III Congreso Internacional de sociología de la AVS (23-25 of January):
“Treballadores de la Cura a Espanya: Invisibilitat i Estratègies en el Context de la Pandèmia”Anna Morero Beltrán, Rosa Ortiz Monera, Maria Antònia Carbonero Gamundí, Lara Borin Campoli.
This communication presents part of the results of the qualitative analysis carried out within the framework of the R&D project “The Social Reorganization of Care during the Pandemic”, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-118801RB-I00). The aim of the project is to deepen the understanding of the social organization of care during the pandemic in Spain. A total of twenty-nine in-depth interviews were carried out with women who had care responsibilities during this period, as well as eight focus groups with civil society organizations. The results we present focus on the impact of the pandemic on women working in the care sector. Our analysis is based on seven interviews with care workers and domestic workers, as well as on the contributions of the focus groups. Their testimonies reveal that, despite the pandemic being a potential moment to recognize the vulnerability of society and the critical importance of care work, female care workers felt devalued and ignored, without initially being recognized as essential workers. Furthermore, they did not receive the same level of social recognition as other sectors. We also highlight how the precariousness and exploitation suffered by women in this sector worsened during the pandemic. Using an intersectional approach, we show that the devaluation and precarization of this work are not only linked to gender, but also to factors such as origin, ethnicity and migration status. In this context, community support played a crucial role in assisting the sector.
“Redes de apoyo mutuo durante la Covid19: mediación y amortiguación de las desigualdades de género y classe” Clara Camps, Ignasi Bernat i Elisabet Almeda
Mutual support networks have mediated the increase in gender and class inequalities caused by COVID-19. Given the strategies deployed by the State to address the crisis, based primarily on lockdown measures, ERTOs, and a temporary absence of the State’s social reproductive function (schools, social services, senior centers, etc.), there is a rehoming of care work. This forced confinement to the home due to lockdowns once again places the nuclear family at the center as the guarantor of social reproduction. Despite the family transformations of recent decades, we are witnessing a sharp rise and increase in the sexual division of labor, gender inequalities, and sexist violence. In this context, the social classes that cannot meet their needs through rehoming due to their position within a precarious and informal labor market are the ones that will most need mutual support networks, religious institutions, and community support. This crisis of social reproduction will have two aspects that mutual support networks will attempt to address: economic and caregiving.
Therefore, by understanding the functions and uses of mutual support networks, we observe how rehoming processes take on different forms and practices depending on social class and economic position in the labor market. Thus, we can understand mutual support networks as mediators and buffers of gender and class inequalities. Precisely, rehoming had offloaded certain functions to the family and the social division of labor. This must be framed within the State-market-family-community dialectic and how certain burdens of social reproduction are shifted. Mutual support networks functioned as the obverse of the social and gender order of our society. The results come from: Mario Domínguez Amorós; Elisabet Almeda Samaranch. The Social Reorganization of Care in a Pandemic: Well-being, Community, and Gender. PID2020-118801RB-I00. 09/01/2021-08/31/2025.
“Procesos de cuidado, trayectorias laborales y reorganización social” Màrius Domínguez i Amorós (working group coordinator)
“La reorganización social de los cuidados durante la pandemia: género, desigualdad y respuestas comunitarias” Màrius Domínguez i Amorós i Sandra Obiol
The aim of this paper is to present some of the results of the research on “The social reorganization of care during the pandemic: Well-being, Community and Gender”, carried out by several research groups from Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands. We aim to analyse the social impacts of COVID-19 on care needs in households, its consequences on gender inequalities and the social reorganization of care work, as well as the role of community support and solidarity organisations and networks. Our general hypothesis is that the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated measures have led to the return to the home of certain care needs that were previously externalised, modifying individual, family and collective strategies for managing care work. This change has led to an aggravation of the care crisis, consolidating and perpetuating social inequalities, particularly those affecting the well-being of the most vulnerable groups, and has also driven the emergence of key solidarity initiatives at the community level. The importance of care work in sustaining current social structures and the challenges we face in redistributing these tasks towards a more just and egalitarian model are evident. From a critical and non-androcentric perspective, we propose a mixed methodological strategy: on the one hand, a quantitative approach through the systematization and analysis of secondary data sources related to time management and care work, and on the other, a qualitative approach involving in-depth interviews with women with care responsibilities and focus groups with social support entities. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the reconfiguration of care, particularly in the context of increasingly diverse and complex family units.
