Women's paid work and moral economies of care

Female labour force participation has been increasing in recent decades, in part encouraged by state policies to raise the employment rate to encourage economic competitiveness and combat social exclusion. Social provision for care, however, has lagged behind this increase, creating practical and moral dilemmas for individuals and for society, facing parents with complex choices about how to combine work and care. In this paper, we draw on a qualitative study in London to explore the extent to which the large-scale entry of women into waged work is altering women's understandings of their duties and responsibilities to care for others. We conclude that their decisions are influenced by class position, entrenched gender inequalities in the labour market, varying abilities to pay for care and complex gendered understandings of caring responsibilities.     

On the relational dynamics of caring: a psychotherapeutic approach to emotional and power dimensions of women's care work

Care is double-edged and paradoxical, inspiring a vast range of strong feelings in both care-givers and care-recipients. This article draws on ideas about psychotherapeutic relationships to offer a theorisation of the complex emotional and power dynamics and imaginative geographies of care. Examining the humanistic approach developed by Carl Rogers as well as the psychoanalytic tradition, I advance an interpretation of psychotherapeutic practices that foregrounds the fundamental importance of the emotional and power-inflected relationship between practitioners and those with whom they work. I show how different traditions offer conceptualisations of the shape of therapeutic relationships that are highly relevant to consideration of the emotional and power dynamics of giving and receiving care. Against this background I discuss current debates about care, emotions and power, drawing especially on feminist and disability perspectives and arguing that psychotherapeutic approaches offer a powerful lens through which to understand the emotional and power dynamics of caring relationships. I conclude by emphasising how this theorisation helps to illuminate ubiquitous features of women's care work.     

Introduction: space,place and the geographies of women's caregiving work

The vast majority of caregivers, whether formal or informal, paid or unpaid, are women. Health care restructuring across the West, inspired by a shift from the welfare to neoliberal state, has greatly impacted caregiving. The idea for this collection arose as a result of a special paper session on the geographies of caregiving, held as part of the Association of American Geographers Meeting (Chicago, 2006). In hearing the papers presented, it became clear that geographers are engaged in interesting and innovative research in this area, much of which involves women's caregiving work in particular. As both unpaid informal family caregiving and paid formal practitioner-provided care are mainly addressed in this collection, they are briefly discussed in this editorial. This is followed by a discussion of the geographical contributions to the growing caregiving literature, which provides the foundation for an overview of ongoing and new research directions. The four articles that make up this special issue are then reviewed in brief. Finally, we identify issues that cut across all four articles, leading to a discussion of future research directions.     

Protagonists and politics in the Italian women's movement: a reflection on the work of Annarita Buttafuoco

This article retraces Annarita Buttafuoco's work as a historian of the women's political movement in Italy through a brief survey of her essays and books. These covered more than two centuries of history, ranging from the echoes of the French Revolution in Italy and the constitution of the Jacobin Republics to the struggles for female suffrage and emancipation in the liberal era down to the period after the Second World War and the founding of the Italian Republic. Emphasizing the originality of both the sources and the methodological approaches she used, the article offers a critical appreciation of Annarita Buttafuoco's research and her role in organizing and shaping collective research projects. It is focused on three specific issues: the history of women as conscious historical subjects, the history of women's political movements not only in their social and political contexts but also in relation to institutional networks and the practices of citizenship.     

Women of the Sisters' Hall: religion and the making of women's alternative space in Taiwan's economic restructuring

Against the background of Taiwan's recent economic restructuring, this article investigates the lives of a group of working-class women who were believers of I-Kuan Tao, a sectarian religion, and who had by and large decided to remain single in order to better practice their religious teaching. They lived together in an I-Kuan Tao temple. This article situates singlehood in the literature of resistance and sees it as a strategy of these women seeking an alternative lifestyle from the culturally prescribed roles of wife, mother and daughter-in-law. Three interlocking factors are particularly important to an understanding of these women's experience: cultural (the Taiwanese patrilineal family), religious (I-Kuan Tao), and economic (Taiwan's post-World War II export-oriented industrialization and its recent economic restructuring). Paradoxically, while trying to establish an alternative social space, these women were also seeking cultural legitimacy for their choice. Marriage resistance, in this case, was an act of both transgression and conformity. Yet the different readings that these women and their families applied to their situations, as well as the ingenuous strategies they deployed to solve their predicaments, also added new elements to the cultural repertoire which, collectively considered, might broaden the range of options for future Taiwanese women who attempt a similar life trajectory. In this article, I therefore caution against a totalizing understanding of the concept of resistance based on its final result, but call for a more nuanced analysis focusing on the process.     

