This contribution is about women's paid and unpaid work in the context of rapid socioeconomic change in Greece between 1983 and 2008. Drawing on feminist analyses of women's employment and the care sector, it highlights the link between women's paid employment and the supply of affordable immigrant (female) labor in Greece in the sphere of care provision. It examines three issues: the acceleration of women's involvement in the paid labor force after 1990; the parallel influx of immigrants, a quarter of whom are women involved in service provision for households, into Greece; and finally, the “big picture” of the demand for care (both paid and unpaid, childcare as well as eldercare) in the context of an aging population and women's rising participation in paid work. The analysis highlights the key contribution of migrant women acting as catalysts for social change.Women migrants, care services, elderly, women's employment, aging,
Are European welfare states, especially in the European periphery, 'fair-weather systems'? Can they survive a sustained and deep crisis and still fulfil basic functions? This article argues that to answer these questions we must look at the interplay between 'formal' and 'informal', family-based, social protection. Social protection services in all countries, but especially in Southern Europe, have always been provided by a hybrid system comprised of state-based and residual family-based systems, where gender plays a critical role. Austerity tests the capacity of formal welfare provision, and so eats into the liquidity of the informal support system. The crisis is thus transmitted from the state to the family. By examining the case of Greece, the article underlines the need for a joint analysis of both parts of the welfare state in the context of the unfolding crisis. A full understanding of crisis dynamics requires innovation in theoretical approaches, in the type of data needed and in policy thinking.
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