Politicising and gendering care for older people

Politicising and gendering care for older people
Author: Anca Dohotariu
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2024-06-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526175983

This book offers a new critical framework for understanding the processes of politicising and gendering care for older people and their manifestations in several European contexts. It interrogates how care for older adults varies across time and place while searching for an in-depth comprehension of how it becomes an arena of political struggle and the object of public policy in different countries and at various societal and political levels. It brings together multidisciplinary contributions that examine the issue of care for older people as a political concern from many angles, such as problematising care needs, long-term care policies, home care services, institutional services and family care. The contributions reveal the diversity of situations in which the processes of politicising and gendering care for older adults overlap, contradict or reinforce each other while leading to increased gender (in)equalities on different levels.

Struggles In (Elderly) Care

Struggles In (Elderly) Care
Author: Hanne Marlene Dahl
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2017-09-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137577614

This book provides a critical engagement with the intensified struggles to be found within elderly care provision. Various social and political processes, including the forces of globalisation and the de-gendering of care, have changed how we might understand this national and global political concern. Emerging discourses such as neoliberalism have also reframed elderly care to increase existing tensions at the individual, national, and transnational level. Dahl argues that in order to grasp these new realities of care we need a new analytical framework that redirects us to new sites of contestation. Dahl approaches these issues from a post-structuralist and radical feminist position, while drawing from feminist sociology, feminist political science, nursing philosophy and feminist history. In particular, Struggles In (Elderly) Care highlights how the predominantly feminist theorization of care has been dominated by a sociological bias that could be improved using insights from political science concerning concepts of power and struggle, and the importance of the state and governance. This book will be of interest to researchers in sociology, gerontology, nursing, and feminist studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics

The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics
Author: Georgina Waylen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 887
Release: 2013-02-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199790833

As a field of scholarship, gender and politics has exploded over the last fifty years and is now global, institutionalized, and ever expanding. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics brings to political science an accessible and comprehensive overview of the key contributions of gender scholars to the study of politics and shows how these contributions produce a richer understanding of polities and societies. Like the field it represents, the handbook has a broad understanding of what counts as political and is based on a notion of gender that highlights masculinities as well as femininities, thereby moving feminist debates in politics beyond the focus on women. It engages with some of the key aspects of political science as well as important themes in gender and feminist research (such as sexuality and body politics), thereby forging a dialogue between gender studies in politics and mainstream political science. The handbook is organized in sections that look at sexuality and body politics; political economy; civil society; participation, representation and policymaking; institutions, states and governance as well as nation, citizenship and identity. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics contains and reflects the best scholarship in its field.

The Politicization of Parenthood

The Politicization of Parenthood
Author: Martina Richter
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2012-02-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9400729715

This book explores changes in the relationship of families and the state, and the shifting borders of public and private responsibility in education, child care, and childrearing. Covers the trend toward attempts at socio-political control of private life.

Parental Leave, Childcare and Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries

Parental Leave, Childcare and Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries
Author: Ingólfur V. Gíslason
Publisher: Nordic Council of Ministers
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2011
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9289322780

The Nordic countries are often seen as pioneers in the area of gender equality. It is true that the position of women in Nordic societies is generally stronger than in the rest of the world. There is an explicit drive in most – or perhaps all – areas of society to promote and strengthen equality between women and men. In recent years, some significant changes have occurred on the family front, where men now assume a greater share of childcare, household work and other tasks that used to be primarily women's domain. Occasionally, we hear questions in the context of public debate as to whether the investments we have made to ensure equal opportunities, rights and obligations for women and men have in fact occurred at the expense of children. This concerns particularly the expansion of childcare and the system of shared parental leave. This book addresses some of these questions through an overview of political and policy developments in Nordic parental leave and childcare. In addition, the book describes research on the situation of Nordic children and their wellbeing as viewed through international comparisons.

The Transformation of Care in European Societies

The Transformation of Care in European Societies
Author: Margarita Leon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137326514

This book aims to explore the nature and extent of the 'care deficit' problem in European societies and how effective the different care systems are in dealing with these problems through policy innovation. It combines theoretical and conceptual debates, cross-national comparisons and analytically-driven case studies.

Learning to Be Old

Learning to Be Old
Author: Margaret Cruikshank
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2009-01-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0742565955

What does it mean to grow old in America today? Is 'successful aging' our responsibility? What will happen if we fail to 'grow old gracefully'? Especially for women, the onus on the aging population in the United States is growing rather than diminishing. Gender, race, and sexual orientation have been reinterpreted as socially constructed phenomena, yet aging is still seen through physically constructed lenses. The second edition of Margaret Cruikshank's Learning to Be Old helps put aging in a new light, neither romanticizing nor demonizing it. Featuring new research and analysis, expanded sections on gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender aging and critical gerontology, and an updated chapter on feminist gerontology, the second edition even more thoroughly than the first looks at the variety of different forces affecting the progress of aging. Cruikshank pays special attention to the fears and taboos, multicultural traditions, and the medicalization and politicization of natural processes that inform our understanding of age. Through it all, we learn a better way to inhabit our age whatever it is.

The Age of Dignity

The Age of Dignity
Author: Ai-jen Poo
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 149
Release: 2009-03-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1620970465

One of Time’s 100 most influential people “shines a new light on the need for a holistic approach to caregiving in America . . . Timely and hopeful” (Maria Shriver). In The Age of Dignity, thought leader and activist Ai-jen Poo offers a wake-up call about the statistical reality that will affect us all: Fourteen percent of our population is now over sixty-five; by 2030 that ratio will be one in five. In fact, our fastest-growing demographic is the eighty-five-plus age group—over five million people now, a number that is expected to more than double in the next twenty years. This change presents us with a new challenge: how we care for and support quality of life for the unprecedented numbers of older Americans who will need it. Despite these daunting numbers, Poo has written a profoundly hopeful book, giving us a glimpse into the stories and often hidden experiences of the people—family caregivers, older people, and home care workers—whose lives will be directly shaped and reshaped in this moment of demographic change. The Age of Dignity outlines a road map for how we can become a more caring nation, providing solutions for fixing our fraying safety net while also increasing opportunities for women, immigrants, and the unemployed in our workforce. As Poo has said, “Care is the strategy and the solution toward a better future for all of us.” “Every American should read this slender book. With luck, it will be the future for all of us.” —Gloria Steinem “Positive and inclusive.” —The New York Times “A big-hearted book [that] seeks to transform our dismal view of aging and caregiving.” —Ms. magazine

Family, Ties and Care

Family, Ties and Care
Author: Hans Bertram
Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2011-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3866495811

Families international – the new milestone How may care be secured—particularly in ageing societies, how may families, relatives and friends support each other and live together beyond market reasons? How can social welfare be secured? How do different countries and different cultures solve the problems they may or may not, now or in days to come, share with other countries and cultures? Families, as is found in this publication by internationally renowned experts, are the base and well of society’s fortune in a humane paradigm. Furthermore, it is the very backbone of lifelong solidarity in inter-generational relations, and the very place where the readiness of taking on care and responsibility are experienced and learned. The publication’s underlying idea opens up two perspectives: on the one hand, differences and similarities in family life forms are chiselled out on the base of an international cooperation. Simultaneously, the international authors are called upon to express their ideas about their own country’s future more distinctly and clearly; thus, distinctions and similarities of the respective paths of development are rather easily perceived.