Mr. Dithers Comes to Dinner: Telework and the merging of women's work and home domains in Canada

Studies of home-based telework by women yield mixed results regarding the usefulness of telework in facilitating work–life balance. Most research on the social impacts of home-based telework focuses on workers—employees or self-employed—who deliberately choose that alternative work arrangement. Labour force analysts, however, predict an increase in employer-initiated teleworking. As a case study of the workforce of one large, financial-sector firm in Canada, this article considers the conditions of employment of involuntary teleworkers, those required by their employer to work full-time from a home office. In-depth interviews were co nducted with a sample of 18 female teleworkers working for the case study firm in a professional occupation. Study participants described the advantages and disadvantages of working from home, particularly with regard to spatial and social aspects of locating work in a home setting. The gendered nature of their jobs, and the caring and supportive functions they provide both through their employment and their household responsibilities are seen to support the relocation of their jobs from office to their homes. In many jurisdictions, telework is promoted as a means of giving women more flexibility to balance their paid work with their household responsibilities; the article highlights some of the contradictions involved in moving the workplace into women's homes.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

Jiangzhai: Social and economic organization of a Middle Neolithic Chinese village

The Early Yangshao period (5000–4000 BC) village of Jiangzhai is the most completely excavated and reported of any early agricultural community in the middle reaches of northern China’s Yellow River Valley. This comprehensive dataset can better our understanding of early agricultural village societies and complex society development, especially the emergence of economic inequality. Analyses of Jiangzhai’s architectural remains and their arrangement; estimates of household population, storage capacity, and animal consumption; and analyses of household artifact assemblages are used to reconstruct the social and economic organization of this important Neolithic settlement. Our analyses suggest that differences in economic organization at the household level are responsible for patterns of intra-settlement economic differentiation previously attributed to higher-order “corporate” institutions. Rather than a segmental society composed of redundant homologous units, Jiangzhai displays substantial variability among residential sectors and constituent households in terms of activity emphases and surplus accumulation. Substantial intrasite variation in socioeconomic organization has previously been thought characteristic only of more complex Late Neolithic societies in the middle Yellow River Valley region.     

A good social work: women's clubs, libraries, and the construction of a secular society in Utah, 1890-1920

After the renunciation of polygamy, Mormon women formed secular women's clubs as a means of collaborating with non-Mormon women in the construction of a shared secular society. Their common goal was the establishment and maintenance of the mainstream American social order. Activity in these clubs extended women's sphere into the public realm through socially acceptable public activities such as the temperance cause, civic improvements, political reform movements, and child welfare. The women campaigned for public support of libraries as institutions that would construct, preserve, and transmit American culture, educate the young, strengthen the home and family, and reform society.     

Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese Sovereignty: A Framing Discourse

A senior American specialist on China and noted geographer presents a framing commentary and analysis of three preceding papers (Yeung et al., 2008; Shen, 2008; and Tang, 2008) comprising a symposium on Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese sovereignty after Great Britain and Portugal ceased to govern these cities in the late 1990s. The paper commences with an historical overview, noting the years of colonial rule, discussing relations with Mainland China before and after its economic reforms were set in motion, and evaluating the post-handover period in light of the material and arguments in the preceding papers. Included in the paper is also a section on environmental degradation in Hong Kong. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: N950, O18, Q30, R11. 3 figures, 17 references.     

死刑与儒家的公平正义——中国传统法律有关宽宥的限度

清朝命案刑科题本的近代读者,不得不佩服清代县长调查和审判命案时所表现的勤勉和称职。因此,从县长的立场来看,审理每一件命案不仅要有效率,同时也必须兼顾人道的考量。本篇文章分析四件因为「护亲情切」而杀死人的案例,充分显示县长如何运用娴熟的技巧,把明确及不明确的案情片段结合起来,做出既符合清代法律规定也顾及当时道德标准的判决。官僚体制为求效率,在执行律法时似乎会和儒家的仁义道德产生矛盾。但作者认为,清代处理命案的法律制度,已足以解决该项问题。     

荷属东印度华人社会的自治与困境——以18—19世纪吧城公堂丧葬管理为中心

论文利用公堂审理华人民事案件和日常管理的档案记录《公案簿》和荷兰莱顿大学图书馆藏原始公堂数字化档案,从华人社会权力管制的视角对公堂的丧葬管理过程、华人丧葬规范以及丧葬背后体现的社会内在矛盾进行了研究探讨。1742年建立的吧城公堂是荷属东印度时期荷兰殖民者委任华人甲必丹管理的华人半自治机构,主要处理华人民政事务,其中丧葬事宜便是管理要务之一,包括倡建、购置和经营华人塚地,规范华人葬仪、丧服之礼。然而在西方殖民统治不断强化的时代背景下,公堂在丧葬管理中面临唐吧贸易衰落后甲必丹们义葬观念的转变、闽粤二帮祭祀矛盾、华人美色甘及公堂内部人士对塚地经费管理的质疑以及殖民政府推进城市化过程中对塚地的侵蚀等挑战,再加上1900年吧达维亚中华会馆成立后倡导革新婚丧旧俗,公堂的权威地位逐渐遭到削弱,华人社会管理多元化的诉求和实践成为时代需要。