the lack of a necessary connection between a perceived decline of the informal market, the expansion of the formal market and continuing informal competition. Furthermore, the re-port discusses differences among domestic service companies regarding rights, positions of employees, working conditions and options to decline “difficult” customers. In addition to a continuum of providers of domestic services, a continuum of customers is analyzed as well. Customer preferences and demands are discussed, and the ways in which they are met by a corresponding continuum of domestic service providers.
This review investigates scholarship on the intersection of race and gender, with a particular focus on the U.S. labor market. We ask the following questions: What assumptions underlie intersectional perspectives in sociology? Is there any evidence to demonstrate that race and gender intersect in the labor market? We begin by discussing the core assumptions within Black and multiracial feminist theories, which represent the most fully articulated treatments of "intersectionality." We then broaden our theoretical overview by identifying fundamental differences in the way that sociologists conceptualize intersectionality. We look for evidence of intersectionality in three central domains of research on labor market inequality: (a) wage inequality, (b) discrimination and stereotyping, and (c) immigration and domestic labor. We and that race and gender do intersect in the labor market under certain conditions. Finally, we consider how an intersectional approach enriches labor market research and theorizing about economic inequality.
As more and more political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. In this article we are interested in problematizing visions of gender equality by studying the challenges that the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households poses for gender equality policies and practices in two European countries. The aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to gender equality by comparing how “paid domestic work” has been framed in policy debates in Sweden and Spain. As welfare states, Sweden and Spain are generally considered to be very different, and in policies on care for children and the elderly the differences are perhaps most apparent. In both countries, however, paid domestic work in the home has become more and more common in the last two decades. The rise of paid domestic services in European households has been interpreted as due to the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing numbers of dual-earner families. These services are most often provided by women, predominantly of immigrant background, and involve a wide range of tasks, including care work. The phenomenon of an increasing sector of domestic (care) work poses a theoretical and methodological challenge to gender and welfare studies. This article argues that the analysis of debates surrounding domestic service in private households is a useful starting-point for an intersectional analysis by means of revealing the normative assumptions and marginalization embedded in gender equality policies. It uses a comparative frame analysis in combination with intersectional analysis to assess how interactions between gender, class, race, and sexuality have been articulated in the policy debates on domestic services in Spain and Sweden.
This paper assesses arguments that paying for housework compromises the moral integrity of either the buyer or seller or both. I find that none provides adequate justification for avoiding paying for housework. Instead, I argue that the vigorous pursuit of justice for women workers will best remedy injustice in service sector occupations, including paid housework.
The Golden Age of post‐war capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe that the emerging post‐industrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. This book takes a second, more sociological and institutional look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What stands out as a result is that there is post‐industrial diversity rather than convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that holds the key as to what kind of post‐industrial model will emerge, and to how evolving trade‐offs will be managed. Twentieth‐century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that now are invalid. Hence, to grasp better what drives today's economy, it is necessary to begin with its social foundations. After an Introduction, the book is arranged in three parts: I, Varieties of Welfare Capitalism (four chapters); II, The New Political Economy (two chapters); and III, Welfare Capitalism Recast? (two chapters).
What differences do welfare state variations make for women? How do women and men fare in different welfare states? Diane Sainsbury answers these questions by analysing the situation in countries whose welfare state policies differ in significant ways: the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Building on feminist criticisms of mainstream research, Professor Sainsbury reconceptualises the crucial dimensions of variation, notably those relevant to gender. She determines the extent to which legislation reflects and perpetuates the gendered division of labour in the family and society, as well as what types of policy alter gender relations in social provision. She thereby increases our understanding of how policy mechanisms, especially the bases of entitlement, exclude or incorporate women and offers constructive proposals for securing greater equality between women and men.
This article deals with the question of new domestic servants. It sets out to describe a ‘new' phenomenon manifesting itself all over Europe, that is the comeback of domestic workers and carers for children and the elderly in many households. It then proceeds to explain the establishment of an informal labour market in the private sector, which arises amid today's revolution of information technology. Research sources on the current situation are scarce compared to historical studies. This is particularly true for Germany and even more for the Netherlands. The present situation differs from its earlier appearance mainly in that domestic workers today are migrant women from Eastern Europe, from Asia or South America. The article aims to show how studying this phenomenon raises relevant questions both on an empirical and a theoretical level for gender studies as well as for migration studies. It pleads in favour of an intersectional analysis by taking into account class, gender and ethnic differences within the context of globalized labour markets and transnational migration movements.
