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Sexual Harassment of Newcomers in Elder Care —An Institutional Practice?
Abstract
Sexual harassment is illegal and may have very damaging effects on the people exposed to it. One would expect organizations, employers, and institutions to take very good care to prevent employees from exposure to sexual harassment from anyone in their workplace. And yet, many people, mostly women, are exposed to sexual harassment at work. In care work, such behaviour is often directed toward their female caregiver by elderly citizens in need of care. Contemporary Nordic studies of working life and work environment have primarily investigated the interpersonal dimensions of sexual harassment, thus focusing on the relation between elderly citizens in need of care and their professional caregivers. In this article, we argue that sexual harassment from the elderly toward newcomers in elder care should also be seen as an effect of institutional practices. Based upon a Foucauldian- inspired notion of practice-making, the article carries out a secondary analysis of three different empirical studies in order to explore how sexual harassment is produced and maintained through institutional practices in elder care. The term institution in this perspective includes three dimensions; a political, an educational (educational institutions in health and elder care), and a work organizational dimension. By examining elder care in these different dimensions, we identify how sexual harassment of professional caregivers is produced and maintained through institutional practice-making in elder care. The article thus contributes to our knowledge on working life by expanding and qualifying the understanding of the problematic working environment in care work, and by offering an alternative theoretical and analytical approach to the study of sexual harassment. Together, these insights suggest how elder care institutions might act to prevent sexual harassment toward caregivers.
... However, knowledge about the impact of sexual harassment from patients, clients, and customers on employee well-being is limited. Although research suggests that sexual harassment from clients and customers is an important and prevalent issue in occupations that involve interpersonal contact [25,26], empirical studies neglected this extraorganizational perspective on sexual harassment. ...
... It is widely regarded that care workers often encounter sexual harassment from patients or clients and that these experiences have detrimental effects on employees' mental health [1,12]. Although sexual harassment from clients and customers is considered an important and prevalent issue, especially in occupations that involve interpersonal contact [25], theoretical developments are weak, and validated measures that may help gain in-depth insights into this phenomenon are missing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a measure for assessing different types of sexual harassment from patients or clients in the healthcare sector. ...
... The experience of patients' sexual needs is a frequently occurring part of care work; therefore, it is difficult for care workers to label sexually inappropriate behavior as sexual harassment [4]. As a result, in healthcare, there is a tendency to trivialize sexual harassment from patients or clients as a part of the job and not as a potentially harmful experience [25,56]. Subsequently, a reason for the limited interest in sexual harassment from patients or clients may be that organizations may normalize and neglect the seriousness of this act [12,25]. ...
Although evidence reveals severe effects of sexual harassment on care workers’ mental health, there is a scarcity of studies that investigate care workers’ experiences of sexually inappropriate behavior from patients or clients. One reason for this lack of research is that validated measures that assess different types of sexual harassment experienced by employees working with patients or clients are lacking. In this study, we seek to establish a conceptual framework for investigating extraorganizational sexual harassment in healthcare work. Based on this theoretical framework, we developed and validated a measure for assessing sexually harassing behaviors from patients or clients. Data were gathered from heterogeneous samples of employees working in a variety of settings in healthcare. To evaluate the factorial structure of the measure, we conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using a calibration sample (N = 179) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using a cross-validation sample (N = 305). The construct validity of the measure was demonstrated by investigating relationships with indicators of care workers’ mental health. EFA revealed three factors, namely, nonverbal, verbal, and physical acts of sexual harassment. Examination of the measure comprising 14 items revealed acceptable internal consistencies and substantial correlations with indicators of care workers’ mental health. This study provides a useful and sound measure for assessing sexual harassment from patients or clients and paves the way for the development of a comprehensive theoretical framework for the assessment of sexual harassment. Furthermore, it facilitates future investigations of risk factors for sexual harassment and protective factors helping healthcare workers cope with sexual harassment from patients or clients.
... The same survey also showed that the prevalence was higher among employees working in health care: the prevalence of sexual harassment across all jobs was 3.1%, and for health care workers it was 16.4% [2]. Another study of 8064 Danish employees showed that in the health care sector, sexual offensive behaviors at work were 3.5 times more often reported than the national average of all other jobs [3,4]. Among health care workers, sexual harassment is most often conducted by clients or customers [3,5,6]. ...