Segundo Congreso Latinoamericano de Estudios de Género y Cuidados (19-21 of March): Miradas Latinoamericanas al Cuidado.
“La articulación de indicadores micro y macrosociales en el análisis comparativo de las desigualdades de género en el trabajo de cuidados” Màrius Domínguez i Amorós
The transformations of contemporary Western societies, since the impact of the economic crisis, have led to changes in the model of social organization and, specifically, in the ways of responding to care needs and their provision. The weakening of the welfare state, with structural adjustment policies that affect the supply of public services, and the inaccessibility of families to the services offered by the market, have increased the unpaid care work carried out within the home.
Recent studies show, among their results, the explanatory weakness of those variables related to microsocial theoretical perspectives as well as the importance of incorporating “subjective” aspects related to the norms and social values of “gender construction”. That is, giving validity to the approaches that confirm the need to incorporate both the theoretical perspective of “gender roles”, as well as macrosocial factors (structural, institutional and cultural) in the analysis of gender gaps in care work.
The relevance of analyzing how institutional and cultural factors can influence unpaid work allows us to advance lines of analysis in different directions: how they affect the meaning and magnitude of the effects of individual characteristics on the sexual division of labor; and the incidence of social policies that affect the structure of employment and the provision of public social assistance services.
The objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the main factors that, both individually and contextually, may be related to the gender gap in the performance and distribution of unpaid and care work within households. Specifically, the operationalization of a system of social indicators is presented that allows the analysis of the impact of these forms of social organization of care and well-being. The proposed social indicators can be used in comparative analyses between different countries taking into account the social dynamics, specificity and comparability of socio-historical and cultural contexts.
Through the analysis of time use surveys in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Spain, the paper aims to be a contribution to comparative studies, advancing the knowledge of the explanatory factors of the gender gap in care time within households (i) by breaking down macrosocial conditions into fundamental dimensions; (ii) by showing the influence of individual resources; and (iii) by incorporating some subjective indicators that are related to the gender gap in the allocation and distribution of this work.
VIII Seminario Internacional de Desigualdad y Movilidad Social en América Latina (24-26 of March).
“Precio, coste y remuneración del trabajo doméstico: un estudio de la plataforma digital brasileña Parafuzo” Màrius Domínguez i Amorís, Lara Campoli
Introduction: presentation and objectives
Brazil is the country with the largest number of domestic workers in the world. Domestic employment represents the largest occupational grouping of Brazilian women, especially black women with low levels of education and from poor families. In 2019, there were 6.3 million people employed there, 92% of whom were women (IBGE, 2020).
Domestic workers provide essential services for the maintenance of the home and families. Despite the important value of these jobs to the economy and for the social development of populations, this work is characterized by informality, insecurity and exploitation of professionals who often find themselves without legal protection.
Recently, paid domestic work has seen the entry of digital intermediaries. Research on the platformization of services shows that the implications of platform work are ambivalent. On the one hand, there is the possibility that workers will obtain more results combined with more flexible schedules. On the other hand, there is a loss of power as a result of the control, surveillance and management practices developed by platforms (Hunt; Machingura, 2016).
While some aspects of these observations apply to all types of platforms, others require a detailed examination of the particular characteristics of each sector. A specific analysis of the impacts of platforms on domestic workers must take into account the existing forms of inequality that structure this work, the type of activity that is carried out and the specific structures of existing labor markets (Van Doorn, 2017).
In light of the transformations in the world of work caused by the emergence and growth of digital platforms, this work therefore aims to identify and analyze the mechanisms developed and used by Parafuzo, a leading Brazilian company in the segment of domestic service intermediation platforms, to define the prices of the services offered and the remuneration of workers. From a critical perspective, this research aims to contribute to the understanding of the risks and opportunities that platforms represent for domestic workers.
