Making Gendered Healthcare Work Visible: Over-Looked Labour in Four Diverse European Settings

Hannah Bradby, Jenny Phillimore, Beatriz Padilla and Tilman Brand
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Hannah Bradby: Sociology Department, Uppsala University, Sweden
Jenny Phillimore: School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK
Beatriz Padilla: Sociology Department, University of South Florida, USA / CIES-IUL, ISCTE–University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal
Tilman Brand: Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology—BIPS, Germany

Social Inclusion, 2019, vol. 7, issue 2, 33-43

Abstract: Healthcare has long been a gendered enterprise, with women taking responsibility for maintaining health and engaging with service providers. Universal healthcare provision notwithstanding, women nonetheless undertake a range of healthcare work, on their own account and on behalf of others, which remains largely invisible. As part of a multi-method comparative European study that looked at access to healthcare in diverse neighbourhoods from the point of view of people’s own health priorities, the concept of ‘healthcare bricolage’ describes the process of mobilizing resources and overcoming constraints to meet particular health needs. Bricolage mediates between different kinds of resources to meet particular challenges and describing these processes makes visible that work which has been unseen, over-looked and naturalised, as part of a gendered caring role. Drawing on 160 semi-structured interviews and a survey with 1,755 residents of highly diverse neighbourhoods in Germany, UK, Sweden and Portugal, this article illustrates the gendered nature of healthcare bricolage. The complex variations of women’s bricolage within and beyond the public healthcare system show how gendered caring roles intersect with migration status and social class in the context of particular healthcare systems.

Keywords: bricolage; diversity; European welfare; gender; healthcare; migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:socinc:v7:y:2019:i:2:p:33-43

DOI: 10.17645/si.v7i2.1962

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