... Another study of 8064 Danish employees showed that in the health care sector, sexual offensive behaviors at work were 3.5 times more often reported than the national average of all other jobs [3,4]. Among health care workers, sexual harassment is most often conducted by clients or customers [3,5,6]. ...
... Most research has focused on sexual harassment from colleagues, supervisors or subordinates while sexual harassment conducted by clients or customers has received limited interest, despite studies showing such harassment is frequent [12][13][14][15][16]. Small studies of occupation-specific samples find associations between sexual harassment by clients or customers and adverse mental health conditions including depression and burnout [13,[17][18][19][20][21] but there is a paucity of larger cross-occupational studies in the field. A reason for the limited interest in sexual harassment from clients or customers may be that organizations may normalize and neglect the seriousness of this act [3,7,22]. At some workplaces there is a tendency to consider sexual harassment from clients or customers as a part of the job and not as a potentially harmful experience [3,22] Sexual harassment by clients or customers Sexual harassment conducted by clients or customers may occur in person-related occupations, i.e. jobs that require interactions with clients or customers [23,24]. ...
Background
Previous research has reported that sexual harassment can lead to reduced mental health. Few studies have focused on sexual harassment conducted by clients or customers, which might occur in person-related occupations such as eldercare work, social work or customer service work. This study examined the cross-sectional association between sexual harassment by clients or customers and depressive symptoms. We also examined if this association was different compared to sexual harassment conducted by a colleague, supervisor or subordinate. Further, we investigated if psychosocial workplace initiatives modified the association between sexual harassment by clients or customers and level of depressive symptoms.
Methods
We used data from the Work Environment and Health in Denmark cohort study (WEHD) and the Work Environment Activities in Danish Workplaces Study (WEADW) collected in 2012. WEHD is based on a random sample of employed individuals aged 18–64. In WEADW, organizational supervisors or employee representatives provided information on workplace characteristics. By combining WEHD and WEADW we included self-reported information on working conditions and health from 7603 employees and supervisors in 1041 organizations within 5 occupations. Data were analyzed using multilevel regression and analyses adjusted for gender, age, occupation and socioeconomic position.
Results
Exposure to workplace sexual harassment from clients or customers was statistically significantly associated with a higher level of depressive symptoms (2.05; 95% CI: 0.98–3.12) compared to no exposure. Employees harassed by colleagues, supervisors or subordinates had a higher mean level of depressive symptoms (2.45; 95% CI: 0.57–4.34) than employees harassed by clients or customers. We observed no statistically significant interactions between harassment from clients and customers and any of the examined psychosocial workplace initiatives (all p > 0.05).
Conclusions
The association between sexual harassment and depressive symptoms differed for employees harassed by clients or customers and those harassed by colleagues, supervisors or subordinates. The results underline the importance of investigating sexual harassment from clients or customers and sexual harassment by colleagues, supervisors or subordinates as distinct types of harassment. We found no modification of the association between sexual harassment by clients or customers and depressive symptoms by any of the examined psychosocial workplace initiatives.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4669-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
... Sexual harassment is illegal and should be considered by managers because of its very destructive effects on individuals. Organizations, employers, and institutions are expected to protect employees against sexual harassment in the workplace (22). ...
... Adikaram et al. (18) in Sri Lanka found that sexual harassment policies and practices should address the gender realities of women in the workplace and avoid using sexual stigma in the workplace. The role and function of healthcare institutions to prevent sexual harassment includes political, educational (educational institutions in healthcare), and organizational dimensions (22). Therefore, organizations have attempted to discover how sexual harassment develops and how to develop prevention policies. ...
Background
Sexual harassment in the workplace is continuing. However, the rate of sexual harassment disclosure is low, which causes many problems. Non-disclosure of sexual harassment can cause nurses' psychological distress and physical harm, and affect their productivity and quality of care. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the reasons why Iranian nurses stayed silent and did not disclose sexual harassment in their workplace.
Method
This qualitative descriptive-explorative study was conducted to investigate the reasons why Iranian nurses ( n = 18) stayed silent on sexual harassment. Conventional content analysis and purposeful sampling method were used in this study. Data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Maximum variance in terms of age, sex, work experience, education level, marital status, and type of hospital and ward was considered in order to obtain rich information. Guba and Lincoln criteria were used to increase the study's trustworthiness, while the Graneheim and Lundman approach was used to analyze the content.