Theoretical-methodological approach
The work is based on the literature on the process of platformization of work, highlighting critical studies of this process in the care sector, such as those by Hunt and Machingura (2016); Van Doorn (2017); Ticona and Mateescu (2018); Tandon and Rathi (2021) and Fetterolf (2022).
The definition of care proposed by Pérez Orozco (2014, p. 62) is adopted here: “Care is the activity that regenerates the physical and emotional well-being of people on a daily and generational basis”. These activities include tasks of direct interaction between people, the management of affections and social relationships and the production and reproduction of material goods necessary for our physical maintenance (tasks usually associated with domestic work, such as cleaning houses).
The definition adopted for the concept of digital platforms, at the same time, corresponds to a combination of the conception of Van Dijck, Poell and Waal (2019) with that of Krein and Manzano (2022). The first authors define platforms as “(re-)programmable digital infrastructures that facilitate and shape personalised interactions among end-users and complementors, organised through the systematic collection, algorithmic processing, monetisation, and circulation of data” (Poell; Nieborg; Van Dijck, 2019, p. 03).
As Krein and Manzano (2022) understand, rather than facilitating or intervening in interactions between users, platforms play an active role in the control and management of labor. In addition to stipulating the necessary conditions for the inclusion, permanence or exclusion of each worker, platforms can define different aspects of work, such as remuneration and working hours. It is in this context that we analyze Parafus from a critical perspective.
To examine it, we analyze its website, YouTube channel and run simulations on the application. Due to the scarcity of available data on the company, we complement the analysis with a pilot interview conducted with a worker registered on the platform. The objective of the interview is to provide a first outline of the functioning of the platform based on the use and experience of the worker.
Results: main contributions, results and conclusions
The main service offered by Parafuzo is residential cleaning, but the platform also provides commercial cleaning, ironing and furniture assembly services. The company was founded in 2014 and today operates in more than 160 cities in Brazil. In 2019, the platform had 3,000 registered professionals and, since then, there have been no updates to the number.
The work under the control of Parafuzo can be classified as on location based (ILO, 2021), since it is work carried out in person in specific places. They are also categorized as “work-on-demand via apps” (De Stefano, 2016) and their workers as “just-in-time”, a condition in which, although they are constantly available to the company to work, part of their working day is not recognized as working time, since it is only used and remunerated to the exact extent of demand (Abílio, 2020).
According to the company, Parafuzo is a platform that acts as a “facilitator” and “in collaboration with thousands of professionals” connecting two ends: “end users who need help cleaning homes and offices and the cleaning professionals who carry out this activity”. In practice, however, it is the company that specifically determines the value of the work and the remuneration of the professionals and that defines and manages the distribution of the services.
The price of the services depends on the type of cleaning and the number of hours that you want to hire. When requesting a cleaning service, the client must provide their address, the type of accommodation, the number of rooms and whether they wish to request additional tasks that are not included in the requested cleaning. From this, a “smart calculator” estimates the time required for cleaning and, thus, the price of the service.
The calculations used to set the prices are updated daily based on customer opinions and comments made in the evaluations. It is stated that the prices established include the cost of transport and food for the professional, which the interviewed worker disagrees with, for whom the bus ticket and the cost of food are part of the cost involved in the job.
Payments for the services are made by bank transfer, always the week following the week worked. To receive payment, registered professionals must have a bank account in their name at one of the banks accepted by the platform. The amount received corresponds to the sum of all the cleanings done during the week, minus the amount paid by the company. There is no recent information on what part of the money paid remains in the hands of the company.
Parafus also charges an affiliation fee of R$90 (€16.76), discounted in three installments of R$30 (€5.60), for the first three cleanings carried out, as well as a monthly fee of R$29.90. Another cost corresponds to the cleaning materials used in the “Post-Construction Cleaning” and “Pre-Movement Cleaning” modality, in which the professionals are the ones who have to buy and bring the materials used.
