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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Janice Turner: women as cheap "unskilled" labour (aka carers)

71 replies

Lamahaha · 22/02/2020 07:40

This is a topic dear to my heart. I'm glad it's close to Janice's too.

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/how-dare-they-call-care-workers-unskilled-b83mzbch9

OP posts:
MarchDaffs · 23/02/2020 14:26

There's not a cheap any kind of solution. There can't be, when we have the unprecedented situation of more people requiring more care for longer periods, provided by a smaller ratio of the population than has ever been the case. Its going to cost. It's expensive now even when paid poorly.

MaybeDoctor · 23/02/2020 14:42

I don't think it's a generalisation. I was simply focusing the lens on the individual - myself - as being the only person or entity that I can truly control. Absent a spouse or partner, those decisions about who does the care still need to be made. Even with a spouse or partner, I still have a decision to make about who does my share of the care work. Namely, do it myself or contract it out. The outcome of that decision gives two very different results in terms of my socioeconomic status, especially if I have a professional job.

it surely can't make any economic sense for a woman whose skills are of the traditionally more valued types becoming 'economically inactive' while trying to do a job that another person would be more capable of.
It doesn't make economic sense, agreed. But could it make ethical sense as a feminist?

midgebabe · 23/02/2020 14:58

Yes it could make ethical sense. As a human being it clearly makes sense to look after people and support their dignity and quality of life. Which is essnetially a key part of feminism. Everyone deserves dignity and respect. Not just men. Not just those who hit hardest or earn more.

someone outside of the current dogma around economic importance is much more likely to recognise the inherent value of humanity over patriarchy

ErrolTheDragon · 23/02/2020 19:48

There's another way of thinking about this issue which might (or might not) be useful. As a feminist, who do you think should physically look after you if you ever need care?

TinselAngel · 23/02/2020 19:56

We should all meet up and carry Janice Turner around in our shoulders.

Antibles · 23/02/2020 22:08

I think there is a difference between morally valuable work and skilled labour.

I consider skilled labour to be something which requires a significant amount of time and training in order for someone to take on a role competently. Unskilled labour is that which someone can do with a modicum of training - says days/weeks.

How morally valuable the role is, is an entirely different question. I wish people were only paid according to how morally valuable their work is, but the reality is that one is often paid according to how easily replaceable you are either in terms of skill and/or scarcity, or how much bargaining power you have in terms of the likelihood of you withdrawing your labour and how easily replaceable you would be if you did so.

ErrolTheDragon · 23/02/2020 23:08

I wish people were only paid according to how morally valuable their work is

Interesting idea, but how would you define the scale of 'morally valuable'?

ErrolTheDragon · 24/02/2020 08:18

Some letters in The Times today to add to this (I think the link gives the whole letters page but the relevant ones are first)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/times-letters-unskilled-workers-and-how-to-finance-care-rrdr62qgl?shareToken=94f2960ac486c20dac473ae55a97f87b

Antibles · 24/02/2020 09:15

Interesting idea, but how would you define the scale of 'morally valuable'?

No idea! I don't think it's workable as a concept.

It would be ideal if everybody were paid a living wage for what they do, even if they are relatively replaceable but unfortunately if it's easy to find replacement workers to do a job - at any skill level - and the workers aren't unionised, it puts downward pressure on wages.

MaybeDoctor · 24/02/2020 12:34

As a feminist, who do you think should physically look after you if you ever need care?
@ErrolTheDragon
It's an interesting question: my automatic gut response was my spouse or child. Both male in my case, btw. But that clearly doesn't work if you don't have a spouse or child, or they are unable/unwilling to provide care.

This is an area in which I actually have high hopes for automation, believe it or not. Two examples of ideas that are already out there in existence:
www.paroseal.co.uk/
www.toto.com/en/wtjapan/exp/index.htm

(Puts in order for gentle and dazzlingly witty caring robot, modelled on Stephen Fry. Delivery expected circa 2040)

ErrolTheDragon · 24/02/2020 12:52

My own (and DHs) answer to my question is informed by having an elderly aunt of DHs who gave up the chance of marriage and having kids herself to look after her mother. Now she's old, there's no one in the family she could look to for physical care. DH keeps an eye out for her interests from the other end of the country, a more local nephew is signed up to be her POA. My own mother nearly fell foul of her father's expectation that she would look after him and grandma (who had a stroke at 50) - he saw off her first fiancé. Fortunately for me DF was of a different character (though he did impair his own career prospects by our family moving to be near these grandparents.

My parents organised their affairs such that they did not place this sort of expectation on myself of my brothers.

