Freedom or money? The dilemma of migrant live‐in elderly carers in times of COVID‐19

As a consequence of the lockdown measures imposed by the Belgian government to fight against COVID‐19, migrant live‐in elderly carers had to choose between safeguarding their job — at the detriment of their personal freedom, their health and their working conditions — and safeguarding their freedom but losing their job — at the detriment of their economic survival and that of their families. This article explores this dilemma from an intersectionality perspective. In order to understand their experience in times of COVID‐19 and their response to this dilemma, I analyse their position as women, as migrants, as elderly care workers, as family breadwinners and as ‘quasi‐family members’ in the families of their employer — which correspond to five interlocking systems of oppression.     

COVID‐19, ethics of care and feminist crisis management

The COVID‐19 pandemic threatens both lives and livelihoods. To reduce the spread of the virus, governments have introduced crisis management interventions that include border closures, quarantines, strict social distancing, marshalling of essential workers and enforced homeworking. COVID‐19 measures are necessary to save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people within society, and yet in parallel they create a range of negative everyday effects for already marginalized people. Likely unintended consequences of the management of the COVID‐19 crisis include elevated risk for workers in low‐paid, precarious and care‐based employment, over‐representation of minority ethnic groups in case numbers and fatalities, and gendered barriers to work. Drawing upon feminist ethics of care, I theorize a radical alternative to the normative assumptions of rationalist crisis management. Rationalist approaches to crisis management are typified by utilitarian logics, masculine and militaristic language, and the belief that crises follow linear processes of signal detection, preparation/prevention, containment, recovery and learning. By privileging the quantifiable — resources and measurable outcomes — such approaches tend to omit considerations of pre‐existing structural disadvantage. This article contributes a new theorization of crisis management that is grounded in feminist ethics to provide a care‐based concern for all crisis affected people.     

Autonomy in long‐term care: a need,a right or a luxury?

Doyal and Gough’s theory of human need highlighted that personal autonomy is a universal need and human right, essential for well‐being. In applying their theory to older disabled people in the UK the author suggests that their ‘minimally autonomous’ threshold would exclude some older people in long‐term care who still have a fundamental need for autonomy or, alternatively, extant autonomy. The disability movement has highlighted that independent living is fundamental to achieving self‐determination for disabled people and debate on equality and caregiving emphasises the autonomy of carers. However, there is a lack of recognition in both academic research and government policy of autonomy as a need and right of older disabled people. The author argues that autonomy is a human right of older people living in long‐term care settings, but that social rights are necessary to facilitate their autonomy.     

Caring during COVID‐19: A gendered analysis of Australian university responses to managing remote working and caring responsibilities

COVID‐19 is dramatically reconfiguring paid work and care. Emerging evidence in the global media suggests that academic women with caring responsibilities are being disproportionately impacted. This article fills a key knowledge gap by examining how Australian universities are supporting academics to manage remote work and caring during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We conducted a desktop analysis of public information about remote working and care from 41 Australian universities and compared them to the world’s top ten ranked universities. Findings suggest that during the pandemic, the Australian higher education sector positions decisions about caring leave and participation in the paid labour force as ‘private’ matters in which employees (mainly women) design their own ‘solutions’ when compared with international institutional counterparts. We argue that COVID‐19 provides another context in which universities have evaded their responsibility to ensure women’s full participation in the labour force.     

To work or to care? Working women's decision-making

Recent changes in older people's public care services in Nordic countries in particular in Finland and Sweden are based on implicit expectations that family members will increase their involvement in care. In Nordic countries, the care of small children has been acknowledged to be a social matter that concerns gender equality and the work life participation of both men and women, while the situation of working carers of older people is much less acknowledged. This study addressed the question of how Finnish working women who give care to their older parents argue for and against their decisions of working and caring and the meaning of work and care in these decisions. Majority of the interviewees emphasised the importance of work and refuted the idea of leaving work for care. The decision not to leave work for care was justified with worker identity, commitment to work, having no innate skills to be a carer, availability of support services and other carers and financial necessity. On the other hand, a few interviewees brought forward their willingness to leave work which was justified by constructing care as meaningful and valuable activity as opposed to meaningless paid employment, and with the intensification of work, and with ageing. Lengthy argumentation and several discursive tools indicate that women anticipated moral blame for the decision of giving work primacy over care, but also for leaving work. Thus, working carers balance between contrasting expectations to care and to work.     