In this article, we use a recent controversy concerning a tax policy designed to facilitate the hiring of housecleaners in Sweden as a case study to reconsider the politics of gender equity in contemporary welfare regimes. We identify a frontier of gender politics that is not captured by current comparative scholarship. As the boundary between family and market changes to accommodate the entry of women into the labor market, who will assume these women’s family‐welfare work? Under what terms should the state or market intervene? While research has focused on one dimension—child care—we follow the Swedish debate to shift attention toward other household labor that has been neglected, both in terms of public policy and scholarly analysis. Swedish and American working women live under two very different welfare regimes, yet they seem to face the same dilemma—either work an oppressive double shift, combining paid employment and unpaid housework, or employ help and expose themselves to the charge that they are engaging in a particularly egregious form of exploitation. We argue that cultural proscriptions against commodifying housework not only hamper women’s efforts to achieve labor market parity but also entrench a gendered division of labor in the home. Rather than blaming women who hire housecleaners, progressives should aim instead at elevating the status of this labor.
In Sweden the government has enacted specific policies, such as generous parental leave, to encourage couples to share in both economic and domestic labour. Using data from a national survey of Swedish women 1 year after childbirth, we assess whether the division of labour varies depending on women's parental leave status, education or number of children. We move beyond the most common measures of domestic labour (housework) and include several measures of daily child-care tasks. Our findings indicate that men share fairly equally only if their partner has returned to work full-time. This pattern remained regardless of women's level of education and number of children. We suggest that parental leave policies are necessary but not sufficient tools for encouraging gender equity at home.
Are social movements responsible for their unfinished agendas? Feminist successes in opening the professions to women paved the way for the emergence of the upper middle-class two-career household. These households sometimes hire domestic servants to accomplish their child care work. If, as I shall argue, this practice is unjust and furthers social inequality, then it poses a moral problem for any feminist commitment to social justice.
The article argues from a Nordic, feminist and poststructuralist position that feminist state theories need to be developed methodologically. This claim is based on both theoretical arguments as well as empirical arguments arising from a case study on care politics in Denmark. In contrast to answering questions about the essence of the state, the aim of the article is to provide some analytical tools for studying the state. First, it focuses on two paradigms of feminist analyses of the state: differences between states (Nordic feminists), and differences within states (poststructural feminists). The article argues that each of the approaches has its merits and problems in terms of feminist engagements with the state. The second part explores an empirical case study on care politics in Denmark. The study illustrates the inadequacies of feminist approaches to the state to date. State discourses and policies on home-helpers are shown to have both empowering and disempowering effects on the women concerned. The third part of the article suggests a framework of three concepts believed to be helpful when analysing gender and the state: hegemony, contradictory effects and boundaries. The concepts are generated from the case study. * University of Helsinki, Department of Political Science, PO Box 54 (Snellmaninkatu 14), FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: Johanna.Kantola@helsinki.fi † Department of Social Sciences, Roskilde University, Bvld 25.3, Box 160, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark. Email: hmdahl@ruc.dk
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
This paper explores domestic employment relations in the context of the growth of the post-industrial service sector and the “stalled revolution.” The data comes from fieldwork conducted among domestic workers, employers, and clients, as well as managers and owners of housecleaning agencies. By presenting a case study of the household service agency “Helping Hands Housekeeping,” I compare and contrast bureaucratized arrangements of paid domestic work with the “traditional” private employment arrangement, demonstrating how the bureaucratization of paid domestic work has (and has not) affected the relations, conditions, and experiences of this occupation. To sell their service, managers train workers to “care” for clients. In addition, HHH managers create a work culture of caring and service as a form of worker control and as a strategy to combat worker turnover. The gender ideologies and personalized management tactics used by these organizations mask the low pay, part-time hours and lack of benefits that persist within the more bureaucratized arrangements of paid domestic work. Workers also implement “strategic personalism” in their relations with employers and clients and may seek out personalistic relationships and use them to their advantage. This research challenges the modernist notion that more formal and structured work relations are sufficient to eliminate the emotional and psychological exploitation of domestic workers. Indeed, my fieldwork suggests that private employment arrangements offer workers more options and greater potential for negotiating wages and control over the work process than do the more rationalized organizations and relations of household service agencies.
