‘I never even tried to get out of work’: low wage service work, work–life interrelationships, and women’s health in the United States

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on an under-investigated link between work–life interrelationships and health: how low-wage work impacts employees’ health by influencing their management of health-related concerns. Using structuration theory, interviews with 21 low-wage service work (LWSS) women workers were analyzed to identify structures and interactional dynamics in their reported interactions with their supervisors about health-related matters that intersected with work. Three ‘corporate privilege’ structures or ‘recipes for action’ emerged, along with three ‘life friendly’ structures. The structures intersected in three dynamics of supervisor–worker interactions: (a) collaborative reproduction of ‘corporate privilege’ structures, (b) collaborative resistance to ‘corporate privilege,’ and (c) contested reproduction and resistance. In some situations, supervisors and workers alike reproduced corporate privilege structures. In other circumstances, supervisors and workers resisted corporate privilege structures, and in still others supervisors and workers contested structures differently, pointing to potential opportunities for more systematic disruption through organizational interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Low wage service work
• work–life
• women’s health
• healthcare seeking
• structuration

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Mohan Dutta and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques, which contributed significantly to this article’s final form. The authors also acknowledge with gratitude the generosity of the women workers who shared their experiences for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under Grant P20MD003373. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities or the National Institutes of Health.