It is nothing new that domestic work is characterized by invisibility, precariousness, low income and scant social protection. What is new is that, with platforms, these elements are controlled in an organized manner. Socially unprotected, workers not only live in uncertainty about their own salary and workload, but are also subordinate to companies that organize, manage and control their work. Although the Parafuzo platform presents itself as a “facilitator” that operates in “partnership” with registered workers, the company specifically defines the value of the services they offer, as well as their remuneration, transferring to them, whenever possible, the costs and risks involved in their work.
INCASI Conference (21-22 of May): Public Policies, Reforms and Innovation in Europe and Latin America.
“The Social Reorganization of Care in Pandemic Times: Public Policies, Gender Inequalities, and Community Strategies in the Spanish State” Màrius Domínguez i Amorós, Carme Vivancos-Sánchez and Elisabet Almeda Samaranch
The sociosanitary crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19 has exposed the consequences of the commodification of public life and human relationships, emphasizing both the importance and vulnerability of the social organization of care, a task predominantly undertaken by women. This article examines the pandemic’s impact on care, addressing structural challenges, shifts in family and work dynamics, and emerging and pre-existing community strategies within the Spanish State. Based on the R&D project “The Social Reorganization of Care in the Pandemic: Wellbeing, Community, and Gender-RESCUPAN,” (PID2020-118801RB-I00), we developed a mixed methodological approach, including semi-structured interviews with women carrying caregiving burdens and discussion groups in various territories (Catalunya, País Valencià, Euskal Herria, and Illes Balears) for the qualitative part, while using the Spanish State as a territorial reference with a comparative strategy using EU27 data for the quantitative part. The findings highlight significant changes in household organization before and after the pandemic, impacting personal and family time. They also uncover experiences of conflicto and wellbeing shaped by structural inequalities and specific care contexts. Furthermore, the study reveals that government policies prioritized assistive and biomedical solutions, neglecting the central role of care and perpetuating a disproportionate burden on women, particularly those in precarious conditions, such as migrant workers or single mothers. However, community support initiatives and neighborhood solidarity emerged as partial solutions to state shortcomings, demonstrating how pre-existing social networks facilitated effective local responses and partially mitigated social inequalities. The study aims to provide tools for better understanding the current situation, assessing the quality of public policies, and analyzing the strategies of economic and social actors. It underscores the need for public policies to integrate gender-responsive programs to ensure the sustainability of the care system. Ultimately, this work contributes to the international debate on the challenges facing welfare regimes, offering critical reflections on how to move towards more inclusive and sustainable systems in a post-pandemic world marked by recurring crises and persistent inequalities.
X Conferencia Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Ciencias Sociales (9-12 of June): Horizontes y transformaciones para la igualdad. Democracias, resistencias, comunidades, derechos y paz.
“La reorganizacion social del cuidado en pandemia en España: un retorno al hogar” Màrius Domínguez Amorós, Elisabet Almeda Samaranch i Carme Vivancos
The presentation will present the research being carried out in Spain (2021-2024) on the social reorganization of care in a pandemic (PID2020-118801RB-I00, Spanish State Research Agency). The general objective of the project is to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on care needs in homes, and the consequences that this entails on gender inequalities and the social reorganization of care work in Spain, with special emphasis on the role of community networks of support and solidarity. The general hypothesis of the research is that the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated socio-health measures mean a return to the home of some care needs that had previously been externalized, modifying strategies to respond to care and attention work. This reorganization of care involves a double movement. On the one hand, we are witnessing a worsening of the care crisis, as some of the trends that have been occurring since the 2008-2009 recession are being accentuated, consolidating and perpetuating social inequalities and affecting women’s well-being more costlyly, and making solidarity initiatives more crucial. On the other hand, the relevance of care work to maintain social sustainability is evident, which involves a reallocation of tasks towards a more egalitarian model between women and men, and an opportunity for change in the norms, values and social imaginaries that underpin the social organisation of care.
