IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/gender/v25y2018i1p63-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Carers to Trainers: Professional Identity and Body Work in Rehabilitative Eldercare

Author

Listed:
  • Agnete Meldgaard Hansen
  • Annette Kamp

Abstract

This article explores how a nationwide reform initiative, calling for a rehabilitative, activating and ‘training’ approach to elderly people in Danish homecare services, may transform gendered and embodied conceptions of ‘the professional care worker'. Care work for the elderly is a low†paid and low†status occupation, affected by the stigma connected with elderly bodies. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a homecare unit, this article shows how the adoption of a new distanced, goal†oriented approach to elderly bodies attempts to transform professional identities, and how care work is constructed as reflexive and change oriented, in contrast to emotional and relational approaches. This transformation potentially leads to a more advantageous position for care workers in gendered professional hierarchies. Simultaneously this process seems to render care workers' own bodies more visible, problematizing what are perceived as uncontrolled and unhealthy care worker bodies. The article thus argues that rehabilitative eldercare leads to an intertwining of two forms of bodywork, where work on the care worker's own body and the elderly body mutually constitute each other in a novel body–body articulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Agnete Meldgaard Hansen & Annette Kamp, 2018. "From Carers to Trainers: Professional Identity and Body Work in Rehabilitative Eldercare," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 63-76, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:63-76
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12126
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12126
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/gwao.12126?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carol Wolkowitz, 2002. "The Social Relations of body Work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 16(3), pages 497-510, September.
    2. Inger Askehave & Karen Korning Zethsen, 2014. "Gendered Constructions of Leadership in Danish Job Advertisements," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(6), pages 531-545, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Julie Ham & Aaron Ceradoy, 2022. "“God blessed me with employers who don't starve their helpers”: Food insecurity and dehumanization in domestic work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 922-937, May.
    2. Susan Mayson & Anne Bardoel, 2021. "Sustaining a career in general practice: Embodied work, inequality regimes, and turnover intentions of women working in general practice," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 1133-1151, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Konnikov, Alla & Denier, Nicole & Hu, Yang & Hughes, Karen D. & Al-Ani, Jabir Alshehabi & Ding, Lei & Rets, Irina & Tarafdar, Monideepa, 2022. "BIAS Word inventory for work and employment diversity, (in)equality and inclusivity (Version 1.0)," SocArXiv t9v3a, Center for Open Science.
    2. Baum, Tom, 2012. "Working the skies: Changing representations of gendered work in the airline industry, 1930–2011," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 1185-1194.
    3. Katherine Sang & Jen Remnant & Thomas Calvard & Katriona Myhill, 2021. "Blood Work: Managing Menstruation, Menopause and Gynaecological Health Conditions in the Workplace," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-16, February.
    4. Mohammed Cheded & Alexandros Skandalis, 2021. "Touch and contact during COVID‐19: Insights from queer digital spaces," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 340-347, July.
    5. Erin Hatton, 2017. "Mechanisms of invisibility: rethinking the concept of invisible work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(2), pages 336-351, April.
    6. Elaine Swan & Rick Flowers, 2018. "Lasting Impressions: Ethnic Food Tour Guides and Body Work in Southwestern Sydney," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 24-41, January.
    7. Rachel Lara Cohen & Carol Wolkowitz, 2018. "The Feminization of Body Work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 42-62, January.
    8. Oldford, Erin & Fiset, John, 2021. "Decoding bias: Gendered language in finance internship job postings," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C).
    9. Nanna Mik†Meyer & Anne Roelsgaard Obling & Carol Wolkowitz, 2018. "Bodies and Intimate Relations in Organizations and Work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 1-8, January.
    10. Francesco Della Puppa, 2019. "Bodies at Work, Work on Bodies: Migrant Bodies, Wage Labour, and Family Reunification in Italy," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 963-981, November.
    11. Diane van den Broek, 2017. "Perforated body work: the case of tele-nursing," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(6), pages 904-920, December.
    12. Clare Butler, 2020. "Managing the Menopause through ‘Abjection Work’: When Boobs Can Become Embarrassingly Useful, Again," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(4), pages 696-712, August.
    13. Costas, Jana & Blagoev, Blagoy & Kärreman, Dan, 2016. "The arena of the professional body: Sport, autonomy and ambition in professional service firms," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 10-19.
    14. Anuratha Venkataraman & Anjali Venkataraman, 2021. "Lockdown & me …!! Reflections of working women during the lockdown in Vadodara, Gujarat‐Western India," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(S2), pages 289-306, July.
    15. Dawn Lyon & Les Back, 2012. "Fishmongers in a Global Economy: Craft and Social Relations on a London Market," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 17(2), pages 1-11, May.
    16. Phillip Mizen & Carol Wolkowitz, 2012. "Visualising Changing Landscapes of Work and Labour," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 17(2), pages 1-7, May.
    17. Adriaenssens, Stef, 2010. "'Its all supply and demand': Market fatalism and norm construction by prostitution clients in the Netherlands and Belgium," Working Papers 2010/18, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    18. Jason Hughes & Ruth Simpson & Natasha Slutskaya & Alex Simpson & Kahryn Hughes, 2017. "Beyond the symbolic: a relational approach to dirty work through a study of refuse collectors and street cleaners," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(1), pages 106-122, February.
    19. Ruth Simpson & Alison Pullen, 2018. "‘Cool’ Meanings: Tattoo Artists, Body Work and Organizational ‘Bodyscape’," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 32(1), pages 169-185, February.
    20. Michelle O’Toole & Thomas Calvard, 2020. "I’ve Got Your Back: Danger, Volunteering and Solidarity in Lifeboat Crews," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(1), pages 73-90, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:63-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.