Women's Hidden Work Linda Delp

Abstract

The articles in this issue of New Solutions emerged from the 5th International Congress of Women, Work and Health held in Zacatecas, Mexico in 2008. They represent a small portion of the work presented at the Congress but provide a window into the critical work women do worldwide. From Brazil and Bolivia to Mexico, the United States, and Canada and across the Atlantic to Spain, these articles illustrate both common threads and differences in women’s experience of work and its impact on their health. They highlight women’s struggles to improve their health in a variety of arenas with an emphasis on the Americas. This issue begins in the North with accounts of Canadian domestic and U.S. home care workers, situated in the private sphere of the home, and their efforts to advocate for policy change from outside the system. It ends in the South with a description of women policy makers in Bolivia, situated in the public sphere of elected office, and their campaign to assert their right to change policy from within the system without fear of violence. Articles from Mexico document the impact of global and workplace policies on women and the need for change in the agricultural and maquiladora industries. Together with articles from Brazil and Spain, they illustrate the persistence of gender inequality in the domestic sphere and the effect on women who must juggle simultaneous work and family demands. The articles from Canada and the United States bring to the forefront the work of women who are employed to care for others in the often invisible domain of the home. Hanley and colleagues depict the plight of Filipina domestic workers in Quebec whose experiences are shaped by global policies that force women to leave their own families behind to care for others and by provincial policies that exclude domestic workers from workers’ compensation coverage. 415