Results
The research data indicated 112 codes, a major category, 4 subcategories, and 9 primary categories. The major category, “The missing link is bitter silence; sexual harassment is still going on,” includes four subcategories: fear of social stigmas, organizational and legal barriers, family barriers, and personal barriers.
Conclusions
Nurses cannot break their silence on sexual harassment because they are afraid that disclosure of sexual harassment has negative consequences for their personal and professional lives. Policies and strategies should be developed to encourage nurses to disclose sexual harassment. This issue must be studied socially, culturally, and politically.
... Det materielle bestod af billeder og andre artefakter, som paedagogerne på forskernes opfordring bragte med ind i vaerkstedsarbejdet. Vores metodiske overvejelser i forbindelse med forskningsdesignet og herunder vaerkstedernes konkrete udformning og indhold er funderet i en epistemologisk tradition, der anser professionel viden, praksis og materialiteter som diskursivt konstitueret (Foucault 1995, Krøjer et al. 2014. Det indebaerer, at vi anser vaerkstedsempirien for at indgå i den diskursive konstituering af paedagogisk professionalitet, og som sådan relatere sig på såvel subtile som direkte måder til den konkrete, professionelle praksis, de udfolder i daginstitutionerne. ...
A new study explores how professional knowledge are shaped in the relation between pedagogues and parents in kindergartens. It is well known that the care work of professional pedagogues holds emotional aspects as in integrated part of professional, pedagogical know-how. Opposed to what you might think, these emotional aspects of pedagogues’ work in this study seems not to be exclusively related to caregiving for children, on the contrary: Emotions also arises from relations with parents. This article examines this unexpected finding. How come that relations between professional pedagogues and kindergarten parents are carrying such a heavy, emotional load? And what are the implications of this for the pedagogical profession? The relevance of these questions is to expand the understanding of emotional demands in professional, pedagogical work in institutional caregiving practices.
... Those with lower organizational power are more likely to experience sexual harassment (Siuta and Bergman, 2019). In addition, organizations might have overlooked sexual harassment (Krøjer et al., 2014). Nielsen et al. (2017) found that there were few guidelines or policies in the workplace to manage and/or prevent sexual harassment . ...
Background
Sexual harassment in the workplace has many negative consequences for nurses and the delivery of patient care. Appropriate policies and strategies can help to create a safe work environment for nurses. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate Iranian nurses’ strategies for preventing sexual harassment in the workplace.
Materials and methods
This qualitative descriptive-explorative study used conventional content analysis to investigate how Iranian nurses cope with sexual harassment ( n = 22). Participants were selected using a purposeful sampling method. Data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews from September 2020 to April 2021. In order to obtain rich information, maximum variation was considered (age, sex, work experience, level of education, marital status, and type of hospital and ward). The Guba and Lincoln criteria were used to increase the study’s trustworthiness, while the Graneheim and Lundman approach was used to analyze the content.
Results
One hundred and twelve codes, one main category, four categories, and 12 subcategories were extracted. The main category, strategies to prevent sexual harassment among nurses in the workplace, includes four categories: behavioral response, working conditions adjustment, informing, and performance of hospital security guards. The most common strategy used by nurses was behavioral response.
Conclusion
Basic measures are required to prevent sexual misconduct against nurses, which is an obvious part of the professional organizational culture. Managers and policymakers should develop workplace ethics, legal accountability, and safety. They should also develop training programs and prevention strategies to help nurses improve their coping skills. Further quantitative and qualitative research in other healthcare groups is required to confirm the findings of this study.
... Det materielle bestod af billeder og andre artefakter, som paedagogerne på forskernes opfordring bragte med ind i vaerkstedsarbejdet. Vores metodiske overvejelser i forbindelse med forskningsdesignet og herunder vaerkstedernes konkrete udformning og indhold er funderet i en epistemologisk tradition, der anser professionel viden, praksis og materialiteter som diskursivt konstitueret (Foucault 1995, Krøjer et al. 2014. Det indebaerer, at vi anser vaerkstedsempirien for at indgå i den diskursive konstituering af paedagogisk professionalitet, og som sådan relatere sig på såvel subtile som direkte måder til den konkrete, professionelle praksis, de udfolder i daginstitutionerne. ...
