Legal Constructions of Body Work

Stewart, Ann

doi:10.1007/978-1-137-02191-5_4

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…As in hairstyling, this symbolically reinforces existing understandings of gender alignment, emphasising the continuity between unpaid domestic and paid body work, and affects the cultural, but also economic, value accorded the latter. Additionally, the legal implications of domesticity and the quasi‐market context of some care roles may leave workers outside of legal definitions, unprotected by legislative employment provision (Daly et al , ; Stewart, ).…”

Section: Hair and Carementioning

confidence: 99%

The Feminization of Body Work

Cohen¹,

Wolkowitz²

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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This article explores the relationship between 'body work' and gender, asking why paid work involving the physical touch and manipulation of others' bodies is largely performed by women. It argues that the feminization of body work is not simply explicable as 'nurturance', nor as the continuation of a pre-existing domestic division of labour. Rather, feminization resolves dilemmas that arise when intimate touch is refigured as paid labour. These 'body work dilemmas' are rooted in the material nature of body work. They are both cultural (related to the meaning of inter-corporeality) and organizational (related to the spatial, temporal and labour process constraints of work on bodies). Two sectors are explored as exemplars: hairdressing and care work. Synthesizing UK quantitative data and existing research, the article traces similarities and differences in the composition of these sectors and in how gender both responds to and reentrenches the cultural and organizational body work dilemmas identified.

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Section: Hair and Carementioning

confidence: 99%

The Feminization of Body Work

Cohen¹,

Wolkowitz²

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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“…Indeed, West Africans were encouraged to become volunteer carers on those promises. Risks that lead to high levels of harm are transferred to workers through precarious employment relations (Stewart, 2011(Stewart, , 2013.…”

Section: Limitations Of the Law In Addressing Harms To Carersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Categorising the Gendered Harms to Caregivers During Humanitarian Emergencies: An Analysis of Law and Practice During Ebola Crises

Sekalala

2020

Social & Legal Studies

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Recent global health emergencies have highlighted the critical role of health care workers in stemming the spread of pandemics. Healthcare workers provide an essential service to local communities impacted by epidemics such as Ebola. Global health scholars suggest that carers may suffer harm while performing this essential work. Building on feminist theories of ‘harm’ and ‘social reproduction’, this article uses as case studies the early 21st century Ebola epidemics that broke out in West Africa and the DRC to ask how do women carers in humanitarian crises experience harm? The article illustrates the hierarchical and gendered nature of harm, and how those at the bottom of social hierarchies face intersectional harms stemming from their race, class and economic status. The article highlights an urgent need to rethink how law at both the domestic and international levels has contributed to the reproduction of inequalities faced by these carers.

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“…When deployed to examine labour relations in supply chains, the manipulation of working time and the control of workers private space common in trafficking for sexual exploitation, expose the ways in which time debt and employer-provided housing tie workers to the employers in the industrial workplace. The suggestion that I advance here, drawing on feminist legal scholarship, is not just that unfree labour is underpinned by the sexual division of labour but, rather, that unfree labour in supply chains is an outcome of capital’s appropriation and reconfiguration of the reproductive realm (Fudge, 2019; Kotiswaran, 2014; Steward, 2014). Researchers concerned with understanding and eradicating forced labour from supply chains should thus look at the critical literature on trafficking for sexual exploitation to understand both the mechanisms that employers use to confine workers and the ways in which capital mobilizes difference to extract value from labour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forced labour in supply chains: Rolling back the debate on gender, migration and sexual commerce

Andrijasevic

2021

European Journal of Women's Studies

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This article makes a conceptual contribution to the broader literature on unfree labour by challenging the separate treatment of sexual and industrial labour exploitation both by researchers and in law and policy. This article argues that the prevailing focus of the supply chain literature on industrial labour has inadvertently posited sexual labour as the ‘other’ of industrial labour thus obfuscating how the legal blurring of boundaries between industrial and service labour is engendering new modalities of the erosion of workers’ rights that are increasingly resembling those typical of sex work. This article advances the debate on unfree labour both conceptually and empirically. Conceptually, it highlights the relevance of social reproduction in understanding forms of labour unfreedom. Empirically, it demonstrates the similarities in forms of control and exploitation between sex work and industrial work by illustrating how debt and housing operate in both settings.

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Legal Constructions of Body Work

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

The Feminization of Body Work

The Feminization of Body Work

Categorising the Gendered Harms to Caregivers During Humanitarian Emergencies: An Analysis of Law and Practice During Ebola Crises

Forced labour in supply chains: Rolling back the debate on gender, migration and sexual commerce

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