scholarly journals The feminist and domestic workers’ movements: disconnected practices, discursive convergences

Author(s):  
Giulia Garofalo Geymonat ◽  
Daniela Cherubini ◽  
Sabrina Marchetti

The article explores the relationship between women’s rights and feminist and domestic workers’ movements by drawing on qualitative data gathered in a comparative study on domestic workers’ rights in Italy, Germany, Spain, India, the Philippines, Taiwan, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador (2016–21). Despite the frequent disconnection between the two movements at the practical level, a possible convergence may be identified in the discursive frames that domestic workers’ rights activists make use of. The analysis focuses on two feminist anti-capitalist frames recurring in mobilisations for domestic workers’ rights, addressing the valorisation of reproductive labour and the transnational commodification of care. Domestic workers’ activism tends to build on these frames beyond their mainstream forms and to expand them in intersectional ways, enlarging their capacity to include racialised, low-class, migrant and other minority groups. This becomes a creative force at the level of discourse, where different alliances may take place in a less visible way.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>In many countries, a large gap exists between the feminist movement and the movement for domestic workers’ rights.</li><br /><li>Activists for the rights of domestic workers often base their claims on feminist arguments on care and reproductive labour.</li><br /><li>Domestic worker activists expand feminist discourses along intersectional lines to include not only gender, but also class, caste and race perspectives.</li><br /><li>The alliance between the feminist and domestic workers’ movements can be facilitated by converging around issues of social reproduction addressed in an intersectional perspective.</li></ul>

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-132
Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova

This epilogue looks at several new factors affecting domestic employment in Ecuador today which may change the landscape for workers, employers, and activists. First is the new government. If before, there was worker-friendly rhetoric and praise for humble domestic workers, but little concrete improvement in policies and conditions, today even the rhetoric is gone. The best way to reach and make claims on the new government is still unclear, and it will be difficult to obtain state funding for domestic worker initiatives. Second, there has been a “rupture” in the domestic worker organization Asociación de Trabajadoras Remuneradas del Hogar (ATRH). This situation makes organizing and advocating for domestic workers more difficult and may lead to confusion among policy makers and funders. Third, there has been an uptick in migration to Ecuador from Colombia and Venezuela, as people flee violence, political instability, and economic disaster. Finally, some of the people interviewed in 2018 claim to be witnessing growth in the proportion of live-in, full-time domestic workers. Despite changes in the context of domestic employment, however, workers' status has not changed much since this study began. Social reproduction is still devalued, informal arrangements still prevail, and the class gulf between employers and domestic workers remains.


2019 ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Erynn Masi de Casanova

This chapter explores some of the challenges that organizers of domestic workers in Ecuador face. Its discussion of domestic worker organizing touches on the three major themes of this book: social reproduction, informal arrangements that render domestic work invisible, and class relations that degrade and dehumanize workers. Workers' engagement in long hours of paid and unpaid social reproduction makes them difficult to reach and organize. Informal arrangements, and lack of political will and political effectiveness to change these arrangements, combine to make the enforcement of existing laws difficult. Moreover, relationships with the left-leaning state, embedded in traditional assumptions about who constitutes the working class—assumptions that leave out women and informal workers—have been fraught. The chapter then shows how domestic workers and their advocates have been organizing, what strategies they have used to demand the rights of these workers, and what the implications of these strategies are for political action and change.


2015 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 150-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harmony Goldberg

AbstractMost efforts of the current domestic workers’ rights movement in the United States have focused on ending the exclusion of domestic workers from employment protections that were institutionalized during the New Deal in the 1930s. These victories have been significant in both policy and culture. They have brought public attention to the invisibilized world of domestic work, and state recognition has validated this often-degraded occupation as “real work.” However, enforcement has been a problem. As domestic worker organizing has matured, it has expanded to include pushing the boundaries of state-ensured minimum standards as well as raising standards in the industry through direct intervention in the relationship between workers and employers. These programs are significant in that they reflect a different strategic approach—often with the goal of base building—than the earlier model of domestic worker advocacy and organizing.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Miller ◽  
Mirca Madianou