This article analyzes how gender equality, paradoxically, has helped produce one unifying identity of the state of Sweden while simultaneously creating divisions within that state. In the 1990s, Sweden came to understand itself as the gender equality champion internationally, having come the `furthest' in empowering women politically and economically. However, this equality discourse has also become implicated in a new inequality, namely the hierarchical categorization of the population of Sweden into `Swedes' and `immigrants'. The article shows that simultaneous with Sweden becoming the `gender equal state' vis-à-vis other states, representations of gender unequal `immigrants' have become prominent.
This article poses the question: What explains variation in the proportion of the labor force employed in paid domestic labor? In contrast to an older, modernization-theory-based literature that argued that paid domestic labor declines and ultimately disappears in the course of economic development, the authors note the occupation's recent expansion in southern California and the wide variations among rich, developed countries in the proportion of the female workforce employed in it. The authors argue that a crucial, neglected factor in explaining such geographic variations is the extent of economic inequality. This factor is overlooked not only in the modernization-theory-based literature but also in recent microsociological studies of paid domestic labor, which highlight the ways in which race, ethnicity, and citizenship status are implicated in interactions between employers of domestics and the workers themselves, while ignoring the enduring significance of class in the employer/domestic relationship. By analyzing 1990 census data for the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, the authors show that income inequality (as well as, but independent of, the proportion of the female labor force made up of African Americans and Latinas, the proportion of the female labor force that is foreign born, and maternal labor force participation), is a significant predictor of the proportion of the female labor force employed in domestic labor.
The concept of intersectionality is often used to grasp the interconnections between the traditional background categories of gender, ethnicity, race, age, sexuality and class. The concept can be a useful analytical tool in tracing how certain people seem to get positioned as not only different but also troublesome and, in some instances, marginalized. In research focused on subjectification and the variability of social life, a retooling and differentiating of the concept is needed. We do not know how the overall categories work and intersect with the lived experiences of subjects and we need to rethink the concept, which can be useful in specifying the troublesomeness of some subjectivities in a diverse and complex version of lived experience. By taking into account the above-mentioned shortcomings, the article lays the foundation for a theoretical reworking of the concept, grounded in empirical studies of subjectification processes on a subject level in a school context.
This article deals with the question of new domestic servants. It sets out to describe a ‘new’ phenomenon manifesting itself all over Europe, that is the comeback of domestic workers and carers for children and the elderly in many households. It then proceeds to explain the establishment of an informal labour market in the private sector, which arises amid today's revolution of information technology.Research sources on the current situation are scarce compared to historical studies. This is particularly true for Germany and even more for the Netherlands. The present situation differs from its earlier appearance mainly in that domestic workers today are migrant women from Eastern Europe, from Asia or South America.The article aims to show how studying this phenomenon raises relevant questions both on an empirical and a theoretical level for gender studies as well as for migration studies. It pleads in favour of an intersectional analysis by taking into account class, gender and ethnic differences within the context of globalized labour markets and transnational migration movements.
To what extent has the traditional male provider model shifted towards a model of equal economic partnership in the Scandinavian welfare states, and how can current social practices and attitudes be explained? In contrast to much recent welfare state research, this article emphasizes differences within Scandinavia, arguing that national structural, cultural and political configurations have contributed to differences among the Scandinavian welfare states in the transition toward gender equality in economic provision.
