“A Woman’s Labour” – interdisciplinary provocations for healthier and more equitable futures

Psarologaki, Liana, Adegoke, Adetoro, Argyrou-Traka, Aikaterini, Bonsall, Amy, Bridgen, Elizabeth and Williams, Sarah (2025) “A Woman’s Labour” – interdisciplinary provocations for healthier and more equitable futures. [Video]

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Abstract

“The future in research is transdisciplinary. Addressing the issue of a woman’s labour as related to care, curates an assemblage of voices, approaches, and systems of thinking that address the ever so prominent need for more hopeful avenues towards equitable futures. The intersectional and multifaceted concept of gendered labour connects us all in questioning, challenging, and recalibrating theories practices and policies. We invite you to join our provocations and actively participate in shaping knowledge that is necessary for each and all of us, as individuals, communities, and society.” - Dr Liana Psarologaki, Guest Editor of the Special Collection Labour as connective, contested and constitutional notion of care-based symbiosis Labour is a multidimensional connective and constested concept, whether it refers to the physical anergy consuption associated with work, often precarious, or the strenuous task of giving birth (literally and creatively). More interestingly, there is a health-related dimension of labour that often goes unnoticed and includes exclusive modalities in existing healthcare systems, restrictive mindsets and stagnated waters when acknowledging women’s health. In her book Ill Feelings, Alice Hatrick talks about the lived experience of chronic fatigue syndrome through radically redefining personal and social narratives around wellbeing and the pains of ill health for women. She writes that “housekeeping is what sticks to us as sick women, as mothers and daughters – it is the work we are expected to do, without pay. Housekeeping is mirrored in the immune system… B-cells are associated with upper-class women. Macrophages on the other hand are associated with a feminized labour: enveloping, housekeeping, and other kinds of low-paid domestic and care work”. Following Hatrick, this introductory provocation will situate labour among disciplines, systems of thought and infrustructures, with the aim that it creates the basis for transdisciplinary and intersectional assemblage of responses that lead to healthier and more equitable futures. Whose Labour Counts? Decolonising care, voice and value in health and society. What happens when we only value labour that is visible, measurable, or institutionally sanctioned? In our rush to theorise care, we risk reproducing the very hierarchies we aim to dismantle. Women in underserved communities - Black women, Roma women, migrant mothers, carers with no paperwork or pay checks - labour daily in the margins of health systems, policy debates, and academic theory. Yet their work remains structurally unrecognised. This provocation urges us to confront: Why “care” is celebrated when professionalised, but pathologised when embodied by women of colour? How the knowledge embedded in survival work - navigating systems, translating trauma, resisting erasure - is systematically excluded from dominant feminist discourse? Wow do we decolonise not just labour theory, but our entire methodological approach to whose labour is “researchable”? A woman’s labour not as a market transaction, but as a relational, embodied, and ecological act beyond mainstream frameworks The talk is founded on questioning how legal and business systems often obscure or devalue the labour of care, the ecological embeddedness of work, and the subjective dimensions of wellbeing, studying social entrepreneurship and gender. It prompts the audience to reimagine organisations as ecosystems of care. It promotes alternative organisational logics, rooted in sustainability, reciprocity, and solidarity, that can challenge dominant paradigms, including the role of leadership, the meaning of value, and the ethics of decision-making. It also invites a potential interrogation on how business practices can be restructured to support regenerative economies, where labour is not commodified but recognised as constitutive of life and community. ‘Burn the witch’ How often is the person doing the burning being paid a handsome sum, yet the woman being burned is burned for actions of unpaid/underpaid labour? What and where are the liminal actions and spaces? – the small events that go unnoticed but which, unseen like Antogone ‘There is something we must do’; they/I must be the one who don’t walk away, regardless of the cost when actions become seen. (2) So much un-remunerated, resented, unappreciated labour/labour. So much risk, without which the very fabric of society would collapse. Synthetic dire consequences created by millennia of patriarchy, with women bearing the cost. Unseen, unvalued and unpaid labour/labour? These stories are everywhere? We must tell these stories, find safe and collective ways to tell urgent stories to provoke, to call for action, to force society, industry, the world to care. Society remunerates and punishes the wrong people, or does it? Why? Why we should research women in ‘dirty’ occupations Many occupations draw their body of knowledge and justification from a reasonably mainstream range of organisational types and cultures and give little space to the opinions, innovations and experiences of those working in marginalised or ‘dirty’ roles or occupations (e.g. adult industry, extreme politics, tobacco, oil, etc.) I argue that we have a duty to include all worlds when we research and theorise on occupations or work and not just draw our understanding from those we see as acceptable or performing the ‘right’ type of work The work experienced by those working in marginalised occupations (and countries) are frequently excluded as subjects from much organisational research. Often the excluded are women (my research is in women working in marketing and comms roles in the adult industry) which creates a double exclusion - women are less likely to feature in research anyway, and their presence in 'dirty' occupations compounds their invisibility. Dismissing ‘dirty’ or marginalised sectors and people is to overlook and denigrate the experiences and knowledge created. Women at Work: Performing Professionalism in Public Relations How do women perform professionalism in the workplace and why does it matter? This talk draws from ethnographic research to highlight the lived experiences and professional behaviours of women working in public relations (PR) in the United Kingdom. By integrating Goffman's concept of social encounters as performances with Foucauldian discourse and Feminist theory, the talk examines the three stages of performing professionalism: preparation, performance, and reception. How does gender influence these stages, shaping the professional identities and career trajectories of female PR practitioners? We will explore the impact of societal expectations and gender norms on career preparation, the strategies women employ to manage impressions and navigate professional environments, and the reception of their professional behaviours by clients, colleagues, and the broader industry. The talk will also address the persistent issue of the "Velvet Ghetto," where women are often confined to lower-paying, technical roles, and the challenges they face in breaking through these barriers. By critically analysing these dynamics, the presentation aims to shed light on the systemic issues within the PR industry and propose pathways towards a more inclusive and equitable professional landscape.

Item Type:	Video
Depositing User:	RED Unit Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Nov 2025 09:17
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2025 09:17
URI:	https://bnu.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/20694

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