Care and community revalued during the COVID‐19 pandemic: A feminist couple perspective

The COVID‐19 pandemic led us to understand and revalue care ethics within our daily lives and communities based on the feminist theory of care ethics. This article is a personal reflection of an academic couple living in Japan as we reflect on our experiences and the challenges encountered in caring for ourselves and our community. We discuss the ideas of care theory mainly: caring‐about and caring‐for, interchangeably in our discussion across the three‐stage categories: Home — A Commonplace; Care Ethics in Community; and Care Ethics for Self. Through these personal narratives, we strive to recognize the struggles of living through the pandemic in a virtually connected world that often disconnects us from self. We foster the idea of embracing care ethics as a starting point at an individual level.     

Sociodemographic Determinants of Occupational Risks of Exposure to COVID‐19 in Canada

The activities performed by Canadian workers in some occupations may increase the risk of exposure to infectious diseases such as COVID‐19. This research note explores how occupational exposure risks vary by labor force characteristics using publicly available Canadian data in combination with a data set providing information on the level of physical proximity and frequency of exposure to infections or diseases faced by workers in different occupations. The results show important sociodemographic differences. First, women work in occupations associated with significantly higher average risks of exposure to COVID‐19 than men. This is driven by their overrepresentation in high‐risk broad occupational categories such as health occupations. Second, older workers (65 years or more), a group vulnerable to COVID‐19, appear to work in occupations requiring performing activities characterized by a lower level of physical proximity than their younger colleagues, with minimal differences in the frequency of exposure to diseases or infections. Finally, workers in low‐income occupations are employed in occupations that put them at greater risk of exposure to COVID‐19 than other workers. This is especially the case for women, immigrants, and members of visible minority groups in low‐income occupations. More broadly, this research note provides insights into the health‐related dimension of the literature on occupational tasks and labor market stratification.     

The ethics of care and academic motherhood amid COVID‐19

The COVID‐19 pandemic has upended the lives of working parents as they strive to meet the conflicting demands of childcare and professional obligations. While growing evidence suggests the extraordinary challenges to time and work brought by the pandemic, this article explores the pandemic as an opportunity for stillness and reflection, a personal and professional recalibration. Through a personal narrative describing my experiences as an academic and mother before and during the pandemic, framed within the ethics of care, this article brings light to the untenable reality of working mothers pre‐pandemic, explores the ways in which the pandemic has positively facilitated caring relationships at home as well as the reallocation of time and household responsibilities, and argues for policy and legislative action at the institutional and societal levels that support and value the care work of women and men alike.     

Young Carers: Conventional or Exaggerated Levels of Involvement in Domestic and Caring Tasks?

Historically, research about young carers has focused on defining the tasks and responsibilities undertaken by children caring for ill or disabled family members and the impacts of such care, without reference to the domestic and caring work undertaken by children and young people in families where there are only non‐disabled or well members. This study presents new evidence of what children and young people generally do to assist in the home and examines how the lives of young carers differ from children and young people who are not carers. It concludes by examining the implications of these research findings for evidence‐informed policy and practice. Copyright © 2006 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2006 National Children's Bureau.     

Who Cares Wins? Women,Caring and Disability

This article is an attempt to open up some of the unexplored issues in the 'carer's debate'. The interest in carers started receiving Government funding in the early 1970s as a response to community care policies. It also received interest from carers themselves and from feminist researchers concerned with the position of women in the family and the labour market. However, in wanting to show the difficult and often unrecognised work of the carer, the debate, in both academic and popular presentation, has often emphasised the public's perception of disabled people as passive, helpless and demanding. Feminist research on carers, it is argued, has ignored women who may need care and the principle of the 'personal is political' has failed to identify with the lives of disabled people. It is both unhelpful and unproductive to polarise the needs of disabled people and their carers and treat them as if they are mutually exclusive. We need research which does not alienate disabled people by defining concepts like rights, independence and power in ways which exclude, making disabled people the problem rather than the focus of the research. We need to move forward in the debate, making sure that we give a voice to all those involved in the giving and receiving of personal care. The concept of citizenship with its association with universal human rights may be a way to look concurrently at these needs.     

