Introduction: Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics

Hobson, Bárbara; Lewis, Jane; Siim, Birte

doi:10.4337/9781781950340.00005

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…The consideration of leave as a right/duty is connected to different parents' approaches to childcare. Childcare may be considered by both parents from two perspectives: as a duty derived from having children, and as a social right which needs to be granted (Hobson et al ., ). Individual/couple decisions. Intra‐family negotiations regarding the allocation of time at work and household activities have been studied (Geisler and Kreyenfeld, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Decision‐Making Factors within Paternity and Parental Leaves: Why Spanish Fathers Take Time Off from Work

Romero-Balsas¹,

Rogero-García²

2013

Gender Work & Organization

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This article aims to understand how Spanish fathers construct and justify their decisions to use both paternity and parental leaves. Specifically, we analyse the fathers' discourse about paid work conditions, the couple's decision‐making process, formal and informal care resources, and care and gender equality. We divided responders according to the type of leave that they took and the length of time away from work; as a result, participants in this study were placed into three groups: (1) fathers who take 15 days off from work after childbirth, which are usually those who took only paternity leaves; (2) fathers who take off more than 1 month, which are usually fathers who also took parental leave; and (3) fathers who take off less than 5 days from work, which are fathers who do not take any official leave. We analyse 30 in‐depth interviews with Spanish fathers by applying a critical discourse methodology. The findings indicate that paternity leave is mostly considered a right, but not a duty, and the decision whether or not to use it is viewed as an individual choice. Fathers who take longer leaves judge time off from work not only as an individual right, but also as a duty to their families. These fathers show a low work‐connection discourse, an explicit rejection of other care resources, and a care‐sensitive attitude.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Decision‐Making Factors within Paternity and Parental Leaves: Why Spanish Fathers Take Time Off from Work

Romero-Balsas¹,

Rogero-García²

2013

Gender Work & Organization

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“…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 . () and Towns ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden

Bowman¹,

Cole²

2014

Gender Work & Organization

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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.

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“…New forms of flexible work and changes in welfarism have therefore become particularly problematic for women 24 . As Hobson et al (2002;5) note:…”

Section: Family Living Standardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, neo-liberalism has produced a new type of 'welfare' contract. Hobson et al (2002;7) argue that the most important change is in the assumptions underlying welfare provision, and the ways in which governments provide social assistance. Here, in late modern neo-liberal economies, the emphasis has shifted from public to private provision, from centralised redistribution on the basis of need to market allocation, from universality to targeting, from tax based to user-pays regimes, from central planning to decentralisation, and from collective claims of social rights or entitlements to the individual demonstration of responsibility (Boston, 1999).…”

Section: Family Living Standardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While these are broad tendencies, different nations-states do respond differently to the forces of globalisation, and different welfare regimes express different logics, including different relationships between the market, the family and the State (Hobson et al, 2002;11, Kingfisher & Goldsmith, 2001;Boston, 1999). Thus, differences in the living standards of New Zealand families receiving income from 'the market' and families receiving income from 'the State' in the form of welfare benefits can be explained as a structural outcome of various discourses informing the policy orientations of New Zealand's neo-liberal 'welfare' state.…”

Section: Family Living Standardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Women, Mothers and Citizens: Lone Mothers' Narratives in the Context of New Zealand Welfare Reform

Patterson¹

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<p>As in other late modern societies with a history of liberal welfarism, 'lone mothers' in New Zealand occupy contested subject positions. On the one hand, lone parenting is understood as the outcome of broader changes in family life and gender relations, and in particular, the emergence of new forms of intimacy as people seek relationships to sustain individual identity projects. On the other hand, in the context of neo-liberal welfare discourses, lone mothers are constructed as a problematic Other, categorically different to 'ordinary' women, mothers and citizens. In New Zealand, welfare reform discourses have constructed women who parent alone as 'particular types of people', and subjected lone mothers to welfare reforms that have had real material effects in their everyday lives. The construction of lone mothers as Other is not only a product of neo-liberal welfare reform discourses. Rather, the ways in which women who parent alone are 'made up' as particular types of people is historically specific. This thesis situates current discourses around lone mothering in New Zealand in the context of a hierarchy of maternal legitimacy that has produced historically specific subjects through a number of traditional, modern and late modern subjectification discourses. Discourses have effects, both materially and in terms of the subjectivity and experience of the people 'made up'. This thesis offers an analysis of the narratives of twenty-one lone mothers in the context of New Zealand welfare reform. In particular, the ways in which women who parent alone make sense of becoming lone mothers, of being 'different' in negotiating the social identity of mother, and of the materiality of the experience of parenting alone are examined. The thesis argues that when narrating experience, women who parent alone enact particular narratives in the form of validation stories. Validation stories are drawn from an amalgam of discourses that both construct lone mothers as particular types of people and shape the material conditions of lone mothers' lives. In enacting validation stories, women who parent alone negotiate these discourses, producing narratives to make sense of their experience and position themselves as ordinary women, mothers and citizens. In this sense, validation stories are narratives that ameliorate the oppressive effects of welfare reform discourses that relentlessly shape lone mothers' lives. The thesis concludes that although validation stories make the lives of lone mothers more 'liveable', sociological theorising around changes in family life must critique claims of individualization as a benign tendency of late modernity, and attend empirically to the ways in which persistent gendered inequalities in family life are both discursively legitimated and reproduced, and continue, for example, to discriminate against lone mothers.</p>

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Introduction: Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Decision‐Making Factors within Paternity and Parental Leaves: Why Spanish Fathers Take Time Off from Work

Decision‐Making Factors within Paternity and Parental Leaves: Why Spanish Fathers Take Time Off from Work

Cleaning the ‘People's Home’: The Politics of the Domestic Service Market in Sweden

Women, Mothers and Citizens: Lone Mothers' Narratives in the Context of New Zealand Welfare Reform

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