Within this general framework, there are three objectives of the research being carried out. The first objective has been to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on care needs in homes and the consequences that this entails for the social organisation of care work in Spain as a whole. In this sense, firstly, empirical evidence has been obtained of the strategies of households in meeting care needs in a pre-COVID-19 context, and where austerity programs were generalized after the economic and financial crisis (2008-2009), which led to an increase in the commercialization of care provider services. And, secondly, to analyze how all this has changed following the start of the pandemic in February-March 2020.
Secondly, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on social inequalities, especially gender inequalities, has been studied as a result of the processes of (re)organization of care. Starting from the idea that gender must be understood in its complexity and in interconnection with other conditions of identification and social discrimination according to a multidimensional vector (income, class, labor market situation, migratory situation, ethnicity, family modalities and household characteristics); as well as in the dimensions of dependency and special care needs.
Thirdly, the articulation of care strategies in relation to networks and social interactions of support and solidarity has been explored; and society’s response has been analyzed based on civic and community support networks. In this sense, information has been obtained on the resources that citizens use in the context of confinement and pandemic, both formal (public aid, social policies, health services, aid from third sector entities, etc.) and informal (family and neighborhood networks, social support and self-management entities, informal practices).
The research methodology has followed a sequential triangulation strategy. A first quantitative phase based on existing surveys on the consequences of Covid (Online survey Living, working and COVID-19, Eurofound, 2020; Study on Emotional Well-being and Study on Effects and Consequences of Coronavirus, Centre for Sociological Research of Spain, 2020). Based on the quantitative analysis, typologies of social organization of care are defined according to the models of provision and family strategies that allow a typological design of the qualitative sample to be applied. Specifically, following the typological design identified in the quantitative part, in-depth interviews are conducted with approximately 30-35 people, including individuals, community support entities or socio-health professionals.
Among some of the main results, it stands out how the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictive measures mean a return to the home of some care needs that had been met outside the home or by external personnel (caregivers), modifying strategies to respond to care and attention needs. This has meant increases in the volume of unpaid domestic work and care, which includes caring for minors, a greater amount of domestic tasks during confinement (such as cooking and cleaning), and caring for sick relatives. In these cases, households have faced a “new” care crisis since the process of externalizing care has been reversed. For its part, the rehousing of care in the context of COVID-19 implies greater visibility and recognition of care, in a “rediscovery” of the home as a safe environment and of care as restorative and satisfying activities. Although gender inequalities in care persist (women continue to take on a disproportionate share of care work), some men are dedicating more time to it, so during the confinement a reallocation of tasks towards a slightly more egalitarian model is observed. Although both women and men are facing more physical and emotional problems as a result of the pandemic and the related measures to address it, this situation is having a greater impact on women: higher levels of anxiety, depression, work overload, isolation or physical illnesses due to the greater volume of unpaid domestic and care work that falls on them. In addition, women are the main victims in terms of their participation in the labor market and overrepresentation in unemployment, due to their greater presence in the sectors most affected by the crisis (domestic employment, healthcare activities and the residential care sector, trade, tourism and manufacturing). And finally, although the confinement has made it difficult to access basic support networks and social interactions and informal encounters in public spaces, practices of voluntary reciprocity and solidarity between neighbors and on a small scale have continued, which have been organized in a more or less formal way, giving rise, in some situations, to organized networks of mutual support.
7th Transforming Care Conference (25-27 of June): Social and Human Rights in Care.
“Continuities and Changes in Women’s Discourse on Care in the Context of COVID-19” Sandra Obiol-Francés, Jordi Bonet-Martí, Jokin Azpiazu Carballo, Màrius Domínguez Amorós i Elisabet Almeda Samaranch
In recent years, different discourses have appeared in the social imaginary (care as a collective responsibility, self-care, the vindication of care work, etc.) that aimed to articulate a rights-based response to the care crisis affecting our societies. However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated social distancing measures, these emerging discourses came into contradiction with the official discourses based on the hegemonic medical model, which promoted individual responsibility and the return of the responsibility of care to the home. In this paper, we propose a feminist analysis of how the impact of COVID-19 has led to a transformation of discourses on care, especially those that appeal to new ways of understanding and organizing care. To this end, we based our study on the sociological analysis of the discourse system of a corpus of 30 in-depth interviews with women with care responsibilities in the home in different parts of Spain. Our purpose in these interviews was to find out how they had organized care in their homes before, during, and after the pandemic. The analysis allows us to identify the permanence of the most traditional discourses on the organization of care that coexist – often in conflict – with discursive references to new ways of covering this care, especially in those women with higher cultural capital.
