'Housework', or 'unpaid domestic work' includes activities such as cooking, cleaning and maintaining a household. These activities contribute significantly to the economy and wellbeing of individuals ...and families, but are not recognised as 'labour' in national accounts (Alonso, et al. 2019). Although women's labour force participation has increased and traditional gender role attitudes have diminished over time, women still do the bulk of unpaid domestic work (Mills, et al. 2014). Time devoted to unpaid domestic work can affect a person's ability to participate in other activities, such as paid work (WGEA 2016). Hence it is recognised that having an accurate understanding of the patterns of unpaid domestic work is crucial for achieving gender equality, understanding the economy, and informing policy decisions that affect individuals and families.
This article analyses visions of everyday life embedded in the 21st-century smart home, specifically the promoted aspiration to generate escalated aesthetic pleasures or 'pleasance', attained through ...automated and connected devices. We explore the likely outcomes and effects of this vision, drawing on our international content analysis of magazine and online articles and semi-structured interview and tours with households who live in smart homes or use automated technologies. Like the industrial revolution of the home, which arguably created 'more work for mother' by increasing cleanliness expectations, we show how the smart home is generating new forms of household work and play. These include researching, upgrading, updating, maintaining and integrating smart home technologies and programming pleasance 'scenes' for lighting, security and entertainment. We find that most of this household labour (and leisure) is being performed by men, possibly leading to more work for father.
Marie Stopes Australia has published a report calling for urgent assistance from the federal, state and territory governments, professional associations and hospitals to support abortion access. ...Covid-19 travel restrictions and isolation requirements mean many doctors are unable to fly interstate. The report notes: 'Doctors should be exempt from mandatory isolation providing they do not have a diagnosis or symptoms of the Covid-19 virus, or a history of high-risk exposure.'
Marie Stopes Australia has published a report calling for urgent assistance from the federal, state and territory governments, professional associations and hospitals to support abortion access. ...Covid-19 travel restrictions and isolation requirements mean many doctors are unable to fly interstate. The report notes: 'Doctors should be exempt from mandatory isolation providing they do not have a diagnosis or symptoms of the Covid-19 virus, or a history of high-risk exposure.'
Issue addressed: To investigate whether Australians have experienced any positive effects during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: National online longitudinal survey. As part of a June 2020 survey, ...participants (n = 1370) were asked 'In your life, have you experienced any positive effects from the COVID-19 pandemic' (yes/no) and also completed the World Health Organisation-Five well-being index. Differences were explored by demographic variables. Free-text responses were thematically coded.
Results: Nine hundred sixty participants (70%) reported experiencing at least one positive effect during the COVID-19 pandemic. Living with others (P =.045) and employment situation (P <.001) at baseline (April) were associated with experiencing positive effects. Individuals working for pay from home were more likely to experience positive effects compared to those who were not working for pay (aOR = 0.45, 95% CI: 0.32, 0.63, P <.001) or who were working for pay outside the home (aOR = 0.40, 95% CI: 0.28, 0.58, P <.001). 54.2% of participants reported a sufficient level of well-being, 23.2% low well-being and a further 22.6% very low well-being. Of those experiencing positive effects, 945/960 (98%) provided an explanation. The three most common themes were 'Family time' (33%), 'Work flexibility' (29%) and 'Calmer life' (19%).
Conclusions: A large proportion of participants reported positive effects resulting from changes to daily life due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.
So what: The needs of people living alone, and of those having to work outside the home or who are unemployed, should be considered by health policymakers and employers in future pandemic preparedness efforts.
This edited volume presents a compendium of emerging and innovative studies on the proliferation of new working spaces (NeWSps), both formal and informal (such as coworking spaces, maker spaces, fab ...labs, public libraries, and coffee shops), and their role during and following the COVID-19 pandemic in urban and regional development and planning. This book presents an original, interdisciplinary approach to NeWSps through three features: (i) situating the debate in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has transformed NeWSp business models and the everyday work life of their owners and users; (ii) repositioning and rethinking the debate on NeWSps in the context of socioeconomics and planning and comparing conditions between before and during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (iii) providing new directions for urban and regional development and resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic, considering new ways of working and living. The 17 chapters are co-authored by both leading international scholars who have studied the proliferation of NeWSps in the last decade and young, talented researchers, resulting in a total of 55 co-authors from different disciplines (48 of whom are currently involved in the COST Action CA18214 ‘The Geography of New Working Spaces and Impact on the Periphery’ 2019–2023: www.new-working-spaces.eu). Selected comparative studies among several European countries (Western and Eastern Europe) and from the US and Lebanon are presented. The book contributes to the understanding of multi-disciplinary theoretical and practical implications of NeWSps for our society, economy, and urban/regional planning in conditions following the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article is about precariousness of work and shifting gender roles among Filipina home-based workers, who labor from or nearby their homes either as industrial homeworkers working for an ...employer, or as own-account laborers--sometimes referred to as the self-employed. It demonstrates how gender and the globalization of production are formed, negotiated, and challenged by people through their localized ideas and practices. Focusing on the persons who have mobilized through Patamaba and Homenet Southeast Asia, I examine the relation between work and life, or workplace and home, which for a long time has involved a spatial division of gender roles that increasingly have been called into question. At the center of the analysis are the shrinking national labor market and growing spatial mobility of women due to their mobilization for the rights of the home-based workers. Because of this changing socio-economic environment, people's experiences of laborare much more complex than the binary gender discourses, as they constantly alternate between home and work, and reproduction and production, as well as the private and political. Finally, I suggest that the growing precarization of life must be approached from a gender viewpoint, which often has been bypassed in the scholarly debate. Keywords: Precariousness, informalization, gender, home, globalization, activism, the Philippines
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced unique circumstances to women workforce in construction including the need to work from home, changes in job situations and family responsibilities following the ...lockdowns. This exploratory study was conducted around six months into the pandemic in examining the changes of their job situations, and their perceptions of career aspects during the pandemic. The results show that most respondents were employed full-time at the time of survey, and that there were profound changes to their work location and working hours including working from home and worked more hours than usual. Their perceived negative impacts of the pandemic on their capacity to engage in paid work activities due to caring responsibilities, pay or earnings, job security, and career progression and advancement are modest. They were also seemingly confident in staying in their job in the next 12-month. Their perceptions have been found significantly associated with their age, education level, and years of experience in the industry. These findings provide a critical insight on women's job situations in the industry during the pandemic, with implications for human resource practices towards addressing the challenges in retention of women workforce during and post COVID-19 pandemic.
In the rural immigrant community of Istanbul, poor women spend up to fifty hours a week producing goods for export, yet deny that they actually 'work'.
Money Makes Us Relatives asks why Turkish ...society devalues women's work, concealing its existence while creating a vast pool of cheap labor for the world market.
Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among family producers and pieceworkers, and using fascinating case studies throughout, Jenny B. White shows how women's paid work is viewed in terms of kinship relations of reciprocity and obligation - an extension of domestic work for the family, which is culturally valued but poorly compensated.
Whilst offering the benefits of social identity and long-term security, women's work also reflects global capitalism's ability to capture local cultural norms, and to use these to lower production costs and create exploitative conditions. This fully revised second edition includes a new introduction and conclusion, updated references, comparative material on women's labor elsewhere in the world, and brand new material on Islam, globalization, gender and Turkish family life.
It is an important contribution to debates about women's participation in late global capitalism.
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