In what ways can we understand the productive tensions and complexities of digital feminist activism? This paper explores the increase of networked feminism, which focuses attention on digital activism and its relation to transformative social change. It suggests that we need a better understanding of how digital feminist activism might be changing the shape of transnational feminist resistance and praxis, and how feminist politics are created and enacted in digitally mediated environments. These result in new forms of feminist consciousness built on affective and embodied engagements. The paper explores the complex and ambivalent role of affective politics and embodied ethics to explore conditions of vulnerability. Using illustrative, global cases to show the nuances across digital activism, the paper contributes to understanding the complexities and differential effects of online environments, the mediation of feminist politics through digital knowledge cultures and the possibilities, challenges, and productive tensions that lie in the ever-increasing use of digital environments.
{"title":"Networked feminism in a digital age—mobilizing vulnerability and reconfiguring feminist politics in digital activism","authors":"Sheena J. Vachhani","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13097","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13097","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In what ways can we understand the productive tensions and complexities of digital feminist activism? This paper explores the increase of networked feminism, which focuses attention on digital activism and its relation to transformative social change. It suggests that we need a better understanding of how digital feminist activism might be changing the shape of transnational feminist resistance and praxis, and how feminist politics are created and enacted in digitally mediated environments. These result in new forms of feminist consciousness built on affective and embodied engagements. The paper explores the complex and ambivalent role of affective politics and embodied ethics to explore conditions of vulnerability. Using illustrative, global cases to show the nuances across digital activism, the paper contributes to understanding the complexities and differential effects of online environments, the mediation of feminist politics through digital knowledge cultures and the possibilities, challenges, and productive tensions that lie in the ever-increasing use of digital environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 3","pages":"1031-1048"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13097","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines the ethical value of artistic artifacts in challenging the unequal valuation of working bodies with a focus on the contemporary art exhibition ‘Useless bodies?’ by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Drawing on Judith Butler's work and posthuman theory, particularly Braidotti's contributions, the paper argues that this exhibition exemplifies how art can foster an ethics of interdependency, one that both critiques dynamics of misrecognition and imagines alternative futures. Furthermore, the paper proposes that this affirmative and critical ethics provides theoretical and methodological foundations for work and organization studies, prompting new questions about the significance of embodiment, esthetics, and artifacts for conducting (ethical) research.
{"title":"Useless bodies? Exploring the ethical potential of art","authors":"Daniela Pianezzi","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13094","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13094","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the ethical value of artistic artifacts in challenging the unequal valuation of working bodies with a focus on the contemporary art exhibition ‘Useless bodies?’ by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Drawing on Judith Butler's work and posthuman theory, particularly Braidotti's contributions, the paper argues that this exhibition exemplifies how art can foster an ethics of interdependency, one that both critiques dynamics of misrecognition and imagines alternative futures. Furthermore, the paper proposes that this affirmative and critical ethics provides theoretical and methodological foundations for work and organization studies, prompting new questions about the significance of embodiment, esthetics, and artifacts for conducting (ethical) research.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 4","pages":"1366-1384"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13094","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Latinas represent one of the fastest-growing groups of entrepreneurs in the United States, yet they are understudied in entrepreneurship research. Through three case studies of middle-class and wealthy Latinas, we explore how ethnorace, gender, immigration, class, and community shape their entrepreneurial endeavors as they practice what we refer to as feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship–entrepreneurial endeavors that aim to empower, assist, and/or build community amongst women through ethnic and gender-specific services and experiences. Feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship, in theory, aims to mitigate ethnoracial and gender inequality. Our participants draw from their lived experiences to inform their entrepreneurial motivations to make a profit and a social difference. By incorporating research centered on feminist approaches to entrepreneurship, we show how gender and the ethnoracial context combine with class to shape Latina entrepreneurs' ethnoracial capitalism and community empowerment practices at the levels of institutions, in community spaces, and markets as they navigate broader structures of racial and gender inequality. Our participants challenge structural ethnoracial and gender exclusion via entrepreneurial endeavors in finance that aim to address gender and racial gaps in access to commercial capital, by opening Latino coffee shops rooted in community and feminist ideology, and by fashioning physical and digital makers markets grounded in Chicana/Latina Feminisms.