A feminist perspective on COVID‐19 and the value of care work globally

The shared response to the COVID‐19 crisis demonstrates that the vast majority of society believes human wellbeing — not economic growth — should be at the centre of policy. COVID‐19 exposes the foundational role of care work, both paid and unpaid, to functioning societies and economies. Focusing on ‘production’ instead of the sustainable reproduction of human life devalues care work and those who perform it. Women’s physical and mental health, and the societies that rely on them, are at stake. When these policies are formulated, the field of feminist economics has valuable lessons for mitigating hardships as countries navigate the related economic fallout. A comprehensive response to the COVID‐19 crisis must recognize this gendered work as an integral part of the economic system that promotes human wellbeing for all.     

COVID‐19 and the gender gap in work hours

School and day care closures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic have increased caregiving responsibilities for working parents. As a result, many have changed their work hours to meet these growing demands. In this study, we use panel data from the US Current Population Survey to examine changes in mothers’ and fathers’ work hours from February through April 2020, the period of time prior to the widespread COVID‐19 outbreak in the United States and through its first peak. Using person‐level fixed effects models, we find that mothers with young children have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers. Consequently, the gender gap in work hours has grown by 20–50 per cent. These findings indicate yet another negative consequence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, highlighting the challenges it poses to women’s work hours and employment.     

Austerity and the lives of people with learning disabilities. A thematic synthesis of current literature

Abstract

The Financial Crisis of 2008 resulted in many western economies implementing cuts in health and social care. This systematic review provides a holistic picture of the impact of austerity policy on the lives of people with learning disabilities (LD) and the collateral effects on the people who support them. Our review suggests that in the current climate of economic austerity, available funding to support people with LD is no longer aligned to their care needs. Cuts in disability services have adversely affected the well-being both of people with LD and their informal carers. Individuals with LD have lost social support and are experiencing increased social isolation. Heightened demands on family carers’ time have negatively influenced their wider roles, including parental functioning, and labour market participation. Our review provides the foundations for further discourse and research on the effects of austerity on people with LD and their family carers.     

Isolation

This article is a messy account not of the COVID‐19 pandemic but one written during the pandemic. Although written over several successive evenings it is not a linear narrative that builds on a chain of passing moments teleologically to an end. It is not a diary, just a collection of scattered thoughts about living during COVID‐19, the (lack of) care that many elderly people receive and how we, or perhaps only I, struggle to cope in these exceptional times. This is not a typical autoethnography, it is not reflexive writing and there is no conclusion albeit that the article ends.     

COVID‐19 as a Transformative Opportunity for Families and Therapists: Harnessing the Possibilities That Constraints Offer Us

This article demonstrates several ways in which the constraints that the COVID‐19 pandemic has posed for families can provide transformative opportunities to strengthen family relationships, become more resilient, and resolve conflicts and longstanding difficulties. Since most families worldwide have been greatly impacted on many fronts by the pandemic, they are looking to us for hope, guidance, and solutions for coping with high levels of anxiety about living in a world where life as we knew it has been turned on its head and we are struggling to cope with uncertainty about what the future will bring. However, in spite of all the limitations and health consequences COVID‐19 has posed for our client families, the majority have been quite resourceful and creative in coming up with their own novel self‐generated coping, problem‐solving, and health‐enhancing strategies well before we see them for the first time. Finally, the article discusses how the constraints of COVID‐19 afford family therapists with many opportunities to further hone their therapeutic alliance‐building skills, gain an intimate insider’s view of their clients’ daily lives that are not accessible in our offices, and co‐design with them therapeutic experiments that can produce high‐quality solutions.     

