Abstract: Beyond Caring Labour Provisioning Work Sheila M. Neysmith, Marge Reitsma-Street, Stephanie Baker Collins, and Elaine Porter Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012In its 10 chapters written by the four authors, with individual chapters from two research assistants, Sandra Tam and Judy Cerny, this book examines the that women do sustain themselves and their families. In this welcome addition the rapidly growing research on women's work, citizenship, and neo-liberalism, the authors start by reviewing the main theories and concepts driving this multidisciplinary discussion. In Chapters 1 and 2, the authors give a conceptual overview of women's and outline the book's empirical project. The central aim of these chapters is question both social capital approaches and much of the feminist literature arising from the of T.H. Marshall and Gosta Esping-Andersen that focuses on market economy as a central determinant of women's citizenship. Through this theoretical questioning, they challenge the notion of dual spheres (p.19): where women at home while men participate in wage work.Although their main criticism of the dual spheres argument is not new, the authors offer a fresh approach long-standing feminist debates on the notion of work. They move beyond the market economy use a core concept from economic feminists of which they define as work needed realize the necessities and conveniences of life (p. 4) to those for whom [women] have responsibility (p. 5). In chapters 3 9, the authors present empirical evidence engage with different strands of feminist literature, arguing that the provisioning concept changes how we look at women's work, allowing us challenge the oppressive policies of the Neo-Liberal era.The book's empirical project was designed be a type of participatory action research (described in a detailed Appendix). It is based on 100 interviews, plus focus with 138 key informants, all women, in six sites/organizations in British Columbia and Ontario, half in large urban centres and half in medium-sized cities. The participants reflect intersectionalities (p.17, 23) with regard gender, age, social class, immigrant status, and racialized group membership. The sites/organizations were selected for their capacity for innovative with marginalized groups (p.6). The interviews and focus were aimed at uncovering the full range of women's provisioning activities, including paid work, caring work, and community work, all of which contain activities and strategies that are largely invisible, due dominant public/private and paid/unpaid dualisms.Chapter 3 presents useful conceptual and operational summaries and tables of women's provisioning activities and strategies. These are presented as manifesting women's agency, or civil society engagement,(p. 43) as community activism, forming a basis for alternative citizenship claims that have the potential challenge the neo-liberal tide, a point further elaborated in the two concluding chapters. This chapter and the following one also outline how provisioning can be operationalized. This is a complex framework, and considers women's in the paid economy, household, and community, as well as their activism, or civil society engagement (p.43). In so doing, the book brings attention women's agency, and the meaning of for women's identity.The provisioning framework is elaborated upon in the middle chapters (5-8), with examples from young, racialized women, immigrant mothers, older women, and low-income women, facing neo-liberal attacks on the range of services that would alleviate their difficulties. The authors compare the examples of provisioning and agency, with the stated goal of observing intersectionalities. For example, they find that child care, community work, and health and safety emerge as key concerns for immigrant mothers (Chapter 6), whereas careers are the focus of young, racialized women (Chapter 5). …
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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