{"title":"Feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship among Latina elite and middle-class entrepreneurs","authors":"Karina Santellano, Jody Agius Vallejo","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13091","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13091","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Latinas represent one of the fastest-growing groups of entrepreneurs in the United States, yet they are understudied in entrepreneurship research. Through three case studies of middle-class and wealthy Latinas, we explore how ethnorace, gender, immigration, class, and community shape their entrepreneurial endeavors as they practice what we refer to as feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship–entrepreneurial endeavors that aim to empower, assist, and/or build community amongst women through ethnic and gender-specific services and experiences. Feminist ethnoracial entrepreneurship, in theory, aims to mitigate ethnoracial and gender inequality. Our participants draw from their lived experiences to inform their entrepreneurial motivations to make a profit and a social difference. By incorporating research centered on feminist approaches to entrepreneurship, we show how gender and the ethnoracial context combine with class to shape Latina entrepreneurs' ethnoracial capitalism and community empowerment practices at the levels of institutions, in community spaces, and markets as they navigate broader structures of racial and gender inequality. Our participants challenge structural ethnoracial and gender exclusion via entrepreneurial endeavors in finance that aim to address gender and racial gaps in access to commercial capital, by opening Latino coffee shops rooted in community and feminist ideology, and by fashioning physical and digital makers markets grounded in Chicana/Latina Feminisms.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 4","pages":"1166-1181"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This polemical essay argues that Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, and her novels North and South, and Mary Barton, portray her as an overlooked, early political economist. The objective of the paper is three-fold: (1) to dismantle taken-for-granted truth claims that Alan Fox is the preeminent thinker on pluralistic forms of employee engagement (2) encourage further development and enlargement of the field and what constitutes its history, and (3) to argue for the recognition of Elizabeth Gaskell as an early political economist. Guiding this exploration is the question: How do we also make sense of Fox’s privileged situatedness in scholarship and the absence of potential early theorists like Gaskell? The paper adopts a feminist reading and polemical writing to engage in feminist critical historiography. The author draws on audience theory to help readers reorient themselves to Gaskell and to help see her as an overlooked political economist. Feminism is conceptually presented as ontology, epistemology, method, and style of writing. Despite the ongoing credit Alan Fox receives as first theorizing the frames of reference and pluralistic forms of engagement starting in the 1960s, Elizabeth Gaskell was contemplating and critiquing the employment relationship starting in the 1850s. She not only provided a rich historical understanding of the inequalities of class and wealth, but her ideas and insights remain unacknowledged in industrial relations scholarship. The paper offers a unique feminist perspective on Elizabeth Gaskell and makes the case that she is neglected early political economist. Further, the paper makes a link between the world of Victorian era fiction as historical understanding of early capitalist society and demonstrates how ideas are taken up by the field in unconscious and unjust ways.
这篇论战性的文章认为,维多利亚时代的小说家伊丽莎白·盖斯凯尔(Elizabeth Gaskell)和她的小说《南方与北方》(North and South)以及《玛丽·巴顿》(Mary Barton)将她描绘成一位被忽视的早期政治经济学家。本文的目标有三个方面:(1)驳斥艾伦·福克斯是研究员工敬业度多元化形式的杰出思想家这一想当然的事实;(2)鼓励这一领域的进一步发展和扩大,以及它的历史构成;(3)主张承认伊丽莎白·盖斯凯尔(Elizabeth Gaskell)是一位早期的政治经济学家。引导这一探索的问题是:我们如何理解福克斯在学术上的特权地位,以及盖斯凯尔等潜在的早期理论家的缺席?本文采用女性主义阅读和论战写作的方式进行女性主义批判史学研究。作者利用受众理论来帮助读者重新定位盖斯凯尔,并帮助读者将她视为一位被忽视的政治经济学家。女性主义在概念上表现为本体论、认识论、方法和写作风格。尽管Alan Fox在20世纪60年代首次提出了参考框架和多元参与形式的理论,但Elizabeth Gaskell从19世纪50年代开始就在思考和批评雇佣关系。她不仅对阶级和财富的不平等提供了丰富的历史理解,而且她的思想和见解在劳资关系学术界仍未得到承认。这篇论文提供了一个独特的女权主义视角来看待伊丽莎白·盖斯凯尔,并证明了她是被忽视的早期政治经济学家。此外,本文将维多利亚时代的小说世界与早期资本主义社会的历史理解联系起来,并展示了思想是如何以无意识和不公正的方式被该领域所接受的。
{"title":"Elizabeth Gaskell: An overlooked political economist and proto theorist in the field of industrial relations","authors":"Kristin S. Williams","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13089","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13089","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This polemical essay argues that Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, and her novels <i>North and South</i>, and <i>Mary Barton</i>, portray her as an overlooked, early political economist. The objective of the paper is three-fold: (1) to dismantle taken-for-granted truth claims that Alan Fox is the preeminent thinker on pluralistic forms of employee engagement (2) encourage further development and enlargement of the field and what constitutes its history, and (3) to argue for the recognition of Elizabeth Gaskell as an early political economist. Guiding this exploration is the question: How do we also make sense of Fox’s privileged situatedness in scholarship and the absence of potential