Anxious to pay: hidden costs of subsidized housing and the gendered burden of homeowner-citizenship in Brazil

The interlocking issues of gender, unpaid work and multiple forms of representation or lived experiences with social policy are complex. The study ‘Who Benefits: Women, Unpaid Work and Social Policy’, supported by Status of Women Canada, and guided by an advisory group consisting of women’s and anti-poverty organizations was based in Saskatchewan, Canada. The study interrogated how mothers on social assistance (SA) defined and understood unpaid caregiving work with small children; and the impact of social welfare policy guidelines that pushed SA recipients to find paid employment. Using action research and original, creative methods to gather data, the research simultaneously created a non-threatening environment for discussion, information-sharing, support and knowledge creation among participants. Overall, findings in the study resonate with other published studies on low-income women and unpaid work. Unique to this study particularly, were the action research process and outcomes which provided ways to address the needs of the study participants and to catalyze participant-led actions. The study assisted the 28 participants in linking their unpaid work with social policy and finally, in taking socio-political action. Actions included meetings with government, press conferences, and an uptake of recommendations by advisory group organizations. Independent of the research, the participants continued to meet after the study concluded.

The participation of married women in the labour market has been increasing since industrialization in the 1960s in Korea; in 1999 it overtook that of unmarried women. This raises the issue of how women reconcile paid and unpaid work and how state policy responds to this issue. In Korea, there have been numerous policy reforms designed to support working women in combining work and family life. For example, a parental leave scheme was introduced in 1995 and maternity benefits were also introduced in 2001. However, it is doubtful whether these policies can be effective in practice in Korea, where Confucian traditions in respect of women's roles remain strong. Confucian tradition has long influenced Korean society culturally and socially. Although Korean society today is not as Confucian as in the past, some traditions still remain strong, particularly with regard to the family: for example filial piety, seniority, the married woman's responsibility for her parents‐in‐law. This paper will argue that Confucian tradition makes for difficulties in Korean women's experiences of reconciling paid and unpaid work and also affects the formation of state policy. The paper explores the impact of the Confucian welfare regimes on Korean women's experience of reconciling paid and unpaid care work, and questions the gendered characteristics of the Confucian welfare state.

Aim of the study: This study investigates the unpaid domestic care work of women factory workers and its impacts on their economic value and emotional well-being in the urban stings of Gilgit. It seeks to highlight the often-overlooked contributions of women in the domestic sphere and the dual burdens of paid and unpaid labor they shoulder. Methodology: adopting quantitative research approach, data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to a random sample of women factory workers. The survey instrument, based on Tabassum et al. (2023), encompassed diverse domains of care dimension; including child care, elderly care, and special need care. Findings: the results reveal significant time allocation of unpaid care work, which adversely affects the economic well- being of the participants. Women reported high levels of stress and emotional exhaustion, compounded by the lack of recognition and financial compensation for their domestic contributions. Conclusion: The study underscores the urgent need of policy interventions to recognize and value unpaid care work, promoting gender equality and economic justice. It advocates for systemic changes to support women balancing paid and unpaid responsibilities. This research contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the multifaceted impacts of unpaid domestic care work and offers actionable insights for policymakers, academics and activists. Future studies should explore intersectional experiences of women in varying socio-economic contexts inform more inclusive and effective policy frameworks.

The rising housing issues occasioned by high costs in the United States (US) are traceable to the high costs of building materials and construction. This study proposes the combined leveraging of AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for prefabricated modular construction as a strategic means of reducing high costs of housing and increasing efficiency in construction. It argues that doing so would pave way for housing affordability in the US. Deploying descriptive survey and qualitative method alongside the applicable interpretive and descriptive techniques, the study demonstrates in the course of its analysis that AI and RPA are viable means of reducing costs of construction and housing, and increasing efficiency. It submits that amidst the established constraints to the ideal extent of leveraging AI for construction activities, the leveraging of AI and RPA for prefabricated modular construction yields huge positive results among which are reduced costs of construction and housing and increased efficiency in construction. Government and construction organizations are charged to play enabling roles in the adoption and sustainability of AI and RPA in construction activities, including prefabricated modular construction, so as to achieve reduced costs of housing and increase efficiency in construction.

Employment Transitions, Child Care Conflict, and the Mental Health of Low-Income Urban Women With Children

Transportation costs are a key component of an overall household budget. These costs are determined in part by residential location—housing and transportation costs are inextricably linked. The burden of high housing and transportation costs must be understood in context. High costs on their own are not necessarily a problem if a household freely chooses their location. Although several national-level tools (including the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s H+T Index and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Location Affordability Index) are now available to improve transparency about combined housing and transportation costs, their ability to reflect local conditions and to understand relative burdens is limited. In this paper, we create a combined housing and transportation cost index tailored to the realities of the Austin metropolitan area in Central Texas, with most data sources coming from state and local government or pertinent transportation agencies. We identify households allocating large shares of their budgets to housing and transportation costs and differentiate between those that have the ability to mode switch to reduce costs in principle and those that do not. Black and Hispanic/Latino households were disproportionately burdened by high costs. But across the entire population, overall cost burdens were low. This result means that fostering nonautomobile travel or denser residential living will be challenging using cost arguments alone.

