Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T10:01:33.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Gender, Caring and Employment in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2001

LINDA McKIE
Affiliation:
Research Professor in Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA
SOPHIA BOWLBY
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Geography, Department of Geography, University of Reading
SUSAN GREGORY
Affiliation:
Research Fellow, Research Unit in Health, Behaviour and Change, University of Edinburgh

Abstract

Employment and social policies continue to be based upon a gender template that assumes women, especially mothers, are or should be natural carers. Invariably, policies that seek to promote women's entry to paid work do so by facilitating their management and conduct of caring work, thus reinforcing the gender template. In addition, contemporary debates around concepts of citizenship emphasise the obligation to paid employment but fail to tackle the gendered division of caring activities and organisation of care. Enhanced access to childcare merely recreates the gender template by promoting low paid jobs for women as paid carers who are predominantly providing care services for other women. The provision of unpaid paternity leave is unlikely to challenge the strong association between femininity, mothering and care work.

In this article we explore notions of caring, home and employment. It is argued that ambivalence exists amongst policy makers, employers, and society more generally, towards the gendered nature of caring and the implications of this for women, and men who wish to care, who are in paid employment. These are old issues and the authors consider why change in social and public policies is so slow. The authors argue that a consideration of gender and equality principles, currently largely absent from welfare and employment policies, and debates on notions of citizenship, should form the basis for the development of future strategies to support parents and children.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Acknowledgements: An earlier version of this article was presented at seminars in our respective departments and we would like to thank colleagues and referees for useful comments and advice.