Community Care

Women In Community Care
By Sharon White

In the modern world we all have definite roles we are assigned to play. It does not mean that someone specific gives this assignment to us, it is simply somehow understood what part each and everyone has to fulfil and what obligations to carry out. We can discuss responsibility and role division among different classes of society, age groups, professional groups, but also from the point of a gender classification. Somehow it is believed that there are jobs for women and those that are meant only for men.

It is a common observation that there are invisible threads that link women with community care. We are so used to conceptualising personal and community care as ‘women’s work’ that we often do not stop to question the invisible threads but act unconsciously in a way so as to reinforce the notion that ‘community care is by women’.

The word ‘community’ is a term that is used to describe many situations and its meaning remains broad but elusive. It has been linked to the commons or common people, the people of a district and the quality of holding something in common. Community can convey a sense of direct common concern, of organisation or to describe an existing set of relationships. Women and community are interconnected in complex and contradictory ways and Fiona Williams argues that of central importance is the question of which communities and which women. Fiona Williams also goes on to make the distinction between ‘space’ and ‘place’. When women collectively organise for better facilities, safety issues etc. then the community becomes women’s ‘space’ in which to redefine conditions. In contradiction to this, community can also represent the women’s ‘place’ to which they are confined and relegated.