The Employment Experience of Women as Family Caregivers：Analysis of Worker Co-Operatives’ members

• Main Authors: Ssu-Chi Cheng, 鄭思琪
• Other Authors: Yi-Yi Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/969bd3

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 社會工作學研究所 === 107 === In Taiwan, married woman often leave their jobs because of marriage and child care. When women face the dilemma of family and work, they tend to give priority to the family and change their jobs. In literature review, it is known that women''s employment and entrepreneurship policies and government services can''t support women in balance of work and family care responsibilities and neither can the programs of non-governmental organizations. It appears that worker''s co-operatives were less considered. Worker''s co-operatives are different from general companies. They are people-oriented organizations which pay attention to the members'' participation in decision making since each member is a shareholder of the co-operative. Such characteristics make it potentially a friendly workplaces for married women at middle age. Therefore, this research asks two questions. (1)What are the difficulties and assistance of women as family caregivers in the employment process? (2) What is experience of married women at middle age in the cooperatives? This study employs a qualitative approach. A purposive sample of 10 women were interviewed. They were aged over 30, had multiple employment experiences, had family care responsibilities for their children, husband or older family members, and had worked in cooperatives for at least 2 years. Two worker’s cooperatives were selected. One offers care work in hospitals at Shi-Chu area, and the other provides family cleaning at New Taipei City. The study found that: with regard to the first research questio, women as family caregivers adopt three work strategies, namely "sustained employment", "discontinuation of employment" and "never employment instability".Women may choose single or multiple strategies depending on alternative care resource accessibility. These women have difficulty finding a job also because of age and lack of skills. Their own social network with friends, relatives, and former colleagues is an important resource for finding jobs. Different from the other employment experiences, the women reported the cooperatives offered pre-training or internship to improve their job skills and they receive help from staff and other members of the cooperative when encountering problems in the workplace. Regarding the second research question , the work experience of the participants in the cooperatives includes four characteristics. First, the cooperatives link to suitable choice of career.There is minimum requirements for care work and house cleaning.The married women at middle age actually have limited choice of job due to education, discontinued work experience, and family care responsibilities. Even better is that they can earn relatively high income in the cooperatives. Secondly, cooperative members have flexibility in asking for temporary leave and work shift arrangement The participants are happy that they can arrange working hours according to family needs, not the opposite. Third, there is trade-off between work flexibility and benefits in the cooperatives. Cooperative members are workers and also the owner of cooperative so they are not covered in the Labor Standard Law. Some cooperatives may pay for their members’ National Health Insurance, Labor insurance and retirement pension plans if enough profits were made and members commonly agree such utilization.However, the two cases interviewed only provide three times of l bonus and casualty insurance but they don''t provide labor insurance and health insurance.Fourth, membership and organizational participation vary. The interviewed members of the two cooperatives mainly meet other members during work hours. It is difficult for members to discuss any decision regarding the cooperative operation with the staff. The members mainly focused on job and have low participate in the cooperative. Based on the above findings, this study suggests that the government and NGOs should improve the age discrimination against women’s continuation of career by the enforcing the laws and their publicity. Also needed is the support for general access to child care and long-term care resources so that women and other family members can work without worries. The government may consider the cooperatives related to women by supplementing cost of work benefits. In addition, cooperatives that aim to assist women’s career can strengthen the membership education and training activities to enhance the supportive relationship among members and members’ full participation of in decision making. The collaboration among various cooperatives is another approach to overcome the current challenge of recruiting members.