early theorists like Gaskell? The paper adopts a feminist reading and polemical writing to engage in feminist critical historiography. The author draws on audience theory to help readers reorient themselves to Gaskell and to help see her as an overlooked political economist. Feminism is conceptually presented as ontology, epistemology, method, and style of writing. Despite the ongoing credit Alan Fox receives as first theorizing the frames of reference and pluralistic forms of engagement starting in the 1960s, Elizabeth Gaskell was contemplating and critiquing the employment relationship starting in the 1850s. She not only provided a rich historical understanding of the inequalities of class and wealth, but her ideas and insights remain unacknowledged in industrial relations scholarship. The paper offers a unique feminist perspective on Elizabeth Gaskell and makes the case that she is neglected early political economist. Further, the paper makes a link between the world of Victorian era fiction as historical understanding of early capitalist society and demonstrates how ideas are taken up by the field in unconscious and unjust ways.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 2","pages":"576-593"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13089","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138543261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Melisa Stevanovic, Antero Olakivi, Henri Nevalainen, Pentti Henttonen, Niklas Ravaja
Difficulties of documentation characterize many problematic experiences of social interaction. Here, we study such difficulties by analyzing a case in which an employee tells her supervisor about the gendered dismissal that she has experienced at work. Using video-recorded performance appraisal interviews as data and conversation analysis and positioning analysis as methods, we examine how the experience of gendered dismissal lends itself to a documentable issue. We describe the process by which the problem that the employee initially described as an organizational leadership issue became redefined as a personal matter, which was not the responsibility of the supervisor. We show how this happened by the supervisor refraining from treating the employee's problem as “tellable” on its own terms, which led to the employee repeatedly changing her storyline. We argue that the persistence of inequalities in organizational interactions may be due to documentation difficulties, which are anchored in cultural expectations that bias the tellability of events in ways that promote gender inequality.
{"title":"Telling a supervisor about experiences of gendered dismissal: Problems of documentation, tellability, and failed authority","authors":"Melisa Stevanovic, Antero Olakivi, Henri Nevalainen, Pentti Henttonen, Niklas Ravaja","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13088","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13088","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Difficulties of documentation characterize many problematic experiences of social interaction. Here, we study such difficulties by analyzing a case in which an employee tells her supervisor about the gendered dismissal that she has experienced at work. Using video-recorded performance appraisal interviews as data and conversation analysis and positioning analysis as methods, we examine how the experience of gendered dismissal lends itself to a documentable issue. We describe the process by which the problem that the employee initially described as an organizational leadership issue became redefined as a personal matter, which was not the responsibility of the supervisor. We show how this happened by the supervisor refraining from treating the employee's problem as “tellable” on its own terms, which led to the employee repeatedly changing her storyline. We argue that the persistence of inequalities in organizational interactions may be due to documentation difficulties, which are anchored in cultural expectations that bias the tellability of events in ways that promote gender inequality.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 2","pages":"554-575"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13088","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2013, the number of Black entrepreneurs surpassed the number of White entrepreneurs in Brazil. Of those Black entrepreneurs, 30 percent were women. In Brazil, gendered racism often stereotypes Black women as domestic servants or hypersexual. Despite the robust literature on Afro-Brazilians generally and Afro-Brazilian women particularly, Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs, their experiences, and their strategies for competing in the market and resisting gendered racism remain under-theorized. I use semi-structured interviews with Black women entrepreneurs to explain the relationship between gendered racism and Black entrepreneurship. My findings show that Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs actively defy and redefine the standard images of entrepreneurs and Black women in Brazil. They contest the treatment of Black women as objects of the market by situating themselves as agentic players by challenging gendered racism through two entrepreneurial cultural strategies: (1) engaging in dignity work and (2) employing a women-first imperative. By centering the experience of Afro-Brazilian women, I contribute to the entrepreneurship literature, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies.
