Since the 1980s, practically all of the western welfare states have developed social policies, which aim at shifting the responsibilities for welfare services from the state to the family, the civil society or to the market. In Sweden, this political transformation has particularly hit the public eldercare. In the last twenty years, the percentage of the population 65 years and older receiving public home help services in Sweden has decreased from 23 to 8 per cent at the same time as the number of beds in hospitalized eldercare has been heavily reduced. Moreover, during the course of the 2000s, the majority of the Swedish municipalities have reintroduced means testing of the eldercare based on whether the elderly have relatives or not that can perform the services. Parallel with these downsizes in the publicly financed and organized eldercare; privately produced eldercare services have increased, carried out by large and internationally own business corporations. Based on an theoretical framework, which combines the historical approach within the neo-institutional research tradition with a discursive method of analysis, this thesis explores if the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in Swedish eldercare during which new ideas have become embedded in the institutional frameworks regulating the division of responsibility for eldercare services between the state, the family and the market. To examine if and how the municipalities, which are principally responsible for organizing and financing the public eldercare in Sweden, have implemented the change in ideas that have emerged in national politics since the 1980s, the thesis also examines how the eldercare has developed in two of Sweden’s municipalities since the 1980s. The results of the thesis demonstrates that the period from the 1980s and onwards has been a formative moment in the Swedish eldercare during which new ideas regarding the public responsibility for eldercare service have emerged and become institutionalized. Since the 1980s, senior citizens’ need for care has increasingly been re-interpreted from a public to a private issue with the consequence that today, their need for certain services, in particular those related to housework, are no longer regarded to be a public responsibility but a private matter that the elderly will have to solve, either by buying the services on the market, or, by asking relatives for help and assistance. The main problem connected with this reprivatization of senior citizens’ need for care is, however, that as the state has withdrawn its responsibility, women, in their role of being wives, daughters, or daughters-in-laws, have been forced to step in as informal and unpaid providers of care. Therefore, regardless of political reigns and modes of production, women have been forced to taken on an increasingly larger responsibility for their elderly relatives.

高齡化社會的來臨，增加了台灣的長期照顧需求。在華人家庭傳統上，照顧一直是女性的責任，社會規範與對性別角色的期待也都將照顧工作賦予女性。但隨著婦女勞參率的增加，許多有經濟能力的女性也開始試圖透過將照顧工作「外包」的方式，來移轉自己的照顧責任。從台灣逐年攀升的外籍看護工人數，即可看出此一趨勢發展。在過往母職外包的文獻中，母親將照顧小孩的責任外包出去的同時，會透過各種手段來維持其原有家庭的完整性，以及合理化這些作為，並重新詮釋這些原本被認為該由自己承擔的責任。而這樣的情況，是否同樣會發生在「孝道外包」的情況中？子女／媳婦會怎麼樣去詮釋自己的行為？他們如何定義照顧工作外包後「孝」的意義？ 本研究發現，家庭成員選擇外包照顧工作的過程中，受到子女輩成員間的經濟能力、角色與長輩的情感關係等各種因素所影響，主要的決策者與執行者會由不同的家庭子女輩成員擔任。對於將奉養工作外包給外籍看護的子女／媳婦來說，他們透過將自己的角色轉換成「監督者」或「主導者」，以確保外籍看護維持高品質照顧的方式，來重新定義自己的孝道實踐。「父母在家終老」以及「主導照顧過程」成為孝的核心條件。此外，透過敘述外籍看護的「專業」與「像對待家人」般的良好照顧，來證明他們將長輩的孝道外包是對長輩「有利的」。同時這個利益並不只是對於長輩，聘請外籍看護還有許多對其他家庭成員有利的外溢效果；例如整理家務，煮飯等等。對子女輩成員來說，聘請外籍看護是一個多方考量後，在現今照顧工作逐漸走向市場化下，對整體家庭最具利益的選擇。 / The need for long-term care increases with Taiwan’s aging population. According to the Chinese tradition as well as current social norms and expectations, care work is considered women’s responsibility. However, with women’s increasing participation in the labor force, many financially-abled women started to outsource care work to relieve their responsibility. The rise in the rate of hiring foreign caregivers in Taiwan manifests this trend. Current literature on outsourcing maternal care work has pointed out the ways mothers maintain family intactness and justify their behavior of outsourcing maternal care. Does the same situation happen in outsourcing filial piety? How do sons, daughters and daughter-in-laws justify such behavior? How would they reinterpret the meaning of ‘filial piety’ after sourcing parental care? The study found that the choice of outsourcing parental care work was affected by factors such as children's financial conditions, roles in the family, and relationship with parents. Sons, daughters and daughters-in-law often played different roles of decision makers and managers in outsourcing parental care. For those who outsourced parental care work to foreign caregivers, their roles were changed from 'primary caregiver' to 'supervisor' or 'manager' to ensure that their parents would obtain high quality care. In this way, the meaning and practice of filial piety were redefined. 