A new study explores how professional knowledge are shaped in the relation between pedagogues and parents in kindergartens. It is well known that the care work of professional pedagogues holds emotional aspects as in integrated part of professional, pedagogical know-how. Opposed to what you might think, these emotional aspects of pedagogues’ work in this study seems not to be exclusively related to caregiving for children, on the contrary: Emotions also arises from relations with parents. This article examines this unexpected finding. How come that relations between professional pedagogues and kindergarten parents are carrying such a heavy, emotional load? And what are the implications of this for the pedagogical profession? The relevance of these questions is to expand the understanding of emotional demands in professional, pedagogical work in institutional caregiving practices.
... Unsurprisingly, experiencing sexual harassment has negative consequences for the recipient, including emotional distress, anxiety, low job satisfaction and an increased risk of absenteeism and turn-over (Ali et al., 2015;Deery et al., 2011;Magnavita, 2014;Malik et al., 2014). Eventually, sexual harassment might even erode the view of caring as a meaningful task, and some health workers who have experienced sexual harassment might develop feelings of hate and aggression toward the harasser, potentially leading to a deterioration in the quality of care (Krøjer et al., 2014;Madison and Minichiello 2000). ...
Objectives:
To explore the extent to which staff members in long-term care facilities (LTCF) have experienced situations of sexual harassment, how they commonly and ideally manage the situation, and how their work position influences their responses.
Design:
Cross-sectional quantitative study, using the vignette technique.
Method:
A total of 2,196 staff-members who were currently working in Spanish LTCF participated in the study. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Questions regarding sexual harassment were analysed by a vignette that described a case of sexual harassment. Participants had to choose common and best practices for dealing with the case, and report the frequency with which they had experienced similar situations.
Results:
The results indicate that 29.9% of participants had experienced an episode of sexual harassment in a LTCF similar to the one presented in the vignette. Responses to the situation were diverse and there were significant differences between common and perceived best practices. Differences were also found depending on the work position of the participant (manager, technical staff or nursing assistant).
Conclusions:
There is a need for a fuller recognition of the sexual needs of older people. However, the presence of inappropriate sexual behavior must also be acknowledged. The right of staff to work in an environment free of harassment must be respected. The need for explicit institutional guidelines and training opportunities is discussed.
... For this category of young employees, we consider the work to be highly uncertain and volatile (Nielsen et al. 2017). This also includes unequal distribution of workload and job tasks that exposes temporary employees with low social status at higher risks (Krøjer, Lehn-Christiansen, and Nielsen 2014;Myers and Lipscomb 2010). Our observations are supported by the study of Bena et al. (2013), which described high risks of injuries related to short tenure. ...
There is broad agreement that precarious work is a growing problem, and that it is highly prevalent among young employees. The financial crisis in 2008 has reinforced the need for knowledge about how precarious work affects young employees. This paper explores how the concept of precarious work may apply differentially to different groups of young people at work and whether this challenges the term ‘transition’, which until now has been one of the core elements within contemporary youth research. We examine discursive representations of precarious work, vulnerability and risks among young Danish employees aged 18–24 in the healthcare sector, the metal industry and retail trade captured in 46 interviews involving 74 participants. Results are discussed taking into consideration the Nordic welfare model with an active labour marked policy. We conclude that precarious work is not, in fact, simply a characteristic of young employees’ work as such, but rather it is related to their position in the labour market and the type of jobs in which they are employed. While some are in transition, others are at risk of being trapped in precarious and risky working conditions.
This paper is primarily a study in research methods, reflecting on the application of an autoethnographic method as means to engage with a co-created intergenerational research project that focussed on reading films about older age and end of life care. Methodologically rich and complex, this paper outlines the research process through which six women at different stages of the lifecourse (Katz, Stephen. 2005. Aging: Life Course, Lifestyle, and Senior Worlds. Peterborough: Broadview Press) came together to critically analyse Amour (Haneke 2012), Chronic (Franco 2015) and A Woman’s Tale (Cox 1991). The autoethnographic approach privileges the voices of older women who use their own life stories and experiences to produce nuanced readings of care and old age as they are represented on screen. From this innovative approach to film through autoethnographic reflection, new concepts of “reading with care,” and “reading with age” emerge as important to our understandings of what it means to care and be cared for.
