Representations and subjective experiences of working-class women's unpaid labour, feminist resistance, and post-work imaginaries

工人阶级妇女是当代围绕无酬劳动的历史性和持续贬值的辩论的核心。联合政府（2010- 2015年）和保守党政府（2015年-）推出的经济紧缩措施取消了对不稳定和低收入女工的社会福利支持，取而代之的是促进“简朴”和“节俭”的家庭管理（Orgad和De Benedictis，2015年：419）。自2020年以来，政府赞扬护士、护理人员和清洁工（均为女性主导的职业）为持续的新冠肺炎疫情（已成为“护理危机”）的“英雄”，凸显了英国对女性劳动力的社会经济依赖（Chatzidakis et al，2020：889）。学校关闭和“在家工作”的规定模糊了工作场所和家庭之间的界限，工人阶级妇女在减少/改变工作时间的选择方面表现最差，正在“承担”日益增加的无薪工作量（Lyonette等人，2021年：4）。女权主义活动家和学者正在通过想象无数种方法来重新评估和重新分配性别无薪劳动，从恢复福利国家到废除核心家庭（Chatzidakis et al 2020，Weeks，2011，刘易斯，2019）。通过与这些女权主义者对话，本项目研究了与日常生活单调相关的文化渠道：即社交媒体、肥皂剧和真人秀电视，以询问：对工人阶级妇女无酬劳动的中介表现与她们的生活经历有何不同？这些占主导地位的叙事在多大程度上、以何种方式受到抵制？

Working-class women are at the crux of contemporary debates surrounding the historical and continued devaluation of unpaid labour. Economic austerity measures introduced by the Coalition (2010-15) and Conservative Government (2015-) have dismantled social welfare support for precarious and low-paid women workers, instead promoting 'austere' and 'thrifty' household management (Orgad and De Benedictis, 2015: 419). Since 2020, government praising of nurses, carers, and cleaners (all female-dominated professions) as 'heroes' of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which has become a 'crisis of care', has highlighted the UK's socio-economic reliance on female labour (Chatzidakis et al, 2020: 889). School closures and 'work from home' regulations have blurred the boundaries between workplace and home, and working-class women, faring worst in terms of options to reduce/alter their working hours, are 'carrying the burden' of the growing unpaid workload (Lyonette, et al, 2021: 4). Feminist activists and scholars are responding to the 'crisis of care' by imagining myriad ways to revalue and redistribute gendered unpaid labour, from rejuvenating the welfare state to abolishing the nuclear family (Chatzidakis et al 2020, Weeks, 2011, Lewis, 2019). Working in dialogue with these feminist imaginaries, this project examines cultural outlets concerned with the humdrum of everyday life: namely social media, soap operas, and reality television, to ask: in what ways do mediated representations of working-class women's unpaid labour differ from their lived experiences? And to what extent, and in what ways, are these dominant narratives being resisted?