ILPC 2026

 Though precarious work is a relatively new phenomenon in the neoliberalizing global North, it has long existed in the global South. Similarly, while precarious work is a relatively new phenomenon in the core economy, increasingly impacting previously secure, well paid male job categories, gender segmentation of the labour market has meant that female-dominated sectors have consistently featured employment that is insecure, low wage and uncertain. These dynamics are particularly at play in care work, or employment aimed at supporting those with physical and emotional needs that cannot or are not met in the private realm of the family. Drawing on international qualitative case study data in the form of interviews, observations and document reviews, this paper provides an comparative analysis of the highly feminized non-government, non-profit social services sector in one country from the global South (South Africa) and two from the global North (Canada and Australia). Though differences existed among the three countries studied, commonalities were more striking.

The case study sites in all three countries were characterized by unstable and precarious funding, the expectation that workers would undertake unpaid hours of care work in addition to their paid hours, and service users that were increasingly impoverished and marginalised within the growing class chasm in the larger neoliberal context. Additional commonalities included: a heavy to exclusive reliance on precarious forms of employment; a predominantly female labour force; intense workloads; poor wages and conditions; and a high commitment to the work and to service users. The paper explores the tensions between these aspects of care work and seeks to theorize the ways that the gendered commitment to care, prevalent among the workers in all three countries, is both a pathway through which control and power is transferred to management, as well as a major source of resistance within the Labour Process.  Feminist Political Economy will also be used to clarify how larger institutions of the economic and political systems help shape policy regimes and the interactions of actors at the level of social life, particularly production (paid work) and reproduction (unpaid care work) (Peterson and Runyan 2009; Vosko 2002).