Sibling kinship carers in England: Evidence from the 2001 UK population census

The numbers of children in kinship care in England has been thought to be substantial, but it is only recently that research has begun to illuminate the circumstances and needs of carers and children. This paper describes the findings of an analysis of the 2001 UK Population Census. For the first time, the numbers of children in kinship care were estimated, as was the proportions of children living in formal and informal kinship care. As expected many children were being brought up by grandparents but surprisingly, large numbers of children were living with an older sibling. This group of kinship carers has not been previously identified by researchers or policy makers and their circumstances and needs may differ from grandparent kinship carers.     

Dual‐earner parent couples’ work and care during COVID‐19

COVID‐19 and the associated lockdowns meant many working parents were faced with doing paid work and family care at home simultaneously. To investigate how they managed, this article draws a subsample of parents in dual‐earner couples (n = 1536) from a national survey of 2722 Australian men and women conducted during lockdown in May 2020. It asked how much time respondents spent in paid and unpaid labour, including both active and supervisory care, and about their satisfaction with work–family balance and how their partner shared the load. Overall, paid work time was slightly lower and unpaid work time was very much higher during lockdown than before it. These time changes were most for mothers, but gender gaps somewhat narrowed because the relative increase in childcare was higher for fathers. More mothers than fathers were dissatisfied with their work–family balance and partner’s share before COVID‐19. For some the pandemic improved satisfaction levels, but for most they became worse. Again, some gender differences narrowed, mainly because more fathers also felt negatively during lockdown than they had before.     

What COVID‐19 could mean for the future of “work from home”: The provocations of three women in the academy

The COVID‐19 pandemic saw academic labor rapidly shift into domestic spaces at the same time as households were “locked down.” In this article, we offer an exploration of our own experiences of working from home as women and mothers in the academy. Inspired by feminist approaches to knowledge production and self‐reflection, we each developed a personal reflective narrative guided by three key questions centered on our experiences of working from home pre‐ and during the COVID‐19 pandemic, and what this may mean for the future of our work. We then collectively analyzed how our personal stories reflected different dimensions of the experience of working from home, and our fears and hopes for the future. We present three distilled themes from our collective experiences here with the aim of entering a dialog with others seeking to live feminist lives during this time, and beyond.     

Women Caring for Our Aging in Place Seniors Will Lose Out because of U.S. Immigration Policies

Most older people experiencing chronic health problems, physical disabilities, and memory losses are still able to age in place in their own homes. However, they often need help from others to enjoy healthy, active, and independent lives. They turn mostly to family members, mainly women and usually their daughters, daughters-in-law or wives. But caring for frail elders has become more demanding and complex, and these family members often feel physically and emotionally overwhelmed and burnt out. They concede that they cannot do it alone. Others find it more difficult to hold full-or even part-time jobs. Hiring home (direct) care workers to assist their loved ones can be an effective solution to ease their caregiving responsibilities. However, these personal care aides, home health aides, and nursing assistants are already in short supply. Moreover, going forward the aging of the baby boomer population will result in an even greater demand for their services even as these jobs are often unattractive to American-born workers and turnover is high. This country’s immigration policies will make it even more difficult for women caring for older persons to hire these workers. Over 25 percent of home care workers are low-skilled immigrants or foreign-born. However, the Trump administration’s policies reduce the number of immigrants entering the U.S. and specifically choke off the various pathways that enable low-skilled persons to be hirable in the home care sector. Female caregivers seeking relief from their caregiving responsibilities will lose out unless we remove these immigration barriers.     

Feminism and gendered impact of COVID‐19: Perspective of a counselling psychologist

When women, girls and gender‐diverse people — who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak since the public health crisis has also become a crisis for feminism — will identify and acknowledge their organismic phenomenological self, wholeness and growth will be fully functioning. Psychological aspects for the public health emergency operated through counselling psychologists to manage mental health, emotional, psychological, cognitive, behavioural, relational and social impacts are fundamental. And the role of counselling psychologists in maintaining personal mental health and their clients is a crucial indicator of collective wellbeing. This perspective is embedded in the gendered approach and feminist framework which attempts to explore and offer the embodied intersectional and divergent impact on living during the COVID‐19 pandemic lockdown.