Love and skills: comparing the valuation of care work in different arenas

This project explores the valuation of care work in six occupations; registered nurse, assistant nurse, social worker, care aide, preschool teacher and childcare worker.

These occupations operate in different welfare arenas, but they have all undergone sweeping changes resulting in conflicting logics between professional and organisational standards for performing care work.

By comparing how these contradictions shape care work in different arenas, the project contributes to new knowledge about the relationship between experiences of care work, the societal status of caregiving and the valuation of jobs in caring occupations.

Furthermore, by analysing occupations that require university degrees as well as occupations that require high school diplomas or no education beyond compulsory schooling, the project also explores the role of education and professionalisation in the valuation of care work.The project draws on feminist economics and uses a holistic model to evaluate all the activities included in care work.

Methodologically, the project combines several approaches in three interrelated sub-studies: 1) review of research and policies of evaluating care work; 2) workshops, on-site observations and self-reporting of care work; and 3) focus group interviews with care workers in different arenas.

This field-organising and theory-building work should generate new findings and new concepts and provide a strong foundation for future research and policy-making in care services.