Conference Agenda

The South African Childrens’ Act, 2005 defines ‘care’ to include safeguarding all aspects of a child’s wellbeing. Despite this obligation falling equally on both parents, studies have shown that mothers in South Africa, continue to take greater responsibility for childcare than fathers. Using the most recently available nationally representative quantitative data on physical and financial childcare, collected for Wave Five of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), this article presents a detailed overview of the involvement in childcare of men compared to women, and fathers compared to mothers. Contributions of this article include examining the gender and parental division in assistant childcare, investigating the role played by absent parents in regular physical and financial care, and analysing the gender division in household income of households in which children live.

En el pasado y aún en los países de menos ingresos, la atención hospitalaria constituye cas la totalidad del sistema de salud. La atención primaria o de prevención era menor o inexistente. Dentro de la producción hospitalaria, la atención de partos es el servicio más recurrente. Los motivos tienen que ver con la concepción histórico-social de la naturaleza de la reproducción humana.

La historia hospitalaria es extensa y ha sido estudiada en muchos países de alto ingreso. Las principales limitaciones en estas investigaciones son la carencia de fuentes de información cuantitiva, la escasa cobertura de contextos de economías menos desarrolladas y el análisis de género en la evolución de los sistemas de salud nacionales.

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar, desde una perspectiva de género, la producción hospitalaria en Chile, desde la creación del sistema nacional de salud en 1960 hasta la actualidad. Para ello, se recabó información de archivos históricos del Ministerio de Salud con la desagregación de los egresos hospitalarios según diagnóstico. Se seleccionaron los relacionados con maternidad y perfil del usuario, y se calcularon indicadores de volumen, proporción y per cápita. Se analizaron estos indicadores en las tres fases del modelo chileno de salud. El primero, consiste en un modelo público casi unificado (Sistema Nacional de Salud), inspirado en el NHS británico y vigente entre 1960 y 1979. El segundo corresponde a un Modelo Dual, abierto a seguros privados obligatorios, implementado por la dictadura militar en 1991 y que perduró casi sin modificaciones hasta 1999. El tercero, corresponde a un Modelo Reformado, que incorpora medidas de justicia social al modelo dual, con sus reformas más importantes entre 2003 y 2005.

Work is extensively gendered. The common neoliberal tropes on female empowerment and their efforts of gender mainstreaming have played a huge role in the feminization of work. Social norms, local realities, history and household dynamics further contribute to this as women are constantly negotiating their participation in paid labor. Institutional structures organizing forms of paid labor are in turn utilizing these ‘external’ factors to continue engendering work and creating a cheap and extractive labor force. Given such a societal and structural exploitation, there is both everyday resistance and submission by women, particularly racialized and lower caste women. In this study, I situate the everyday negotiation that occurs between the paid and unpaid labor of racialized and lower caste women within the healthcare ‘sector’ in India.

Healthcare is a public good and health care related work is co-constituted between paid and unpaid work. Privatization and financialization characterize the current healthcare sector in India. The patriarchal state has supported private corporations to penetrate various subsectors of healthcare provision from access to medication, health insurance and usurious loans to cover healthcare costs. This burden of privatizing healthcare is borne by two interrelated groups. First, there are the healthcare workers also known as ASHA workers in India shouldering most of the primary healthcare provision. The state treats them as ‘honorary volunteers’ who have no access to the state minimum wages, pensions or social security. The second group are the unpaid care workers within the household (or privately hired care workers) who are forced to take up high interest rate loans to cover any health-related costs.

By focusing on the healthcare sector, I try to archive the everyday negotiations and resistance of both paid and unpaid healthcare workers in India. Through this qualitative case study, I try to understand how women, mostly racialized and lower caste women are navigating and resisting the ongoing market and non-market pressures from the privatization and financialization of healthcare in India.