Navigating babysitting as liminal, gendered, and undervalued work

Abstract

Babysitting is a common early-work experience in the West, yet there is little research on babysitters. From in-depth, qualitative interviews with 16 babysitters, we explore three themes related to liminality and gender inequality in babysitting. First, babysitting is a skilled job; many babysitters undertook formal and informal training and used it at work. Second, babysitters occupy a liminal position between childhood and adulthood, bringing challenges and opportunities at work. Finally, babysitters thoughtfully negotiate pay, but sometimes experience challenges doing so.

Income generation on care work digital labour platforms

“…The automated prompts providing seemingly objective location‐based market rates for carers stood in place of detailed information on pay rates across the platform and provided no indication of the means by which the location‐based averages were calculated. These rates were also frequently reported as being lower than the rate that the worker was planning to advertise, which aligns with women's experiences of care work being poorly remunerated and undervalued (Easterbrook et al., 2021). Platform competition, price wars and pressures to increase transaction volume nudge hourly pay rates downwards, serving the interests of clients whose engagement with the platform is critical to the economic viability of business models in the gig economy, at the same time as eroding labour conditions for workers (Calvey, 2016).…”