Legal Constructions of Unpaid Caregiving

One Day Workshop

28th June 2005 at Keynes College, University of Kent, UK

A joint venture of the Universities of Keele, Kent, and Westminster, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council

This workshop is the fifth in a series of six workshops on the theme of Gender, Sexuality and Law: Theory and Practice, funded by the ESRC. The workshop aims to bring together researchers working within the broad field of law, gender and sexuality and with a particular interest in issues relating to the treatment, depiction and positioning of unpaid caregiving in law and legal discourse.

A core object of the workshop is to explore the legal construction and positioning of unpaid caregiving, within the UK and in a broader global context, to ascertain firstly, the role and significance of unpaid caregiving in regulation and policy-making; secondly, the distributive consequences of particular legal constructions of unpaid caregiving; and finally, the progressive possibilities posed by challenging or disrupting current/prevailing understandings of unpaid caregiving in law.

Research questions include:

·  How is unpaid caregiving constructed and positioned in different contexts in legal discourse (e.g., labour law, family law, social security law, international law and development)?

·  (Relatedly), to what extent do legal conceptions of unpaid caregiving converge/diverge across different sub-disciplines of law? For example, how does the depiction of unpaid caregiving in marital property law (broadly construed) correspond with its positioning in legal discourse around labour or social welfare? Is there a detectable and coherent narrative of unpaid caregiving in law or a set of subnarratives? How far are they in tension/conflict with one another and to what effects?

·  How and why are legal narratives of unpaid caregiving changing? How do changes in this context correspond to perceived or actual changes in the gendered allocation of the labour or in (hetero)sexual constructions of the family?

·  To what extent is the legal depiction of unpaid caregiving dependent upon the invocation of dichotomies - work/family; public/private; male/female; emotion/reason - and what are the implications of /possibilities posed by challenging or dislodging these dichotomous forms from an equality-seeking point of view?

·  Can gender, sexuality and law scholarship help to illuminate the conceptual and legal difficulties which characterise understandings of unpaid caregiving in a legal-political context?

·  In what ways can a focus on unpaid caregiving inform current understandings/analyses of gender, sexuality and law issues, in particular in relation to the family?

·  How are current legal and political strategies to redress gender and other inequities affecting traditional legal conceptions of unpaid caregiving and the work/family dichotomy?

·  What is the relationship (theoretical, functional, ideological, legal) between unpaid caregiving and policies/discourses of social welfare?

·  What is the role, actual and potential, of unpaid caregiving in the discourse and politics of development?

·  How is unpaid caregiving depicted and positioned in the context of the emerging policies of international financial institutions and accompanying discourses?

Please direct queries to Joanne Conaghan () or fill out the registration form at the end of this document.


Provisional Programme

9.00 am - 10. 00 am Keynes College, Upper Lobby

Coffee and registration

10.00 am -12.30 am

Current configurations of unpaid caregiving: shifting boundaries in diverse contexts

Kerry Rittich, University of Toronto, Equity or efficiency: constructions of the work/family nexus within the international financial institutions

Margarita Leon, University of Kent (Social Policy), Unpaid caregiving and discourses of welfare

Jane Krishnadas, University of Keele, The World Bank; global de-valuing of local capacities to care

Anne Barlow, University of Exeter, An overview of the configuration(s) of unpaid caregiving within current legal discourse in and around the family

12.30 pm-1.30 pm Keynes Upper Lobby

Lunch

1.30 pm -3.00 pm

Legal conceptualisations of unpaid caregiving

Simone Wong, University of Kent, Legal constructions of unpaid caregiving in the context of shared property rights

Jo Bridgeman, University of Sussex, Dependency and responsibility: caring for children with severe disabilities

Sarah Nield, University of Southampton, Testamentary promises: A test bed for legal frameworks of unpaid caregiving

3.00 pm - 3.30 pm

tea/coffee

3.30 - 5.00 Managing the care deficit: discourses of care and carers

Ann Mumford, LSE, Taxing the sandwich generation: discourses surrounding multiple caregiving - women, flexibility, gender essentialism and money

Joanne Conaghan and Emily Grabham, University of Kent, Sexuality and the citizen-carer

Ann Stewart, University of Warwick, Who do we care about: welfare policy and global care chains

Suzi Ahmed Shukor, University of Kent, Unpaid housework and working mothers in Malaysia: what difference does it make?

5. 00 pm - 6. 00 pm

Drinks reception sponsored by Feminist Legal Studies


Legal Constructions of Unpaid Caregiving

Tuesday 28 June 2005

Keynes College, University of Kent

To register please return the booking form to Lynsey Goodacre, Kent Law School, Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NS

or fax 01227 827831

or e-mail to

NB please could all delegates, including those funded by ESRC, complete and return this form

Terms and conditions: Cancellations will be subject to an administration fee of 20% In the event of a cancellation less than 2 weeks prior to the event no refund will be available.

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