So... thinking about our own DD, no bloody way do we expect her to look after us except as POA should that be necessary! DH and I will look after each other to the extent of our capability but in the knowledge we may need to pay (properly) for help. (And/or assistive technology).

MarchDaffs · 24/02/2020 12:54

I don't think we can specifically say we think another named individual (or several) should do it, feminist or otherwise. What we can do is say that partner, family, a close friend etc should be able to, that the infrastructure ought to be in place to allow that option. For example, there are instances where an individual's care package costs more than paying a liveable income to a loved one who would be willing to provide that care if they could afford to stop work. That type of thing.

I'd prefer intimate care to be done by a female and given that women live longer, I can see how that might require a more woman heavy care workforce. But we should be able to allow for that possibility without placing the responsibility so unevenly on the shoulders of one sex as we do now.

MoltenLasagne · 24/02/2020 13:20

Is there a country anywhere who have found an answer? I know politicians like to extol the virtues of caring for elderly relatives within the family, but they're doing so a) purely because it costs less for the state and b) in apparent ignorance of the difficulties of doing so.

My grandfather was looked after at home for 3 years with increasing difficulty before he was granted a partially funded place in a care home. In truth he only got one when my grandma ended up in hospital herself. Carers are supposed to work themselves into an early grave and yet the massive service they do for the country will never be recorded on a budget and therefore has apparently zero value.

Goosefoot · 24/02/2020 13:31

I think there is a fundamental problem with the way that caring is funded which means it's very difficult for it to be high up in terms of how it is paid. So long as pay for carers has to be affordable to people with other jobs, it will almost always have to mean being paid less than said jobs.

No one can pay for child care (or other care) that costs more than they bring in themselves, so the carer will have to be paid less, enough to make working worthwhile, and at a certain point it makes sense for the worker to simply become the carer.

Socialising care helps this somewhat but only to a point. There is still a sense in which the cost of that care is being paid for by the productivity of the economy. I think what we are likely to see is that more is going to have to go towards paying for such things and less to consumer goods and perhaps certain other leisure activities. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As a feminist question, I'm not convinced feminism has ever really faced this question honestly, and it's been able to get away with this because it's been possible to think of childbearing as a choice, almost a consumer choice, and childrearing as something that can be solved by the capitalist economy, or in part turned over to men. These are all somewhat dodges though IMO - in reality most women will have kids and having more than one will often impact career because it is a big job, and it's not clear that most women really prefer to give up most or half of infant or even child care to paid workers or even fathers.
But, and this is I think what I don't see people talk about much, mainly because there is a kind of synergy, in biological terms, between being the one who bears and nurses infants and also taking on the related jobs like caring for older kids, managing the domestic sphere, etc. Like there is a reason we have not developed as a species with men doing most childcare and eldercare and domestic work while women go out to till the fields, fight battles, and hunt. Those things happen, some more than others, but we don't really see societies patterned like that, and that's not because of sex stereotypes. It's directly related to what usually works when we are also "working" at our reproductive roles.
Feminism has been very very uncomfortable to talk about that, that these patters are likely to assert themselves, and capitalist society has also preferred not to talk about it for other reasons. But this has IMO contributed to some of the problems we have now around women's rights, and I think it's also made it difficult to talk about patterns of caring. Humans exist in families, even if they are families of one, and all families at one time or another require carers, you could even say all need them but sometimes it can be combined with other things. I always think that most families with school age kids usually need 1.5 adult paid jobs, so that .5 can deal with the rest of life and kids needs. A lot of the time it does not make sense for that work to be hired and many people would not prefer that anyway, they value their own human connections outside of paid work.
I'm not sure I think we can address this outside a capitalist model that sees adults in the same family as independent workers who happen to be roommates, or until we acknowledge that things like age, and sex, will affect our living patterns, perhaps long term.

MaybeDoctor · 24/02/2020 14:39

thinking about our own DD, no bloody way do we expect her to look after us except as POA should that be necessary! DH and I will look after each other to the extent of our capability but in the knowledge we may need to pay (properly) for help.

Of course that's not what I want for my child either, no way. But I was quite interested to observe that that spouse/child was my gut response, when I asked myself your question about who should care for me if I needed it.

Saying 'looking after each other/ourselves' isn't a solution because while we all think that's what we'll do, inevitably there comes a time when we can't do that anymore.

'Paying properly' for care is another solution that works for very few people, because how many of us could really afford that once we are not working anymore? 'Properly' suggests national average salary, or a part-time proportion of it - plus paying employment-related costs. Very few of us could afford that, I imagine.

MaybeDoctor · 24/02/2020 14:46

As a feminist question, I'm not convinced feminism has ever really faced this question honestly, and it's been able to get away with this because it's been possible to think of childbearing as a choice, almost a consumer choice, and childrearing as something that can be solved by the capitalist economy, or in part turned over to men.
I think that elder-care is actually a more wide-ranging feminist question than childcare, because almost everyone has elderly relatives even if they choose not to have children.

