Care parading as service: Negotiating recognition and equality in user‐controlled personal assistance

Cecilie Basberg Neumann and Tonje Gundersen

Gender, Work and Organization, 2019, vol. 26, issue 7, 948-961

Abstract: This article addresses aspects of the relationship between disabled people and their personal assistants within the user‐controlled personal assistance programme in Norway (BPA — brukerstyrt personlig assistanse). Within this programme, a disabled person and her/his personal assistant (PA) form a working relationship in which the disabled person functions as a supervisor for her/his PA. The purpose of the programme is to enable the supervisor to live as independently as possible, equal to any other member of society. In a study conducted about the work relationship between physically disabled persons and their PAs, we found that many supervisors wanted service, not care, from their PAs. Furthermore, the supervisors’ image of the ideal PA was one who was invisible. In this article, we wish to address the tensions between supervisors’ hard‐won rights to personal assistance in order to live independent lives and the gendered work‐related implications of positioning PAs as invisible service workers within this work relationship.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12297

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:gender:v:26:y:2019:i:7:p:948-961

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0968-6673

Access Statistics for this article

Gender, Work and Organization is currently edited by David Knights, Deborah Kerfoot and Ida Sabelis

More articles in Gender, Work and Organization from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().