Negotiating masculinity in informal paid care work

Abstract

The theorisation of informal care markets from the perspective of global care chains focuses on the feminisation and racialisation of the field. Some recent research does, however, also discuss male migrant care workers, while national male care workers in informal care markets remain overlooked. The entrance of men into such an extremely feminised and racialised field as care work in private homes represents a challenge to masculinity. If the vulnerable and subordinate position of migrant men in European labour markets provides an explanation for their gender-untraditional choice of work, this, however, does not explain what drives national men into the informal care market, nor how they negotiate their masculinity. Drawing on individual interviews, the article explores how national male care workers in child and elder care in Slovenia employ a strategy of professionalisation and a vision of care entrepreneurship in order to distance themselves from the feminised and racialised norms and practices of care work. How their inclusion in informal care markets might reinforce gendered and radicalised hierarchies in care work is also analysed. Nevertheless, the interview data also indicate that the informal care market represents an arena for doing alternative masculinities that transgress the stereotypical, racialised construction of men in care work.

Keywords:

• care
• masculinity
• intersectionality
• global care chains

Notes on contributor

Majda Hrženjak, PhD, sociologist, is acting as a senior research fellow at the Peace Institute – Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies in Ljubljana. Her current research topics are related to gender studies and social policies, in particular those dealing with care work and intersectional inequalities. She is the author of Invisible Work (2007) and editor of Politics of Care (2011). She publishes regularly in national and international scientific and expert periodicals and monographs.

Notes

1. The interviews were carried out between January and April 2009 within the research project ‘Informal Reproductive Work: Trends in Slovenia and the EU’ (J6-0958). The qualitative survey took place from January to April 2009. It consisted of 10 semi-structured interviews with cleaners, 11 interviews with childcarers, and 8 interviews with carers for the elderly, by using a snowball sampling method. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and the researchers kept field-work diaries on methods of gaining an interview and on their personal impressions. Respondents were found by using the snowball and link tracing methods. In addition to basic demographic data, the interviews contained questions about previous work experience and the person's motive for doing this work, their positive and negative experiences, the general work day, relations with the members of the household, their opinions about why the households hired them, their outlook on doing this work for a living, potential links with other workers from the same field, social security, and their plans for the future.

2. In order to acquire a quantitative picture of the extent and structure of informal paid care work in Slovenia, in March 2009, a public opinion research study was carried out by a telephone poll on a statistically representative sample of 2677 Slovenian households. In addition to the demographic questions, they were asked their opinion of paid home help, whether they were using it, if so, in what form and for which services on what scale, why, how much they were paying for it, and what was the ethnic, gender, and employment structure of workers, how they found the person working for them, and about the nature of the relationship with the care worker.

3. Some services concur, for instance, cleaning and elder care.

4. The name is fictitious to cover the identity of the respondent.