Abstract: This paper uses the concept of ‘cutting the network’ derived from the work of Marilyn Strathern to examine the relationship between two kinds of social network, that of kinship and the system of friends constructed on social networking sites. Specifically the material comes from a study of Filipina domestic workers and nurses in the UK and their relationship to their left behind children in the Philippines. A bilateral system of kinship can lead to a proliferation of relatives, while the use of the Friendster social networking site can lead to a proliferation of friends. It is when these two systems clash following the request by one's mother to become a friend that the constraints and problems posed by both systems comes into view. Cases show that it is possible to use social networking sites to help mothers become close friends for their absent children, but more commonly the increasing presence of actual mothers through new media disrupts the relationships that children had developed for themselves to a idealised projection of motherhood.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-217
Author(s):  
Karijn G. Nijhoff

This paper explores the relationship between education and labour market positioning in The Hague, a Dutch city with a unique labour market. One of the main minority groups, Turkish-Dutch, is the focus in this qualitative study on higher educated minorities and their labour market success. Interviews reveal that the obstacles the respondents face are linked to discrimination and network limitation. The respondents perceive “personal characteristics” as the most important tool to overcoming the obstacles. Education does not only increase their professional skills, but also widens their networks. The Dutch education system facilitates the chances of minorities in higher education through the “layering” of degrees. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Minerva Rosas ◽  
Verónica Ormeño ◽  
Cristian Ruiz-Aguilar

To assess the progressive teaching practicums included in an English Teaching Programme at a Chilean university, 60 former student-teachers answered a questionnaire with both Likert-scale and open-ended questions. The issues assessed included the relationship between the progressive teaching practicums and the curriculum’s modules and sequence, and the skills developed while implementing innovation projects during the student-teachers’ two final practicums. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses allowed us to identify both strengths and weaknesses. The participants highlighted strengths in the areas of teaching strategies, critical thinking skills and professional and pedagogical knowledge. Among the weaknesses, they identified limited supervision and feedback, and diverging views on teaching education between the university and the schools as the most difficult to deal with. These findings may be useful for introducing improvements in Initial Teacher Education aimed at reducing problems and discrepancies and devising suitable induction processes.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Shannon Said

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-112
Author(s):  
Richard Larouche ◽  
Nimesh Patel ◽  
Jennifer L. Copeland

The role of infrastructure in encouraging transportation cycling in smaller cities with a low prevalence of cycling remains unclear. To investigate the relationship between the presence of infrastructure and transportation cycling in a small city (Lethbridge, AB, Canada), we interviewed 246 adults along a recently-constructed bicycle boulevard and two comparison streets with no recent changes in cycling infrastructure. One comparison street had a separate multi-use path and the other had no cycling infrastructure. Questions addressed time spent cycling in the past week and 2 years prior and potential socio-demographic and psychosocial correlates of cycling, including safety concerns. Finally, we asked participants what could be done to make cycling safer and more attractive. We examined predictors of cycling using gender-stratified generalized linear models. Women interviewed along the street with a separate path reported cycling more than women on the other streets. A more favorable attitude towards cycling and greater habit strength were associated with more cycling in both men and women. Qualitative data revealed generally positive views about the bicycle boulevard, a need for education about sharing the road and for better cycling infrastructure in general. Our results suggest that, even in smaller cities, cycling infrastructure may encourage cycling, especially among women.


2001 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Arat

The development of liberalism with both the courage and the capacity to engage itself with a different world, one in which its principles are neither well understood nor widely held, in which indeed it is, in most places, a minority creed, alien and suspect, is not only possible, it is necessary.-Clifford Geertz. 2000.Available Light.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p. 258.Over the past two decades, the debate over multiculturalism challenged the justice of neutral, “difference blind” rules in liberal democracies. Allegedly neutral institutions were shown to be implicitly biased toward the priorities, experiences, or interests of the dominant groups in the society. Criticism of difference-blind rules and claims for justice to minority groups defined the relationship between government and opposition in many contexts. Arguments for special rights to protect minorities, women, or ethnocultural groups gained legitimacy (Young 1990, Jones 1990, Phillips 1991, Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Kymlicka and Norman 2000).


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