Global Variations In The Political And Social Economy Of Care

1. Introduction : global variations in the political and social economy of care : worlds apart? / Shahra Razavi and Silke Staab -- 2. Democratic care politics in an age of limits / Joan Tronto -- 3. Advanced economy, modern welfare state and traditional care regimes : the case of Switzerland / Mascha Madörin, Brigitte Schnegg and Nadia Baghdadi -- 4. The struggle against familialism : reconfiguring the care diamond in Japan / Emiko Ochiai ... [et al.] -- 5. The boss, the worker, his wife and no babies : South Korean political and social economy of care in a context of institutional rigidities / Ito Peng -- 6. Beyond maternalism? : the political and social organization of childcare in Argentina / Valeria Esquivel and Eleonor Faur -- 7. The limits of family and community care : challenges for public policy in Nicaragua / Juliana Martinez-Franzoni and Koen Voorend -- 8. Care in South Africa : a legacy of family disruption / Debbie Budlender and Francie Lund -- 9. Unpaid and overstretched : coping with HIV et AIDs in Tanzania / Debbie Budlender and Ruth Meena -- 10. Between the state, market and family : structures, policies and practices of care in India / Rajni Palriwala and Neetha N. -- 11. Claims and frames in the making of care policies / Fiona Williams -- 12. Harmonizing global care policy? : care and the commission on the status of women / Kate Bedford -- 13. The globalisation of paid care labour migration : dynamics, impacts and policy / Nicola Yeates.

As national borders become more permeable, women are increasingly travelling from poor to rich countries to take up jobs as care workers. The struggle to maintain a healthy work/care balance in Western nations is creating a care deficit in the developing world. This volume links ethics to the social politics of care by examining the implications of the feminization of migrant labour and the shortcomings of social policy. From Canada to Sweden and from Korea to Japan, renowned and emerging scholars reveal that a truly feminist ethics of care must be grounded in the concrete lives of real people working in transnational webs of social relations.

Care work, both paid and unpaid, contributes to well-being, social development and economic growth. But the costs of providing care are unequally borne across gender and social class. Feminist scholarship on the gendered construction of welfare provisioning and welfare regimes has produced a conceptually strong and empirically grounded analysis of care, reinforcing the necessity of rethinking the distinctions between "the public" and "the private" as well as the links between them. Yet this analysis, premised on post-industrial contexts, does not travel easily to other parts of the world. Many of its core assumptions – about family structures, labor markets, state capacities, and public social provisioning – do not hold for a wider range of countries. Drawing on original research on the care economy in three developing regions (Africa, Asia, Latin America), this volume addresses a major empirical lacuna while facilitating a conversation across the North-South divide.

"Health and health care are at the pop of the public agenda, not only in Canada but throughout the world. Canada's most cherished social program -- health care -- is being transformed in many ways, some highly visible and others hidden from public view."--Cover.

Poverty and inequality are among the most significant determinants of health. Increased inequality gaps associated with globalization have serious implications for global health. Global changes in political economy shape global health influencing who bears the burden from epidemics, unhealthy environments and lack of access to health care.

This book explores recent social policy reforms and innovations in Chile. Focusing on four major reform episodes — health, pensions, childcare, and maternity leave — Silke Staab unveils the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the successes and failures of actors pursuing positive gender change in social policy. She shows that even in highly constrained settings positive gender change is possible, but that its scope and quality are bound to vary in response to sector-specific institutional constraints and opportunities.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.