Vicent Borràs Català

Male Hegemony in Decline? Reflections on the Spanish Case

The masculine role is built primarily on the basis of men’s position as breadwinners providing income for the home through paid work. However, it has been suggested that economic and employment crises and the transformation of production systems that have been underway since the 1970s have diminished the value of work as an identitarian element. The aim of this article is to analyze the extent to which employment crises question the model of hegemonic masculinity. Through the comparative analysis of the career paths of men and women, we show that work still forms the core of male identity, though the persistence of hegemonic masculinity is influenced by social class and generation.

Long-term care in Spain: Difficulties in professionalizing services.

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze the difficulties in professionalizing the long-term care system in Spain. Since 2006, the new Spanish law has recognized care as a subjective right, and regulations are being designed to create a framework for its professionalization. Nowadays, family remains the most important group of providers who care for their elders, and women remain the main informal caregivers. Why do families resist using public long-term care services and professional carers included in the new law? The hypothesis highlights sociocultural factors as an obstacle to professionalization of long-term care services in addition to political and economic factors. The results show qualitative data about expectations, preferences, and discourses that women caregivers have in relation to their responsibility. The empirical material includes 25 interviews with different profiles of caregivers and six focus groups with family caregivers. The article suggests that the Spanish ideal of care is a problem for the professionalization of services because the family remains as the main provider of care—without specific skills, knowledge, and abilities.

La masculinización del tiempo dedicado al trabajo doméstico rutinario / The Masculinization of the Time Devoted to Routine Domestic Tasks

espanolEl articulo analiza los cambios en la distribucion del trabajo domestico entre hombres y mujeres. La hipotesis de partida plantea que la tendencia a una mayor dedicacion de los hombres al trabajo domestico no lleva aparejada una disminucion del tiempo que las mujeres dedican a las tareas domesticas, sobre todo, las mas rutinarias. A partir de la Encuesta de Empleo del Tiempo (INE), se estudia el caso de las parejas de doble ingreso heterosexuales, siendo la variable a explicar el cambio en el tiempo que se dedica al trabajo domestico segun su clasificacion en cuatro grupos de actividades. Los resultados apuntan que pervive la desigual dedicacion de hombres y mujeres al trabajo domestico y la segregacion de tareas segun su contenido, aunque se observa una disminucion de dichas diferencias. EnglishThis article focuses on changes in the distribution of housework between men and women. The main hypothesis suggests that the trend for a greater participation by men to domestic work does not lead to a reduction in the time that women devote to domestic tasks, especially the more routine ones. Based on the Time Use Survey (INE), this paper analyses the case of heterosexual dual-income couples. It uses the change in the time devoted to housework (according to its classification into four groups of activities) as the dependent variable. The results show that the unequal distribution and segregation of domestic work between men and women remains although a decrease is seen in these differences.

Mercato del lavoro e immigrazione in Spagna

This article presents an analysis of the career paths of immigrant men and women in order to study the Spanish employment model. It takes into account the influence of changes in the sexual division of labour along the career paths. The main objective is to show the features of work and personal life of the immigrant population in the construction and care sectors. The results describe the impact that structural factors such as gender and ethnicity have on the career paths. The crossroads between gender and ethnicity creates a so-called “status inconsistency” defining in large part the career paths of immigrants. Work trajectories are characterized by a continuum transition between formal and informal sectors, becoming the social model of immigrant employment