Home and Work/Public and Private - Blog #3

Personally I have not really had to experience carework within my family. I suppose you could consider helping out with babysitting my younger siblings so that both of my parents could work, as an example. Fortunately though, no one in my immediate family has gotten seriously ill. I lost an aunt and a cousin to cancer, and I know that it was extremely difficult for their immediate family to balance their lives to care for them. It is necessary for someone to always be around to take care of them when the situation worsens and the ill can no longer do daily functions by themselves. You also know that you have a limited time with these loved ones and want to take advantage of that time. I cannot imagine how extremely emotionally and mentally difficult it would be to have to give up your career in order to fully care for another person.

“Juggling Work and Care” demonstrated how different businesses within the UK are accommodating to employees’ need when they must also be a caregiver. Businesses enabled employees to work from home, work odd shifts, and offered support to caregivers. An internet networking site, where information, suggestions, and experiences of caregivers can be shared, was created in the UK to better assist people in this situation. By doing this, employers found that there was no decrease in work productivity, and that their employees became more loyal and committed to the company. With a plan like this, people are able to keep their jobs and continue taking care of their loved ones. These options create less stress for employees and overall are a really generous and efficient way to cater to the needs of everyone.

“Women’s work” is described as being all the household work; laundry, cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids. “Men’s work” is everything outside of the home or tasks such as car repairs and mowing. These ideals of gender roles have existed since the beginning of time and in modern day “women’s work” is not always considered “real work”. Society needs to focus less on these gender roles through the media and through general notions that this is the way things should be. Almost all cleaning supplies ads are targeted toward women; showing women cleaning, cooking, and running errands. I think society should portray women in professional environments more frequently and display men in household environments more often. I think the public should educate themselves on the pay disparity between genders. Also, society should recognize care as “real work” and that it is also an economically stimulating aspect of life. If society could rid themselves of these engrained gender notions, I think it would help achieve gender equality.