{"title":"“Quem pode ser a dona?”: Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs and gendered racism","authors":"Demetrius Miles Murphy","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13090","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13090","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In 2013, the number of Black entrepreneurs surpassed the number of White entrepreneurs in Brazil. Of those Black entrepreneurs, 30 percent were women. In Brazil, gendered racism often stereotypes Black women as domestic servants or hypersexual. Despite the robust literature on Afro-Brazilians generally and Afro-Brazilian women particularly, Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs, their experiences, and their strategies for competing in the market and resisting gendered racism remain under-theorized. I use semi-structured interviews with Black women entrepreneurs to explain the relationship between gendered racism and Black entrepreneurship. My findings show that Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs actively defy and redefine the standard images of entrepreneurs and Black women in Brazil. They contest the treatment of Black women as objects of the market by situating themselves as agentic players by challenging gendered racism through two entrepreneurial cultural strategies: (1) engaging in dignity work and (2) employing a women-first imperative. By centering the experience of Afro-Brazilian women, I contribute to the entrepreneurship literature, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 4","pages":"1149-1165"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13090","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535603","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing on the qualitative research of Jewish ultraorthodox female fashion entrepreneurs (JUFFE) in Israel, we examine how women's body regulations are collectively negotiated, challenged, and resisted. Our paper shows that, through the disruption of religious clothing and hairstyling, JUFFEs have challenged the patriarchal expectations of women's ideal type in their authoritative society and triggered various changes that allowed for the construction of alternative forms of femininity. Our contributions are twofold: First, we advance the understanding of the body as a site of resistance by exposing the analytical constituents of embodied resistance, namely, the forms of femininity constructed through embodied resistance, which demands are challenged, which types of modesty are resisted, which bodily means are used in women's resistance acts, and the implications of the resistance. By deepening our understanding of the constitutive resources of embodied resistance, we offer a more nuanced and detailed analysis of the various embodied ways and means through which women of religious communities may prompt changes regarding women's visibility and economic status. Second, we broaden the conceptualization of resistance's outcomes in authoritarian regimes by demonstrating how alternative religious femininities are constructed through the collective power of fashion. We present two manifestations of femininity: femininity as a marker of diversity (individualized femininity) and femininity as a marker of economic status (affluent femininity)—both deviate from the one prescribed by their leadership and community. We demonstrate how entrepreneurs' subversive messages are diffused through their clientele's bodies as the carriers of their subversive messages.
