Kim England

Gender relations and the spatial structure of the city

Abstract This paper begins with the premise that gender relations are socially and culturally constructed and, as such, vary over time and space. It is argued that the particular nature of gender relations at any point in time is reflected in the spatial structure of cities, and as gender relations are not constant over time, neither is the spatial structure of cities. These ideas are initially explored in this paper through a brief discussion of social theories and how they facilitate an understanding of the spatial structure of the city from the viewpoint of gender relations. This is followed by interpreting the recent history of American cities as one of increasing spatial and functional separation of public and private spheres to produce a city with distinct areas of production and reproduction. Two post-Second World War trends—the increase of women in paid employment and the changing composition of households—have highlighted the inadequacy of this form of the city. Given these trends, attention turns to an examination of how the city is being restructured by new household forms such as single women householders in well-paid jobs (gentrifiers) and poor women householders. The concluding section consists of a discussion of some of the points raised in the paper and how these should be interpreted in light of the insights gained by employing social theories.

Home, Work and the Shifting Geographies of Care

A range of commentators, such as those quoted above, are raising the alarm about a mounting care crisis in Canada. Union representatives, journalists, academics and others besides express concern about the cost, quantity and quality of care for children, the elderly, and people with illnesses and disabilities, as well as about the well-being of the people who provide that care. The three quotes above address themes raised in this paper: the provision of child care and home care, the responsibilities of the state and ‘larger society’ in that provision, and the implications of assigning responsibility for care to ‘‘women (and other subordinate groups)’’. In this paper I explore such themes in the context of the shifting geographies of care – one where the home and the families in them have become a more prominent site of care than has been the case in recent decades. The crisis around care is having profound effects on the relationship between states, markets, households, and the volunteer sector. A key aspect of the care crisis has been the emergence of what Arlie Hochschild (2003) and others call a ‘‘care deficit’’. Women have long held primary responsibility for providing care, in their homes, in their communities (as volunteers) and in the workplace. Changing social,

Managing the body work of home care

Body work is a key element of home healthcare. Recent restructuring of health and social care services means the home is increasingly a key site of long-term care. While there is a growing literature on the social dynamics between care recipients and their family caregivers, less is known about the formal work dynamic between paid care workers and care recipients and family caregivers. Drawing on interview data from an Ontario-based study of long-term home care, we explore how body work is negotiated through the embodied practices of care in the home and through care relationships associated with home care. In particular we focus on how the practices of intimate body care (such as bathing, toileting, and catheter management) show the diverse dynamics of care work through which caregivers, care recipients and homespace are constituted. We argue that the practices of care are shaped by a complex interweaving of regulatory mechanisms associated with home care along with the physical and affective dimensions of intimate body work. In turn this suggests the need for new ways of understanding body work in contemporary landscapes of care.

Who will mind the baby? : geographies of child care and working mothers

One of the most significant social and economic changes of recent years has been the explosion in the number of mothers in the work place and in paid employment generally. Child care policy, provision and funding has in no way kept up with this change. Who Will Mind the Baby? explores how working mothers negotiate their responsibilities in the face of these difficulties. The book contrasts the limited child care policies of the United States and Canada with the more advanced situation in Europe and Australia, focusing in particular on the coping strategies of working mothers.

Towards a feminist political geography

The next challenge for the subdiscipline (of political geography) is to incorporate new politicizations of human geography through… feminist geography (the politics of ‘public’ and ‘private’) (1994: p. 450). (T)he subdiscipline has still yet to meet the challenge of feminist geography whose concerns for power in place and space from a gender perspective have only appeared intermittently in contemporary political geography. The study of place/space tensions may be one way of integrating feminist geographical concerns into political geography (2000: p. 597). These quotes are the closing words in the ‘political geography’ entry in the third and fourth editions of The Dictionary of Human Geography . The 1994 entry basically represents feminist geography as the politics of the ‘public–private’ divide; while the 2000 entry broadens the scope (and possibly the geographic scale?) of the feminist challenge, framing it in terms of power and space—a central concern of political geography. (Notably, feminist geography is not even mentioned in the ‘political geography’ entry in the first two editions.) I want to think about a feminist political geography that takes formulations of the politics of ‘public’ and ‘private’, power, space, and scale seriously as one way of engaging part of Kevin Cox and Murray Low’s charge: “attempt to situate issues about what counts as ‘political’ subject matter in political geography in a broader field of geographic and social science concern, and in relation to ‘current affairs.’ Panelists will explore these questions of subdisciplinary approach, identity, and focus in relation to an array of topical areas in political geography which form actual or potential sites for exchange between subdisciplines and with other disciplines.”