R E C E N T SCHO L A R S H I P on African American, Latina, Asian American, and Native American women reveals the complex interaction of race and gender oppression in their lives. These studies expose the inadequacy of additive models that treat gender and race as separate and discrete systems of hierarchy (Collins 1986; King 1988; Brown 1989). In an additive model, white women are viewed solely in terms of gender, while women of color are thought to be "doubly" subordinated by the cumulative effects of gender plus race. Yet achieving a more adequate framework, one that captures the interlocking, interactive nature of these systems, has been extraordinarily difficult. Historically, race and gender have developed as separate topics of inquiry, each with its own literature and concepts. Thus features of social life considered central in understanding one system have been overlooked in analyses of the other. One domain that has been explored extensively in analyses of gender but ignored in studies of race is social reproduction. The term social reproduction is used by feminist scholars to refer to the array of activities and relationships involved in maintaining people both on a daily basis and intergenerationally. Reproductive labor includes activities such as purchasing household goods, preparing and serving food, laundering and repairing clothing, maintaining furnishings and appliances, socializing children, providing care and emotional support for adults, and maintaining kin and community ties. Work on this project was made possible by a Title F leave from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a visiting scholar appointment at the Murray Research Center at Radcliffe College. Discussions with Elsa Barkley Brown, Gary Glenn, Carole Turbin, and Barrie Thorne contributed immeasurably to the ideas developed here. My thanks to Joyce Chinen for directing me to archival materials in Hawaii. I am also grateful to members of the Women and Work Group and to Norma Alarcon, Gary Dymski, Antonia Glenn, Margaret Guilette, Terence Hopkins, Eileen McDonagh, JoAnne Preston, Mary Ryan, and four anonymous Signs reviewers for their suggestions.
Are social movements responsible for their unfinished agendas? Feminist successes in opening the professions to women paved the way for the emergence of the upper middle-class two-career household. These households sometimes hire domestic servants to accomplish their child care work. If, as I shall argue, this practice is unjust and furthers social inequality, then it poses a moral problem for any feminist commitment to social justice.
The Golden Age of postwar capitalism has been eclipsed, and with it seemingly also the possibility of harmonizing equality and welfare with efficiency and jobs. Most analyses believe the the emerging postindustrial society is overdetermined by massive, convergent forces, such as tertiarization, new technologies, or globalization, all conspiring to make welfare states unsustainable in the future. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies takes a second, more sociological and more institutional, look at the driving forces of economic transformation. What, as a result, stands out is postindustrial diversity, not convergence. Macroscopic, global trends are undoubtedly powerful, yet their influence is easily rivalled by domestic institutional traditions, by the kind of welfare regime that, some generations ago, was put in place. It is, however, especially the family economy that hold the key as to what kind of postindustrial model will emerge, and to how evolving tradeoffs will be managed. Twentieth-century economic analysis depended on a set of sociological assumptions that, now, are invalid. Hence, to better grasp what drives today's economy, we must begin with its social foundations. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/politicalscience/0198742002/toc.html
Some argue that formalizing this labour will not eradicate the informal market, e.g
- See
See, for instance, Fredholm (2005) and Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2003). Some argue that formalizing this labour will not eradicate the informal market, e.g., Gavanas (2010).
For more on how welfare state scholarship has neglected issues of care and service, focusing on paid work and income maintenance instead, see
- Hobson
For more on how welfare state scholarship has neglected issues of care and service, focusing on paid work and income maintenance instead, see Hobson et al. (2002) and Towns (2002).
Ett riktigt arbete? Stockholm: Pang
- C Calleman
Calleman, C. (2007) Ett riktigt arbete? Stockholm: Pang.
Rent hus: Slaget om den svenska dammråttan Politics against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies
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Ernsjöö Rappe, T. and Strannegård, L. (2004) Rent hus: Slaget om den svenska dammråttan. Stockholm: Norstedts Esping-Andersen, G. (1985) Politics against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esping-Andersen, G. (1999) Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. New York: Oxford University Press. Fredholm, K. (2005) Fint hemma. Stockholm: Fredholm & Claesson.
Ett socialdemokratiskt dilemma. Från hembiträdesfråga till pigdebatt
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Öberg, L. (1999) Ett socialdemokratiskt dilemma. Från hembiträdesfråga till pigdebatt. In Florin, C., Sommestad, L. and Wikander, U. (eds) Kvinnor mot kvinnor, Stockholm: Norstedts.