A View from the Inside

Abstract

The Nordic model is often seen as having succeeded in gaining recognition for care-giving work and as embodying a potentially women friendly state model owing to the availability of publicly provided care for the elderly and pre-school children. This simple story neglects one particular group of women - publicly employed home-helpers and the valorization of their care-giving work. Applying Nancy Fraser’s dual theory of justice gives us a normative and analytical tool with which to analyse this group’s situation in relation to recognition and redistribution. Some advances concerning pay and in the professionalization of the home-helper’s work have taken place. These advances hide less flattering developments, such as a general egalitarianism (on pay) insensitive to gendered valorizations, an androcentric perception of work and work-related accidents formerly at play and a New Public Management inspired elite discourse struggling to reduce the home-helper’s work to simple, manual tasks in a discourse of de-professionalization. Overlapping of struggles about redistribution and recognition show that the positive changes identified are merely superficial, since no basic change of the socio-cultural framework has taken place that provides an impetus for future struggles.