{"title":"Fashion as embodied resistance: The case of Jewish ultraorthodox female entrepreneurs","authors":"Varda Wasserman, Avital Baikovich","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13093","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13093","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Drawing on the qualitative research of Jewish ultraorthodox female fashion entrepreneurs (JUFFE) in Israel, we examine how women's body regulations are collectively negotiated, challenged, and resisted. Our paper shows that, through the disruption of religious clothing and hairstyling, JUFFEs have challenged the patriarchal expectations of women's ideal type in their authoritative society and triggered various changes that allowed for the construction of alternative forms of femininity. Our contributions are twofold: First, we advance the understanding of the body as a site of resistance by exposing the analytical constituents of embodied resistance, namely, the forms of femininity constructed through embodied resistance, which demands are challenged, which types of modesty are resisted, which bodily means are used in women's resistance acts, and the implications of the resistance. By deepening our understanding of the constitutive resources of embodied resistance, we offer a more nuanced and detailed analysis of the various embodied ways and means through which women of religious communities may prompt changes regarding women's visibility and economic status. Second, we broaden the conceptualization of resistance's outcomes in authoritarian regimes by demonstrating how alternative religious femininities are constructed through the collective power of fashion. We present two manifestations of femininity: femininity as a marker of diversity (individualized femininity) and femininity as a marker of economic status (affluent femininity)—both deviate from the one prescribed by their leadership and community. We demonstrate how entrepreneurs' subversive messages are diffused through their clientele's bodies as the carriers of their subversive messages.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 2","pages":"535-553"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13093","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138535602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Crowdwork platforms have been widely celebrated as challenging gendered labor market inequalities through new digitally mediated possibilities for reconciling work, home, and family. This paper interrogates those claims and explores the wider implications of digital labor platforms for an expansive work–family research agenda stubbornly rooted in formal modes of employment in the “analogue” economy. Based on ethnographic research with women platform workers in the UK (using PeoplePerHour, Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and Copify), the paper asks: what are women crowdworkers' lived experiences of integrating paid work and family relative to formal employment? And what coping tactics have women developed to reduce gendered work–family conflicts on digital labor platforms? In response to these research questions, the paper makes three contributions. First, it offers a critical review of recent commentary to theorize how disruptive innovations by digital labor platforms to recast long-standing definitions of “work”, “workers”, “managers”, and “employers” have served to position platforms and platform workers as somehow outside the analytical gaze of the expansive work–family research agenda. Second, it extends a growing alternative work–family analysis of platform work to examine the kinds of “work–life balance” (WLB) provision available to women crowdworkers in the absence of an employer; and how women's experiences of algorithmically mediated and contradictory work–family outcomes further challenge widespread claims of new platform work–life “flexibilities”. Third, the paper points to exciting and urgent possibilities for advancing and recentering work–family research through new engagements with platforms, algorithmic management, and “independent” platform workers in support of feminist activism and campaigning around WLB.
{"title":"Platform work-lives in the gig economy: Recentering work–family research","authors":"Al James","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13087","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13087","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Crowdwork platforms have been widely celebrated as challenging gendered labor market inequalities through new digitally mediated possibilities for reconciling work, home, and family. This paper interrogates those claims and explores the wider implications of digital labor platforms for an expansive work–family research agenda stubbornly rooted in formal modes of employment in the “analogue” economy. Based on ethnographic research with women platform workers in the UK (using PeoplePerHour, Upwork, Freelancer, Fiverr, and Copify), the paper asks: what are women crowdworkers' lived experiences of integrating paid work and family relative to formal employment? And what coping tactics have women developed to reduce gendered work–family conflicts on digital labor platforms? In response to these research questions, the paper makes three contributions. First, it offers a critical review of recent commentary to theorize how disruptive innovations by digital labor platforms to recast long-standing definitions of “work”, “workers”, “managers”, and “employers” have served to position platforms and platform workers as somehow outside the analytical gaze of the expansive work–family research agenda. Second, it extends a growing alternative work–family analysis of platform work to examine the kinds of “work–life balance” (WLB) provision available to women crowdworkers in the absence of an employer; and how women's experiences of algorithmically mediated and contradictory work–family outcomes further challenge widespread claims of new platform work–life “flexibilities”. Third, the paper points to exciting and urgent possibilities for advancing and recentering work–family research through new engagements with platforms, algorithmic management, and “independent” platform workers in support of feminist activism and campaigning around WLB.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 2","pages":"513-534"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13087","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135137990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Domestic workers were one of the most negatively affected groups by COVID-19 in Latin America, yet they have also been resisting and mobilizing in impressive and innovative ways. This article shows that domestic workers' organizations were able to adapt to an extremely adverse context in order to protect their members and defend their rights. Furthermore, their mobilizations provide an alternative vision of society grounded on love and solidarity and offer concrete ways forward to “build back better.” Indeed, their core campaign, “Care for those who care for you”, demands the recognition of care work as real work and fair treatment for those who provide this care. Based on an analysis of this campaign, I have identified 3 repertoires of care-resistance: the promotion of self-care and well-being, concrete practices of solidarity through the distribution of humanitarian aid, and legal mobilizations for the recognition of care as a fundamental right. I argue that these forms of action contribute to feminist ethics and theories of care and that putting forward the right to care and be cared for in times of crisis is an act of resistance.