Crabgrass confinement: Housing and transportation challenges of low- and moderate-income suburban residents in the San Francisco Bay Area

In resource-based towns that have historically been dominated by young workers and their families, seniors’ housing issues have received little attention by community leaders and senior policymakers. However, since the 1980s there has been a growing trend of older women living alone in Canadian rural and small town places. Although research on rural poverty focuses on small towns in decline, booming resource economies can also produce challenges for low-income senior women living alone due to higher housing costs and the retrenchment of health care and service supports. Because housing costs can consume a significant proportion of household income, low-income senior women living alone may not have the financial resources to cover expenses in a competitive housing market. Using a household survey, we explored this different dimension of the Canadian rural landscape by looking at housing costs for low-income senior women living alone in the booming oil and gas town of Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada. The authors findings indicate that low-income senior women living alone are incurring higher housing costs compared with other senior groups.

Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953–1961

Editor's Introduction

Over the last two decades, scholars have situated paid and unpaid care work as an important component in the US economic infrastructure. Until recently, scholars have neglected to address the sociological significance of the cooking and sharing of food (“foodways”) as part of the productive unpaid work of caregivers. This article details the lives of West Indian childcare providers in Brooklyn, New York and places their experiences in the context of economic structures. The study shows how childcare providers share food with their charges to establish forms of control and resist the subordination inherent in childcare work. By studying the unpaid care work of food sharing through participant observation and interviews during 2004–7, this research reveals blurred boundaries between reproductive and productive work. It also analyzes how childcare providers resist and momentarily invert the hierarchy of employer households, shaping their workdays beyond the responsibilities of taking care of children.

South African researchers' legitimate preoccupation with political and market concerns has, in the past, resulted in much less attention being paid to gender dynamics in South Africa. Where gender inequality has been targeted as an issue, studies have largely located their arguments within public debates of the polity and the economy. Studies seeking to understand the intra-household dynamics of gender relations are still rare in South Africa, so that the lives of those women and men who are neither part of the open labour market, nor the frontline political agenda still remain invisible and silent. This study seeks to contribute to the on-going gender debate in South Africa by concentrating on the intra-household dynamics of gender, and how its articulation with the public domain impacts on the position of women. The research examines various aspects of the economic survival strategies of households headed by women in Orlando East, Soweto. In particular, it investigates the socio-economic value of women's unpaid labour; the value of non-market transfers for the survival of poor households; the significance of household structure for household welfare and survival; and the link between formal education and informal income earning opportunities. The study revealed a strong relationship between economic problems and breakdown of urban African families. Economic and social policy, and societal beliefs, have so far failed to consider and acknowledge the changing roles of women who are increasingly being forced into the status of household headship, in the context of worsening urban livelihoods. The major social policy implication arising from the study is that low-income African women, in particular, should be targeted as a priority group by researchers. Women heads of households, many of whom have no security of income, are particularly vulnerable because they have to provide primarily for their households. It is suggested that policy-oriented research should analyze, first and foremost, intra-household dynamics along gender lines to unveil the unequal distribution of welfare and opportunity, and women's relative discrimination within the home. The study also revealed serious limitations with the data base on the position and status of women in South Africa. A need for more research with a progressive edge is therefore stressed. It is believed that the political climate provided by the recent democratization of government in South Africa, provides a conducive context within which the contents of the women's constitution could be transformed into specific programmes and projects focusing on low-income women and women heads of households. The major contribution of this study has been its shift of emphasis of the gender debate in South Africa away from explicit political and shop-floor issues, to household and neighbourhood level strategies, while emphasising the relevance of these experiences to the functioning of the more visible institutions such as the economy and the polity.

Housing Is Health Care

BackgroundUnpaid labour as a determinant of health is under-researched, especially in low- and middle-income countries where women bear a disproportionate load of unpaid labour. Moreover, the double burden of employment...

Housing and indoor feeding of sheep is required throughout the cold season, which can last more than half a year, in Nordic highlands and Alpine regions. This study aimed to examine and evaluate the housing costs, including labour requirements, according to type of sheep housing system and degree of mechanized feeding by investigating systems commonly used in Nordic and Alpine regions. Detailed cost data were obtained from 61 surveyed sheep farmers in Norway with sheep houses built between the years 2008 and 2015. Costs were calculated for a baseline scenario (2021-prices) as well as for five scenarios at low and high discount rates and opportunity cost of labour, and high energy prices. The median (interquartile range) flock size was 150 (100) winter-fed sheep. Houses with slatted floors were more expensive than deep-litter systems. Costs of bedding material and feed waste were however higher, and the net value of the manure were lower in houses with deep-litter systems. At the baseline assumptions, overall net housing costs per sheep was not statistically different among the main housing types studied. Multiple regression analyses showed that net housing costs per sheep were lower in larger flocks and for centrally located farms (control variables). Undertaking daily chores, such as feeding of roughages twice a day rather than once, resulted in significantly higher net housing costs. Mechanized feeding of roughages, and even more so for concentrates, were not economically justified since labour savings were not sufficient to pay for the additional capital costs. A round bale chopper lowered net housing costs, significantly at a high labour cost. None of the scenarios found slatted floors to be significantly more expensive than deep-litter systems. High costs of labour and capital favoured deep-litter systems, while slatted floor systems were more advantageous at rising prices of energy that resulted in increased values of organic manures and costs of feed wastes and bedding materials. The study was based on a decade old data from common Norwegian sheep house variants. Farmers that consider constructing a new sheep house today, still must compare these variants as their main alternatives. We encourage other researchers to include effects of housing systems and mechanized feeding on animal performance, health, and welfare. Moreover, future studies should preferably also be undertaken in other environmental or socio-economic settings to produce more general results.