'Parents living at home till the end of life' and 'quality control of parental care' became the core considerations of filial piety. By emphasizing foreign caregivers' professionalism and their family-like relationship with foreign caregivers, those children who outsourced parent care work justified their choice of outsourcing and claimed that such arrangement was beneficial to parents who were cared for. In addition, the care work provided by foreign caregivers often generated 'spillover effects' for the whole household; not only parents but other family members could also obtain benefits from hiring foreign caregivers. For example, foreign caregivers helped cleaning house, cooking and so on. Consequently, the choice of outsourcing parental care work to foreign caregiver was considered most appropriate for the whole family.

Cette thèse en philosophie politique féministe part avant tout d’un constat empirique. Malgré les avancées réalisées depuis les cinquante dernières années au plan de l’égalité des sexes, la division du travail entre les hommes et les femmes, aussi bien sur le marché de l’emploi que dans la famille, perdure toujours dans nos sociétés démocratiques. S’inscrivant dans une perspective résolument féministe, croisant les réflexions contemporaines sur la théorie politique du care et la méthode féministe postmarxiste, cette thèse propose une interprétation plausible de ce clivage. Dans une première partie, l’analyse de deux enjeux d’actualité en matière d’égalité des sexes, le soutien économique aux proches aidantes (chap. 1) et la reconnaissance du travail des mères et des femmes au foyer (chap. 2), me mène à la conclusion préliminaire suivante : malgré les objectifs visés, ces mesures politiques contribuent à enfermer encore davantage les femmes dans des rôles traditionnels. Dans une deuxième partie, je soutiens que ces mesures, ainsi que les approches féministes qui les sous-tendent, découlent elles-mêmes de processus de domination. L’argument avancé comporte quatre volets. J’aborde dans un premier temps les théories politiques du care. En inscrivant la réflexion sur le care dans une perspective politique, et non plus seulement morale, ces théoriciennes adoptent une définition du care comme « activité de soin » et visent à dissocier genre et care. Je suggère que malgré ces objectifs, elles adhèrent toujours à la logique différentialiste qui renforce le lien entre les femmes et le care lorsqu’il s’agit de proposer des politiques en matière d’égalité des sexes (chap. 3). En fait, cette logique différentialiste est intimement liée à la notion qu’elles se font du genre. Leur approche constructionniste, en démarquant le genre construit du sexe biologique, a pour effet de reconfirmer la différence des sexes (chap. 4). Sous ces approches, l’homme demeurant la norme et les femmes étant définies comme différentes, ces dernières intériorisent l’idée d’une « différence » logée en leurs propres corps (chap. 5). J’attire enfin l’attention sur la conception limitée que les théoriciennes se font du care, qu’elles posent comme l’équivalent des soins aux plus faibles (nourrissons, personnes malades, âgées et handicapées). Cette conception réductrice contribue à invisibiliser la plus grande partie du travail réalisé par les femmes dans leur vie quotidienne en soutien à ceux dont la dépendance ne se présente pas sous la forme la plus « extrême » : le care aux indépendants, c’est-à-dire tous les services (domestiques, de soins, reproductifs, sexuels) dévalués par leur principaux bénéficiaires, alors qu’ils constituent au même moment la condition essentielle à leur « indépendance ». Alors que le care aux indépendants demeure invisible, les femmes sont réassignées aux rôles traditionnels et les plus « puissants » continuent de dominer les institutions et le savoir qui porte sur elles. Rendre visible la part la plus « invisibilisée » du care et replacer notre commune vulnérabilité au cœur de la réflexion politique sur la justice représentent les premiers pas à franchir pour s’acheminer vers une société radicalement démocratique, une