{"title":"Caring is resisting: Lessons from domestic workers' mobilizations during COVID-19 in Latin America","authors":"Louisa Acciari","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13085","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13085","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Domestic workers were one of the most negatively affected groups by COVID-19 in Latin America, yet they have also been resisting and mobilizing in impressive and innovative ways. This article shows that domestic workers' organizations were able to adapt to an extremely adverse context in order to protect their members and defend their rights. Furthermore, their mobilizations provide an alternative vision of society grounded on love and solidarity and offer concrete ways forward to “build back better.” Indeed, their core campaign, “Care for those who care for you”, demands the recognition of care work as real work and fair treatment for those who provide this care. Based on an analysis of this campaign, I have identified 3 repertoires of care-resistance: the promotion of self-care and well-being, concrete practices of solidarity through the distribution of humanitarian aid, and legal mobilizations for the recognition of care as a fundamental right. I argue that these forms of action contribute to feminist ethics and theories of care and that putting forward the right to care and be cared for in times of crisis is an act of resistance.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 1","pages":"319-336"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135429827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ben Kerrane, Katy Kerrane, Shona Bettany, David Rowe
We explore the foodwork performed by white middle-class mothers in the United Kingdom who were preparing to feed their families in anticipation of post-Brexit resource scarcity. We illustrate their laborious preparations (‘prep-work’) as they stockpiled items (mostly food) in anticipation of shortages. We reveal tensions in how they envisaged how (and who) to feed. Analysis reveals how our (privileged, white middle-class) participants enrolled ‘good’ motherhood into prep-work and engaged in a new form of ‘othering’. Non-prepping ‘(m)others’ were positioned as deficient, ‘bad’ parents due to failure to save children from post-Brexit risk/hunger, and participants downplayed their own (classed and material) advantage in being able to prepare. By exploring their prep-work accounts, we illustrate how they assumed a morally superior motherhood position to the non-prepared underclass and make several contributions. First, we extend foodwork categories, recognizing additional foodwork of managing and hiding stockpiles (given stigma/ridicule surrounding prep-work). Second, we illustrate the darker side of motherhood that prep-work revealed, which clashes with elements of intensive motherhood ideology. Third, we illuminate the ‘othering’ of a new parental underclass: the unprepared.
{"title":"‘Othering’ the unprepared: Exploring the foodwork of Brexit-prepping mothers","authors":"Ben Kerrane, Katy Kerrane, Shona Bettany, David Rowe","doi":"10.1111/gwao.13086","DOIUrl":"10.1111/gwao.13086","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We explore the foodwork performed by white middle-class mothers in the United Kingdom who were preparing to feed their families in anticipation of post-Brexit resource scarcity. We illustrate their laborious preparations (‘prep-work’) as they stockpiled items (mostly food) in anticipation of shortages. We reveal tensions in how they envisaged how (and who) to feed. Analysis reveals how our (privileged, white middle-class) participants enrolled ‘good’ motherhood into prep-work and engaged in a new form of ‘othering’. Non-prepping ‘(m)others’ were positioned as deficient, ‘bad’ parents due to failure to save children from post-Brexit risk/hunger, and participants downplayed their own (classed and material) advantage in being able to prepare. By exploring their prep-work accounts, we illustrate how they assumed a morally superior motherhood position to the non-prepared underclass and make several contributions. First, we extend foodwork categories, recognizing additional foodwork of managing and hiding stockpiles (given stigma/ridicule surrounding prep-work). Second, we illustrate the darker side of motherhood that prep-work revealed, which clashes with elements of intensive motherhood ideology. Third, we illuminate the ‘othering’ of a new parental underclass: the unprepared.</p>","PeriodicalId":48128,"journal":{"name":"Gender Work and Organization","volume":"31 2","pages":"494-512"},"PeriodicalIF":5.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gwao.13086","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135774685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}