As I have indicated, feminist research on the social identity of the person who undertakes and is perceived to be primarily responsible for care in society has, unsurprisingly, focused on its gendered character. In particular, it is women who are the primary care givers. In addition, one of the major landmarks of feminist research into care has been the recognition and naming of care as work, whether paid or unpaid. However, as Thomas (1993) notes, it should not be assumed that paid and unpaid care can be separated into the public and private domains respectively. Paid care occurs in family settings and unpaid care occurs in paid employment contexts. For example, Black feminist research has drawn attention to the ‘race’ and class dimensions of care. The role of Black women as care workers in the households of White middle-class women has both highlighted issues of class and ‘race’ power relations and challenged any assumptions that care in the household is always unpaid. The greater numbers of women in the workforce has led to an expansion in the employment of nannies and nursery workers.
The significance of conceptualizing care as work impacts on the kinds of theoretical frameworks that are drawn upon to explain care as a social phenomena and the nature of political change that is thought to be required. The economic character of care can be seen in explanations that have been put forward to explain why the needs of care fall disproportionately on women. Charles (1993) suggests that there have been four main sociological explanations why women have the major responsibilities for family care in capitalist societies. The economic nature of these is illustrated in terms of the attention paid to issues of industrialization, capitalism, production and reproduction and dualsystems theorizing. These explanations also illustrate how the domains of private and public are inter-connected. The four explanations are:
1 Industrialization: This focuses on how processes of industrialization removed the site of economic activity from the home to the factory. Prior to industrialization families worked collectively in, for example, agricultural and craft work. Factory production made it difficult for women to combine their domestic care work with paid work.
2 The capitalist mode of production: This focuses on the separation of waged labour from unwaged, domestic, labour. Marxist analyses highlight how labour is a commodity to be bought and sold in the market. Feminists took up the issue of surplus value that arises from the purchase of waged labour in the Wages for Housework debate. In contrast to Marxist analyses that domestic labour was unproductive, Wages for Housework feminists argued that domestic labour produces surplus value. This is because it produces goods, such as food, clothes and health care, that otherwise would have to be bought in the market. This lowers the value of labour and keeps wages down.
3 Patriarchy: The focus here is on male dominance of all women or the dominance of older men over women and younger men. Charles notes that analyses that explain gender divisions through the concept of patriarchy often offer a ‘dual systems’ explanation. This is because of the attention that is paid to the relationship and interconnections of patriarchy and capitalism.
4 Social reproduction: Charles notes that there are varying conceptualizations of reproduction. Her discussion points out that the reproduction of labour power requires individuals to be literate, be sufficiently healthy and accept the values of a capitalist society. Feminists have highlighted how women’s unpaid domestic labour contributes to the necessary maintenance of family members and, along with education, the media, health and social care services and so forth, they contribute to the socialization process. In addition, women’s paid labour undertakes similar reproductive work.
In turning to the disproportionate numbers of women who work in the ‘care’ sectors of paid employment, sociological explanations have drawn attention to the processes of gendered labour market stratification. The labour market is stratified both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal segregation refers to how women and men work in different jobs or sectors of the economy. Hatt (1997) reports that in the mid-1990s women outnumbered men by four to one in hairdressing, clothing manufacture and medical and other health services. On the other hand, men constituted 80 per cent of employees in coal extraction, metal manufacturing and railways. Wilson (1999) also comments on how women are more likely to be employed in the lower-status caring professions such as nursing, teaching and social work than higher-status worlds of global financial capital.
Vertical segregation refers to how women occupy the lower positions in an organizational hierarchy and men occupy the higher positions. Despite claims that women are enjoying remarkable career success, research into ‘glass’ (Porter, 1995), ‘concrete’ and ‘bedpan’ (Lane, 2000) ceilings demonstrates the intransigence of masculine organizational cultures to women’s entry at higher levels. Hatt (1997) notes that gender segregation is a feature of most developed countries in the world and endures even when women have high rates of labour market participation. For example, Bryson’s (1998) analysis of Israel illustrates how employment patterns are highly gendered for all ethnic groups. Women are over-represented in caring and service work, in part-time and low status employment. Men have a near monopoly of top positions in the public and private sectors.
These features of the labour market are interconnected. For example, when men are employed in predominantly female sectors such as primary school teaching, nursing or social work they are also more likely to be occupying the senior positions in these sectors. In addition, Blackwell (2001) reports that women’s part-time work is not only more gender-segregated than women’s full-time work but also part-time jobs tend to be at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy.
The focus of research on gender segregation in terms of domestic care and in terms of paid employment primarily gives a pessimistic picture of progress in respect of greater equality between the sexes. Although there is some evidence in lesbian households of greater equality in the share of domestic work (see, for example, Dunne, 1997), changes in women’s participation in paid employment and greater recognition of equal rights between the sexes have not led to significant changes in the domestic division of labour. Women in heterosexual relationships continue to undertake the major share of domestic and family care (Press and Townsley, 1998; Pilcher, 1999). As paid employees, care work is also seen to fix women into low paid and low skill sectors of the economy.
