Valuing Care Work: Comparative Perspectives

By Ceclia Benoit & Helga Hallgrímsdóttir (eds.)

Health care systems encompass many forms of paid and unpaid labour, including home care for the elderly or disabled, community health services, and the care family members provide for loved ones.  Valuing Care Work is a comparative study that examines economic organizations as well as home and institutional environments to show how personal service work is shaped by broader welfare state developments.

Tracing the relationships between gender, labour, and equity in health care, the essays in this volume analyze the rules and practices that shape care work.  The contributors highlight how national configurations of the welfare state shape the gendering of paid and unpaid intimate labour in a range of settings and discuss how the policies and practices associated with neoliberalism have focused on efficiency and accountability to the detriment of other policy agendas.  Together the essays explore systems and strategies that promise to increase dignity and equity for both recipients and providers of paid and unpaid health care.