JohnMcCainsDeathStare · 24/02/2020 14:48

This might be something of a digression but in the early years of computing, computer science (or just plain 'computers' as the people doing the grunt work were known) wasn't really valued much outside the field. There was significant resistance to establishing Bletchley Part for instance. There is no coincidence that many of the early programmers and debuggers were women.
Strange that when more men became software engineers that women got forced out and SEG became a more high-status job.

Strange that caring is seen as such low status despite all the skill required and that it is female dominated.
I wonder what sort of end-of-life plan Priti Patel has? A one way trip to Dignitas? Firing Squad?

Don't diss the people who pay your taxes and wipe your ass...

Antibles · 24/02/2020 16:29

Funnily enough I just heard an ad on the radio encouraging people to consider a job in adult social care.

ErrolTheDragon · 24/02/2020 17:11

Goosefoot- while some of those synergies you note may have existed in the past, and some still may (In particular the care of infants by nursing mothers) I don't think they really do so much now when it comes to elder care. Far less non-domestic work is now of the 'till the fields, fight battles, and hunt' physical variety where males are at a distinct advantage - much of that is now to a large extent mechanised anyway. In fact, one of the remaining fields in which manual strength is surely an advantage is physically caring for adult.

No one can pay for child care (or other care) that costs more than they bring in themselves, so the carer will have to be paid less, enough to make working worthwhile, and at a certain point it makes sense for the worker to simply become the carer.

That's why we have nurseries and care homes where the cost of the carer is spread over several people.

MaybeDoctor · 24/02/2020 17:12

I had heard something of the kind, especially in information science/databases as that work arose from libraries where many of the staff were, guess what...female.

bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg · 24/02/2020 19:39

Antibles Care work is not unskilled.

Forget that the care industry demands training in nutrition, physical handling of patients, safeguarding, continence and, with disabled adults, managing complex apparatus like tracheostomy and gastrostomy tubes or ventilators, duties which when performed in hospitals are deemed high-skill tasks. The truth is that caring is seen as low-grade because it is work women used to do for free

Not on that list: managing the challenging behaviour of many dementia patients and working professionally in the face of physical, sexual, and verbal abuse.

Goosefoot · 25/02/2020 02:24

I think that elder-care is actually a more wide-ranging feminist question than childcare, because almost everyone has elderly relatives even if they choose not to have children.

Yes, I can see this, except that somehow we seem more able to shunt elderly people aside, or put them out of mind. Maybe it's that there has been enough wealth in the last few generations to remove a lot of that burden from the middle classes. Any way you cut it though, children, the elderly, and those who need care for other reasons all require people, not only for the care itself but for companionship.

while some of those synergies you note may have existed in the past, and some still may (In particular the care of infants by nursing mothers) I don't think they really do so much now when it comes to elder care. Far less non-domestic work is now of the 'till the fields, fight battles, and hunt' physical variety where males are at a distinct advantage - much of that is now to a large extent mechanised anyway. In fact, one of the remaining fields in which manual strength is surely an advantage is physically caring for adult.

That's very much a quirk of place and time, not because we've really come to terms with our physical realities. It doesn't apply in many parts of the world. In 100 years it might not apply in the west if we have a real climate crises. Does that mean feminism will be dead, if we can't use technology to make our bodies behave or augment our strength? Or can we exist in a way that is respectful to us as persons even when we have to accept the limits of the reproductive roles we happen to inhabit?

ErrolTheDragon · 25/02/2020 09:22

Does that mean feminism will be dead, if we can't use technology to make our bodies behave or augment our strength?

That's a huge theoretical 'if' - I very much doubt climate change will cause the end of mechanisation, other technology and women's education.

ErrolTheDragon · 25/02/2020 09:38

Other factors which are involved in the dynamics of elder care are family size and mobility. In the 19th C with larger families maybe it wasn't so unreasonable to expect one of your many children would be a daughter who could physically care for you (and sons who'd financially support you). Smaller families simply don't work with that model - but, if you don't have the costs of raising half a dozen or more children then you should be more able to save for your old age (oh, and of course chances were the mother would die early anyway...). Mobility - most people didn't move far and particularly not women so apart from daughters there were extended families.

MarchDaffs · 25/02/2020 10:47

People in the 19th century were also much less likely to live well into their dotage, and there wasn't the facility then to keep them alive whilst unwell for decades like now. The UK then, in terms of population pyramid and healthcare available to the common person looked much more like some of the societies where they do manage elder care in the family than it does today.