Segues and synergies: Feminist economist and occupational scientists meet human rights

Abstract

How do the international rules of 'work' and 'economic activity' treat 'occupation'? What 'work' is constantly absent from the database for determining public resource allocations and investments? What occupies those whose work is unpaid? Is this work visible in Occupational Science research? What are the implications for 'overoccupation' in a human rights context? Are there opportunities for political economists and occupational scientists to work together on these issues? KEYWORDS occupation and human rights; over-occupation; family carers Introducing political economy and occupation Thank you for the honour of the invitation to address you today. My discipline background is in political economy and public policy, my research is feminist, and for the last forty years, it has had a human rights focus. For occupational therapists, this address begins with a segue, a short introduction to a major feature of economics: its treatment of 'occupation'. I move to a discussion of synergies between my work and yours, in the environment of human rights, with a case study on the caregivers of those with HIV and AIDS using a capability framework. I describe my own experience of managing the care of a terminally ill family member, and what I learned from this. I conclude with the exploitation of women's unpaid care work. My work in economics (Waring, 1988, 1999) has focused on the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA). You will be familiar with the term GDP, and these growth

Challenging conceptualisations of work: Revisiting contemporary experiences of return to work and unemployment

“…To better capture the range of occupations that people experience as work, some occupational scientists have framed work as inclusive of informal economy engagements (Dickie, 1996) that use money as a medium of exchange but stand outside traditional employer-employee structures (Ferman, 1990). Dickie (2003) defined work as "any activity that supports the survival of oneself and one's family" (p. 251), and this broad definition encapsulates a wider range of occupations than traditional paid employment, including unpaid occupations such as domestic or household work (Cox, 1997;Primeau, 2000) and caregiving (Waring, 2017). This broad understanding of work is evident in many fields, as noted by Scanlan and Beltran (2007).…”

“…Very little attention has been paid to the definition of unemployment, though it appears that most occupation-focused scholarship equates unemployment to the lack of paid employment (O'Halloran et al, 2018). Both return-to-work and unemployment have primarily been elucidated from an individualistic standpoint, but scholars are increasingly attending to the social expectations and structural conditions that hinder or prohibit people's access to work Berr et al, 2019;Burchett & Matheson, 2010;Holmlund, Hultling, & Asaba, 2018;Jakobsen, 2009;, 2017Lintner & Elsen, 2018), in line with the broader uptake of critical perspectives in occupationfocused scholarship (Farias & Laliberte Rudman, 2016).…”

Addressing the gender construct in occupation-based research: A scoping review / Abordaje del constructo género en investigación basada en la ocupación: Un estudio de alcance

“…Por último, se identifica un interés por explicar los géneros como parte de un sistema estructural el que interactúa e intersecta con otras categorías sociales destacando así su carácter situado, múltiple y dinámico (Almeida y Lugli, 2018;Angell, 2014;Cortina-Roa, 2019;De Melo et al, 2014;Dos Santos et al, 2019;Dowers et al, 2019;Grandón-Valenzuela, 2018;Huff et al, 2018;Méndez-Montaño et al, 2013;Rivas-Quarneti et al, 2018;Vidal-Sánchez et al, 2018;Waring, 2017). Por ejemplo, Angell (2014) detalla en su artículo que desde este punto de vista el constructo de género no puede ser visto independientemente de otras categorías sociales (clase, raza, etnia, sexualidad y otras relaciones de poder) donde los géneros se producen y resignifican constantemente.…”

“…Vidal-Sánchez y colaboradoras ( 2018) analizan cómo las ocupaciones de cuidados que desempeñan las mujeres no pueden ser abordadas sin entender los vínculos entre el sistema patriarcal y el sistema capitalista. Esta idea es presentada también por Waring (2017) quien además explica que esto genera situaciones de "sobreocupación" ("over-occupation") cuando la mujer se hace cargo del cuidado doméstico y del trabajo fuera de casa. Lo anterior influye en la posibilidad de estas mujeres de desempeñar ocupaciones significativas y que garanticen sus derechos al ocio y el autocuidado.…”

Editorial: Special issue on Inclusion and Participation

“…Marilyn Waring (2017), a renowned feminist economist, furthered the theme of participation as a human rights issue in her accounting of "women's work". Taking the United Nations System of National Accounts, from which governments derive Gross Domestic Product (GDP), as her starting point, Waring charted the systematic exclusion of the unpaid labour women contribute to their households.…”