The connections between the public and private spheres have illustrated how women’s responsibilities for care create mutually reinforcing structures. For example, Parker (1993) considers how inequalities in pay and the gendered nature of public policies reinforce the economic dependence of women in relation to spousal caring relationships. Parker’s research has focused on the material and subjective meanings of being cared for. This adds further weight to arguments that women are in a disadvantaged position in relation to care through an analysis of the gendered implications of being cared for as a disabled woman:
The evidence of this study adds support to the growing recognition that women can be more disabled than men in comparable circumstances. If they remain in the labour market, as women they have lower incomes anyway. If they are not in the labour market, indirect discrimination in the state benefits system means that they are likely to receive lower levels of benefits. Their need for help and support may be seen as less important, and their desire to retain control over domestic arrangements may be over-ridden by the provision of services which serve to replace, rather than enable, their role. Women who become disabled after marriage are also affected by the pre-existing dynamics of the relationship. In marriages where power is particularly unequal, disabled women find themselves very constrained in their ability to assert their needs. Even where power is not so unequal, women’s general reluctance to assert their needs before those of other family members may find disabled women doing things they would rather not (like entering respite care) or not doing things that they would rather (for example, retaining control over domestic arrangements). (Parker, 1993: 125)
The inter-conections between women’s caring responsibilities in both paid and unpaid work have also been assessed in terms of women’s career progression and employability. Reviewing the careers of women in educational management in Europe Wilson summarizes the barriers that women face in terms of career advancement and progression as:
The presence of young children in a family, the uneven distribution of domestic responsibilities between male and female partners, career breaks, the psychological status of combining the dual role of parenthood and teaching. . . The absence of family leave to care for young children, inadequate provision of childcare facilities for preschool children and differing levels of maternity/paternity leave are also significant variables. (1997: 213)
Hasibuan-Sedyono’s (1998) analysis of women managers in Indonesia also illustrates how strong regulatory effects of assumptions about mothers’ responsibilities for care impact on women’s careers. Hasibuan — Sedyono comments: ‘Indonesian society still insists that women have not completed their mission in life until they have married and brought up children’ (ibid.: 88). Women managers in Indonesia therefore risk losing respect because they are thought to be giving less attention to their families and, unsurprisingly, these assumptions impact on their chances of further promotion. In addition, responsibilities for family care impact on the choices women make in terms of employment. For example,
Sullivan and Lewis’ (2001) research indicates how fitting paid employment with childcare responsibilities was a major motivation for women to undertake telework. This was not the case for men who undertook this form of working arrangement.
Women’s access to company-based childcare support is also limited. Reskin and Padavic (1994) note that it is normally large companies who provide such benefits. However, most people are employed by small companies. Thus, the number of women who benefit from family — friendly employer-provided policies are relatively small. In addition, the polarization of core-periphery working (Atkinson, 1985, for a critique see Pollert, 1991) that is being evidenced in the labour market between core workers who are higher status professionals and peripheral workers who are employed on part-time, casual or temporary bases is another division. Employer-provided benefits are normally restricted to those who form part of the core, full-time, permanent labour force.
One of the key responses arising from these research findings and analyses of the inter-connections between women’s responsibilities for domestic care and their employment prospects in the labour market has been to lobby for childcare as a social right. Charles comments in this respect that: ‘Feminism. . . defines child care as a social right and exposes the gendered nature of care work, arguing that the whole organisation of child care in advanced capitalist societies needs to be transformed in the direction of greater parity between women and men in both the private and public spheres’ (Charles, 2000: 20).
The issue of rights in respect of care has also been more broadly linked to issues of citizenship. In this respect feminists have raised two main critiques with regard to the assumptions of the universality of citizenship (Bryson, 1998). First, claims of universality ignore the particular needs and circumstances of women. For example, it is necessary to be employed full-time to gain the economic security, social welfare and other resources for political participation. However, many women are either full-time carers or part-time workers. In addition, issues of nationality are significant because, as Charles (2000: 23) notes, ‘even though black women are more likely than their white counterparts to be in full-time employment, this does not guarantee their access to citizenship rights which are limited by racialised definitions of national identity’.
Second, conceptualizations of citizenship emphasize its nature as a public activity. This ignores the essential work that women do within the home and the inequalities in family life. Bryson (1998: 128) argues for ‘a reconceptualisation of citizenship based on a recognition of the social necessity of caring work and an analysis of the private bases of public activities and inequalities’. In this respect Bryson suggests there are three main areas in which policy demands are made:
1 The first of these concerns the caring needs of society and women’s domestic work. Reforms advocated here are intended to provide state support for women’s caring responsibilities, to enable these to be combined with employment and to facilitate and encourage greater domestic involvement on the part of men. They include parental leave, shorter working weeks and affordable, good quality childcare.
2 The second set of reforms rests upon the belief that personal economic dependency is incompatible with full citizenship. It seeks to provide economic independence for women by improving their employment prospects, securing greater rights for part-time workers and giving women independent access to state welfare benefits.
3 The final area is defined in narrower political terms and includes a demand for electoral reform and the introduction of quotas, in the belief that these will facilitate an increase in the political representation of women.