Care work, migration and citizenship: international nurses in the UK

Recent debates about nursing shortages in the Global North are part of a broader global nursing workforce crisis. Western governments have been increasing their recruitment of international nurses to fill their shortages, but this accelerates the global migration of nurses. The UK is a key node in global nurse migration. The increase in international nurse migration has profound consequences for both the sending and receiving countries, as well as implications for the health care system, and, of course, the individual nurses. In this paper, we explore recent trends in the UKs dependence on foreign-trained nurses. We use 1994–2012 data from the national register of nurses to track the admission of international nurses to the register and the countries they arrive from. During the early 2000s, there was an uptick of nurses from the Global South (notably several sub-Saharan countries, India and more recently the Philippines) and relative decline in traditional sources countries such as Australia and New Zealand. We draw on feminist care ethics to highlight the ways in which foreign-trained migrant nurses working in the UK are de-valued despite the UKs dependence on their labour and suggest rethinking citizenship in ways that are more clearly inclusive of care.

Migrant Workers in Home Care: Routes, Responsibilities, and Respect

We consider the increasingly common provision of home-based health care by migrant care workers. In particular, we explore the racial division of paid reproductive care and ideas about embodied work to show that although (im)migrants tend to fall to the bottom of the hierarchy of care work, the reasons are multifaceted and complex. We draw on interview data from a larger study of long-term home care in Ontario to explore the lived experience of care work by migrant workers, emphasizing their social agency. We organize our discussion around the themes of routes, responsibilities, and respect and emphasize the embodied and power-inflected care work relation. Through these themes we explore the different routes the migrants took into care work—how they found their jobs and what role those jobs play in their lives. Then we address the responsibilities of different home care jobs and the relational dynamic of how job responsibilities are actually practiced. Finally, the theme of respect examines how the workers try to treat their clients with dignity but sometimes the work relation is marked by racism and friction over what counts as “good” care. We show that care work is constructed and experienced through a complex interweaving of embodiment, labor market inequalities, and the provinces regulatory mechanisms of care provision.

Gender, work and technology in the information workplace: from typewriters to ATMs

We consider the relations between gender and technology in the workplace, focusing on clerical work in the information workplace, especially the finance and insurance sector. Our goal is to excavate a ‘hidden history’ of how clerical work and the artifacts which sustain it have been understood and deployed under different cultural and economic circumstances. We employ an analysis of technosocial relations developed in Science and Technology Studies in which meanings about ‘technology’ and ‘society’ are mutually constitutive, changeable, and in need of maintenance in order to sustain their conceptual coherence. By drawing on examples from the USA and Canada, we argue that at various points over the twentieth century particular office technologies became ‘feminized’, or associated with characteristics coded as feminine, as a means of shaping spatial practice and social relations in the workplace.

Social policy at work? Equality and equity in women's paid employment in Canada

Under mounting pressure from women, Canada introduced employment policies to address the gender wage gap and womens access to a wider range of jobs. The policies were generally introduced between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Over time these policies have shifted from focusing on equality to emphasising equity. Two pivotal policies are pay equity and employment equity. In the end, the impact of these policies is difficult to assess. Keeping the European situation in mind we argue that they be considered as a component of broader changes rather than as specific causes of improving the situation of women in the Canadian labour market.

Nurses across borders: global migration of registered nurses to the US

Like many other global north countries, the US is facing a nursing shortage. In the last few years, such nursing shortages have been identified as part of a broader ‘global crisis’ in nursing. Resorting to importing internationally educated nurses is a popular strategy to address the shortfall. Importing nurses into the US is not new. However, the current shortage is different because of greatly intensified efforts to recruit nurses from overseas, and because of the unprecedented scale of global nurse migration. This article uses an analysis of Census data to track the trends and geographies associated with internationally educated registered nurses (IERNs) in the US since 1980. I show that there are important subnational differences in the distribution of IERNs; most are concentrated in a few states. By paying particular attention to subnational geographies within the US, I draw attention to the variations in and implications of the distribution of IERNs and how this impacts public policy discourses associated with the transnational migration of IERNs into and within the US.