Migrant Women, Care Work, and Women's Employment in Greece

This contribution is about women's paid and unpaid work in the context of rapid socioeconomic change in Greece between 1983 and 2008. Drawing on feminist analyses of women's employment and the care sector, it highlights the link between women's paid employment and the supply of affordable immigrant (female) labor in Greece in the sphere of care provision. It examines three issues: the acceleration of women's involvement in the paid labor force after 1990; the parallel influx of immigrants, a quarter of whom are women involved in service provision for households, into Greece; and finally, the “big picture” of the demand for care (both paid and unpaid, childcare as well as eldercare) in the context of an aging population and women's rising participation in paid work. The analysis highlights the key contribution of migrant women acting as catalysts for social change.