XVIII CONGRESO DE MEDICINA SOCIAL Y SALUD COLECTIVA (4-8 of August): Por la democracia, los derechos sociales y la salud: Retomar el camino de la determinación social y la soberanía de los pueblos.
“Cambios y continuidades en los discursos emergentes sobre el cuidado en el contexto de la crisis de la COVID-19” Jordi Bonet-Martí
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic generated a context of exceptionality that strained socially organized forms of care. Despite expectations of progress in the democratization of care after the cycle of feminist mobilizations in the period 2017-2019, during home confinement there was a reinforcement of traditional discourses and an intensification of the burdens of care on women.
This work analyzes the changes and continuities in emerging discourses on care based on the analysis of a corpus of interviews with female caregivers in different autonomous communities of the Spanish State. The study uses discourse analysis to identify the dominant discursive configurations during the health crisis, the effects of the pandemic on the practices and meanings of care, and the way in which these discourses were related to institutional, family and community frameworks.
The analysis shows the persistence of gender and territorial inequalities, as well as the emergence of hybrid discourses that articulate elements of traditional, professionalized, democratizing and individualized care, showing the tension between the politicization of care and its reabsorption in an individual and emotional key.
Objective
To analyze the changes and continuities in the discourses on care among female caregivers during the COVID-19 pandemic, identifying discursive configurations, their transformations and the influence of social and institutional frameworks.
Methodology
The research is based on the Sociological Analysis of the Discourse System (ASSD) applied to 29 interviews with women with care responsibilities residing in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country and the Valencian Community. The participants were selected through intentional sampling, with a diversity of work, family and community profiles. The interviews, carried out within the framework of the RESCUPEN project, were transcribed and coded with the CATMA software. The ASSD allowed us to reconstruct the meaning of the discourse according to the social conditions of production and the positions of enunciation. The analysis focused on identifying discursive configurations on care and displacement during confinement. Territorial differences, technological mediations and the role of self-care in the stories of the interviewees were also considered.
Results
The interviews reveal that confinement was experienced mostly as an intensification of care burdens, although some interviewees interpreted it as a period of personal and family reorganization. Four main discourses were identified:
(1) Traditional-familialist discourse: assumes care as a feminine obligation, with a strong presence in mothers.
(2) Modernizing discourse: promotes the professionalization of care, although without male co-responsibility.
(3) Democratizing discourse: poses care as a right and collective responsibility, visible especially in the Basque Country.
(4) Hybrid discourse: combines elements of the previous ones and articulates care as technologically mediated care and as emotional management, giving rise to an individualized form of self-care.
The results show that the pandemic did not drive a generalized advance in the democratizing discourse. Only some groups (single mothers, sex workers) experienced a shift in this direction, probably due to the link with community care networks. The territorial analysis shows differences: in the Basque Country community networks stand out, in Catalonia the role of the neighborhood; in the Balearic Islands and Valencia, difficulties in accessing public resources. In all cases, the feminization of care and dependence on the market persist in the face of the insufficiency of the State.
Conclusions
The pandemic reaffirmed the centrality of care work in the hands of women, without generating a structural transformation of its organization. The hegemonic health discourse identified care as an individual responsibility. Although discourses that revalue care emerged, these coexisted with traditional narratives and individualized forms focused on emotional self-care. The democratizing discourse appeared as a desirable horizon, but limited in its implementation. The study shows how territorial differences in access and organization of care must be considered in the design of public socio-health policies. Likewise, the hybrid discourse poses new challenges for the politicization of care from a feminist and emancipatory perspective.