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feminists@law, Vol  8, No 1 (2018)


The Sexual Contract  in Paid Care Work: Evidence from the Prosecution of Care Workers for Failures  to Care

  Lydia Hayes*
This is a video of a paper given at the Sexual Contract: 30  Years On conference held in the School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University  on 10-11 May 2018. This paper was part of Panel 2: The Employment Contract,  chaired by Sarah Keenan. The PowerPoint slides accompanying the paper are  available as a separate file.

The contemporary meaning of paid care  work is best understood through a recognition that the contract of employment  is only part of the story since it relies on a coexisting sexual contract. The  sexual contract in paid care work is brought sharply into focus by the framing  of criminal law. In this paper, I explore the criminalisation of care workers  in relation to elder abuse. When handing down custodial sentences, judges  narrate the gap between offending conduct and social expectations of the  behaviour of care workers towards the people for whom they are employed to  care. The legal capacity to prosecute depends upon the existence of a contract  of employment yet the duties and obligations existing between the care worker  and her employer are curiously absent from judicial narratives. 

The capacity to prosecute individual care  workers for ill-treatment and wilful neglect provides powerful insights about  the social meaning of paid care work. It reveals that in the shadows of the  contract of employment lies a suite of private sphere obligations which the  care worker owes to care recipients, and to society at large, as a consequence  of her employment. This is the sexual contract in paid care work. Women who are  employed to care are liable for prosecution as workers, yet they are judged as  women. The root of their offence is an individual failure to exhibit caring  behaviour and having a ‘couldn’t-care-a-less’ attitude. 

Reports of  elder abuse by paid care workers have risen, in concert with the UK’s rampant  privatisation of social care provision and increased public concern. Neglect,  meaning the failure to provide care as and when it is needed, is the most  frequent form of abuse in which care workers are implicated. The scientific  evidence from research in care-settings is that poor quality employment  relationships create conditions in which abuse occurs. The scale and nature of  the UK’s elder abuse problem suggests systemic causes. However, the  criminalisation agenda in the UK care sector has been recently expanded by new  provisions which widen the scope for individual prosecutions in the shadow of  the contract of employment. Drawing on Pateman, the paper identifies how the  sexual contract serves as a form of discipline in paid care work and suggests  that the state draws upon the subjection of women to legitimate its  criminalisation strategy.

 



  
    * Lecturer in  Law, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, Wales. Email: hayesl@cardiff.ac.uk

  



