Care Workers' Mobilization During Public Services Reform: Opportunities and Institutionalized Gender Relations

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the structuring effect of public policy and gender relations on the activism of care professionals working in progressively privatized public services. More specifically, it looks at how care professionals responded to the 2015 health and social services sector reform in Quebec, Canada. It argues that workers in caring professions, such as nursing and social work, had a limited capacity to take advantage of the political opportunities created by the reform because of the prevailing gradual privatization and gender relations structuring this sector. By considering gender relations as an antecedent factor that cuts across organizational and institutional dimensions and, thereby, contributes to shaping political opportunities, this paper stresses the relevance and importance of relations of domination to understand how people organize and attempt to act individually and collectively within institutional spaces.