Arbejdet i sundhedssektoren omfatter i stigende grad bestræbelser på at skabe en patient-centreret behandling og pleje. I artiklen analyseres, hvorledes de professionelles samarbejde om patientcentreret behandling og pleje aktualiserer patientens kropslighed, og hvordan patienters kroppe indskrives i de professionelles forhandlinger om professionel etik. En vigtig pointe i analysen er, at kroppe ikke – selv ikke i sundhedssektoren – kan forstås som ’naturlige’, men tværtimod optræder som moralske størrelser. Med afsæt i et empirisk studie af forskellige faggruppers (læger, jordemødre, sygeplejersker) samarbejde på en fødeafdeling vises det, at dette arbejde involverer at nå til enighed om forskellige, professionelle etikker. Og det vises, hvordan samarbejdet herom handler om patienters helt konkrete, kropslige praksisser, der vurderes moralsk af sundhedspersonalet. Det undersøges, hvordan patienternes kropslige praksisser bliver en vigtig – måske uundværlig – komponent i det tværprofessionelle samarbejde om en fælles professionel etik.
The Nordic countries share a tradition of investing in the public provision of care. The everyday care services were aimed at securing the social rights of citizens, constituting a sphere for developing what was recognised as socially defined care. Recent reforms have disrupted this vision. A broad restructuring of welfare policies as well as educational policies has occurred, driven by economic and demographic constraints, claims for efficiency but also by debates concerning what level and style of competence are required for the provision of paid care.
Building on case studies from four Nordic countries, this book discusses a broad range of aspects in what is here identified as a crisis in care work, including recruitment problems, the crisis of educational models and care work cultures. The aim of this book is to show that values and the ethos of welfare policy matter, and shape the everyday world of care for both the clients and the workers.
With a starting-point in the sociology of work, occupations and organizations, this interdisciplinary book is of interest to policymakers, academics, students and anyone concerned about the future of care services, both within and outside the Nordic region. It is also suited as a textbook in comparative social welfare, social work and research on occupations and education.
“Dad, Mom and Engineer: The Becoming of Everyday Life - in and between Work Life and Family Life”.
In the thesis I investigate everyday life as it is lived by a group of engineers in, across and between family life and work life. In public debate the object of this thesis is often named ‘work life balance’ or ‘relations between work life and family life’.
The thesis is about the becoming of gendered subjects, fathers and mothers and it is about the becoming of their conduct of life. It is based on individual as well as group interviews with 21 engineers, all of them employees in a large, Danish consulting company. I focus on life as it is conducted in and between the work organization and family life - with the work organization as primary analytical focus.
I deploy Holzkamp’s concept ‘the conduct of life’ (livsførelse) (1998). It con-ceptualizes the particular subjective task it is to carry oneself in and between the many contexts of life, which we live our life in and through. The concept enables a theorization of the ways that subjects connect different life organi-zations through their conduct of life. Furthermore, the concept enables fo-cusing on the complexity and oppositional aspects of everyday life and on how subjects handle the oppositional demands of different life organizations, and do not live their lives alone or independently of social relations and con-nections.
The concept ‘the conduct of life’ is developed and often used by critical psy-chologists. Nevertheless, this thesis is primarily situated within a poststruc-tural feminist, discursive psychological research tradition (Bendix Petersen 2004, 2007, Bendix Petersen and Flynn 2007, Davies 2000 a, b, Davies and Harre’ 1990, Davies and Petersen 2005, Lather 1991, Staunæs 2004, Staunæs og Søndergaard 2006, Søndergaard 1999, 2005, Wetherell 2001 a,b).
The analyses presented in this thesis are, like the work of many of the above-mentioned, widely informed by and applying the thinking of Judith Butler on subjectification and gender (1990, 1996, 2005). This research tradition has en-abled me to open and analyze the everyday lifes of the engineers through situated, action oriented, lived discursive practices.
The inspiration from Butler also forms a platform for investigating the ways that the engineers position and perform themselves within different discur-sive ordering resources; to investigate how organizational ordering resources organize subjects, gender and orientations of everyday life; how different or-ganizational ordering resources produce livable positions in the organization and in everyday life.
The organizational perspective is mainly unfolded through John Laws’ think-ing of the “decentered organization”, and is inspired by his concept ‘modes of ordering’ (1994 a, b, 2001).
I conceptualize the engineers’ conduct of life as constant negotiations. Nego-tiations, which relate to the mastery of complex and conflicting discourses of work life and to the complex and conflicting discourses of family life as well.
