The effect of the pandemic in a highly feminised sector: policy changes or back to normal? A cross-national discussion on home care work (part I)

Abstract

When the COVID pandemic began in 2020, home care workers received increased media and political attention, because of their role as frontline workers. Despite cross-national differences, they were globally perceived as 'essential' workers, and this contributed to their visibility during the crisis. Each country used existing institutional resources (legislation, welfare state institutions, courts) to address the public health crisis. In order to analyse the extent to which policies developed in the urgency of the crisis enabled institutional change or, conversely, represented limited and temporary changes to long-lasting policies, the papers in this first panel use a top-down approach. Covering different geographical areas –Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, the US, Latin America– the different contributions explore whether the pandemic contributed to introduce (or to accelerate) long-term changes in the home care sectors and whether this translated into institutional reforms and/or a permanent improvement of workers employment and working conditions. Specific attention is paid to pre-existing policy frameworks, the ‘emergency’ measures adopted during the health crisis, and the action of institutional stakeholders (trade unions, employers’ organisations, care providers, governmental bodies) in negotiating and defining such measures. The contributions presented in this panel discuss the problems, the potential and the challenges encountered in the field of home care during the pandemic, how they were managed with a view to long-term change, and what lessons can be learned from this experience in terms of institutional reforms. Although much has been written in the first two years of the pandemic, it is important to foster a cross-country discussion that allows us to look not only at short-term measures, but also at medium- and long-term transformations. At the very least, it is a reminder of how difficult it is for countries to bring about real change in a very undervalued feminised sectors.

Title	Details
Care beyond Crisis? COVID In-home Policies in the United States	View Paper Details
All rhetoric, no change? The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on working conditions in home care	View Paper Details
Live-In Care After the Pandemic in Germany: Business as Usual after a Focusing Event	View Paper Details
The management of the home care sector in Belgium during the pandemic: fragmented measures or coordinated effort?	View Paper Details
The difficult attempts to reduce the limitation and fragmentation of workers' rights in home care policies during the pandemic in Germany	View Paper Details
The Covid-19 pandemic as a trigger for the expansion of social rights: unemployment insurance for domestic workers in South America	View Paper Details