société libérée de la domination de genre (chap. 6). / The starting point of this thesis in feminist political philosophy is first and foremost a preoccupying empirical record. In spite of all the progress made in the past fifty years in matters of gender equality, the division of labor between men and women, at home as well as in the workplace, still persists in our democratic societies. In line with a decidedly feminist perspective, combining the contemporary reflections on the politics of care and a post-marxist feminist method, this thesis offers a plausible interpretation of this persisting division. In the first part, the analysis of two current gender equality issues, of the financial support to family caregivers (chap. 1) and of the economic recognition of the work done by mothers and housewives (chap. 2), leads me to the following preliminary conclusion: in spite of their goals, these political measures actually contribute to maintain the status quo, indeed, to further confine women to their traditional roles. In a second part, I argue that these measures, as well as the feminist approaches which underlie and support them, are themselves derived from processes of domination. This argument comprises four parts. First, I discuss the political theories of care. In shifting the debate from en ethic to a politic of care, these philosophers both wanted to illustrate the dimension of caring as an activity and to dissociate care from gender. I suggest that in spite of their goals, they still tend to stick to the differentialist logic which strengthens the links between woman and care when they put forward policies on gender equality (chap. 3). This logic of difference is actually closely linked to their notion of gender. Indeed, in distinguishing the socially constructed gender from the biological sex, their constructionist approach has the effect of confirming natural sexual differences (chap. 4). Man still being the norm and woman the «difference» under this view, women come to internalize the idea of a difference located in their own bodies (chap. 5). Finally, I bring to attention the very limited conception of care of these theorists, defined as care for the most vulnerable (infants, the sick, the old and the handicapped persons). This reductive conception actually contributes to invisibilize the largest part of the work done daily by women in support of those whose dependency doesn’t come under the most «extreme» form: the care of independents, that is, all the services (domestic, caring, reproductive and sexual services) devalued by their recipients while they constitute the condition for their «independence». As caring for «independents» remains invisible, women are ascribed to traditional roles and the most «powerful» are free to keep on dominating both institutions and the knowledge produced about it. Making this «invisibilized» part of caring visible, and replacing our common vulnerability at the heart of the political reflection on justice, are the first steps towards a radical democratic society, that is, a society freed from gender domination. / Thèse réalisée en cotutelle avec l'Université catholique de Louvain

Even though the idea of microcredit is to stimulate entrepreneurial activities in developing countries, there is an ongoing debate whether this is achieved. Many argue that only providing credit is not enough and see a need for additional components in promoting entrepreneurial activities for the stimulation of economic growth. Moreover, the importance of including women in economic development is widely acknowledged. In Lao People's Democratic Republic where many women run their own businesses and a majority of microcredit borrowers are women, we aimed to examine the relation between microcredit and female entrepreneurship. This was accomplished by conducting semi-structured interviews with 13 Laotian female microcredit borrowers running businesses, as well as interviews with seven representatives from organizations related to microcredit and female entrepreneurship. To understand the female entrepreneurs and the environment in which they operate, we developed a model where factors related to the loan agreement, networking, motivation, gender division of labor and training were identified as important components in the context of Lao PDR. The results support the view that a credit only approach is not enough for the development of female entrepreneurship in Lao PDR.

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