In the analyses I give insight into some of the negotiations and balancing strategies through which the engineers conduct their everyday life. Negotia-tions of what is experienced and given meaning as ‘right’ and ‘necessary’ ways of performing employee, father and mother: Negotiations of majority and minority organizational positions, of various organizational codes, of man-agement- and control technologies, of ideologies, and politics, such as flexible work, flexible working hours, reduced work time and maternity/paternity leave.
Further more, the thesis gives insight into negotiations of masculinity, femi-ninity, motherhood and fatherhood, ‘balance’, equality and gendered division of labour.
The thesis investigates how employees subject themselves and is subjected through different discursive and material resources, how different subject po-sitions become relevant within different organizational ordering resources and how the engineers recite and undo them.
All of the themes mentioned above are throughout the thesis treated as sig-nificant discursive repertories through which everyday life is conducted. As significant discursive repertories through which the engineers concretely live and conduct their life in their effort to conduct their life in ways which is ex-perienced as good and right.
The life orientations of the engineers come to existence through constant ne-gotiations, which take form as a kind of self management and self discipline.
Self management becomes necessary when the geographical placing of work, flexible working hours and pay do not produce recognizable boundaries of work life.
The thesis gives insight into the becoming of relatively traditional gendered orderings of everyday live. But these orderings are not seen as neither unam-biguous nor stable. The thesis shows how gendered categories constantly work as ordering resources in the becoming of everyday life of the engineers, but it also shows, that these gendered constituting processes must be concep-tualized as ‘relative’, understood in the way that everyday life also is con-ducted through destabilizing gendered life orientations.
I use different forms of scientifically forms of representations. Poetic writing is one of the forms I use, in an attempt to produce scientifically presentations of everyday life, which reflects details, open ends, ambiguous and oppositions of the everyday life as it is told by a group of engineers.
Contrapower sexual harassment occurs when the target of harassment possesses greater formal organizational power than the perpetrator. Traditional conceptualizations of power underlying sexual harassment have either focused on location within organizational hierarchies or sociocultural status differences between men and women. We suggest the utility of simultaneously considering the influence of gender, race, and class on power dynamics at organizational, sociocultural, and interpersonal or individual levels. Using qualitative data obtained from 8 focus groups, 20 interviews, and 1 in-depth case study, we examine how gender, race, and class influence varied sources of power available to perpetrators and targets in workplace contrapower situations. We argue that the exploration of the dynamics involved in contrapower sexual harassment can illuminate broader processes of doing gender and power in the workplace.
Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them.Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling.For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives"Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.
The purpose of this article is to identify the general methodologic and data set-specific challenges that must be overcome when attempting a secondary analysis of qualitative data. Two separate examples of secondary analyses of qualitative data sets are also described, including one unsuccessful beginning.
The Nordic model is often seen as having succeeded in gaining recognition for care-giving work and as embodying a potentially women friendly state model owing to the availability of publicly provided care for the elderly and pre-school children. This simple story neglects one particular group of women - publicly employed home-helpers and the valorization of their care-giving work. Applying Nancy Fraser’s dual theory of justice gives us a normative and analytical tool with which to analyse this group’s situation in relation to recognition and redistribution. Some advances concerning pay and in the professionalization of the home-helper’s work have taken place. These advances hide less flattering developments, such as a general egalitarianism (on pay) insensitive to gendered valorizations, an androcentric perception of work and work-related accidents formerly at play and a New Public Management inspired elite discourse struggling to reduce the home-helper’s work to simple, manual tasks in a discourse of de-professionalization. Overlapping of struggles about redistribution and recognition show that the positive changes identified are merely superficial, since no basic change of the socio-cultural framework has taken place that provides an impetus for future struggles.
This paper offers a narrative, an ethnographic short story, which the author created from material that she generated through extensive fieldwork and interviews with Australian and Danish researchers in the social sciences and humanities. The material was generated as part of the author’s doctoral study. Inspired by the detailed descriptions of everyday life in the (natural) science laboratory, she offers an ethnographic narrative of a (possible) day in the social science and humanities ‘laboratory’. She follows an actor through an ‘ordinary day’ to explore how ‘academicity’, that is, culturally intelligible academic subject positions and practices, comes into existence through everyday interaction and activities. The story explores the ways in which the constructions of what it means to be ‘the right kind of person’ in an academic context work invisibly, insidiously, insistently, in everything academics do, say and feel.