Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
 Emeritus, North Carolina
 Central University

Robert Wortham,
 Associate Editor,
 North Carolina
 Central University

Board:
Rebecca Adams,
 UNC-Greensboro

Bob Davis,
 North Carolina
 Agricultural and
 Technical State
 University

Catherine Harris,
 Wake Forest
 University

Ella Keller,
 Fayetteville
 State University

Ken Land,
 Duke University

Steve McNamee,
 UNC-Wilmington

Miles Simpson,
 North Carolina
 Central University

William Smith,
 N.C. State University

Editorial Assistants

John W.M. Russell,
 Technical
 Consultant

® 

Volume 10, Number 1

Spring/Summer 2012
 
 
 

Gender and Job Loss in Rural North Carolina: 
The Costs of Carework

by

Leslie Hossfeld
University of North Carolina Wilmington

E. Brooke Kelly
University of North Carolina 
Pembroke

Tricia McTague
Eastern Michigan 
University

and

Angela Wadsworth
University of North Carolina
Wilmington

Introduction

    Global trade policies and economic liberalization practices have had far reaching impacts on individuals and families, with women often at the center of these global dynamics.  A good deal of the new literature on gender and globalization focuses, and rightly so, on the impact economic restructuring has had on citizenship issues, migration and how global politics shape gender inequalities.  This focus has primarily been on women living transnational lives as migrant mothers who live away from their homelands and serve as nannies, nurses and housekeepers, providing carework for others, often creating what Zimmerman, et al., call gaps of carework in their own countries; a global care chain which creates care deficits (2007).   Indeed the recent edited volume by Zimmerman, Litt and Bose (2007) brilliantly illuminates these tensions and contradictions brought about by globalization and economic restructuring. 

    Our interests in these global dynamics are similar, yet we depart somewhat from this framework.  Our focus has been on economic restructuring in the United States and what has happened in communities, particularly in rural America, when jobs disappear.  As the United States becomes increasingly integrated into the global economy, everyday people, and in particular women, are finding it harder and harder to get by.  We examine a domestic story of women in the global system whereby carework responsibilities increase due to job loss and economic restructuring, and how these carework responsibilities at home became barriers to reemployment.

    Previous research indicates that gender and age impact the experiences of displaced workers.  Displaced Worker Survey data (a supplement to the Current Population Survey and the largest nationally representative source of data on displaced workers in the United States) show that women were twice as likely to be out of the labor force at the time they were surveyed when compared to men (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2000).  This higher post displacement unemployment rate has been interpreted as a permanent departure from the labor force.  However, Knapp and Harms (2002) found that women do not permanently leave the labor force.  Instead they average twenty more weeks of joblessness than did men after the plant closure in their case study.  Delayed reentry was not due to acquired skill deficits, as human capital theorist would assume.  Women with employed husbands were more likely to delay reentry in order to raise children.  Delayed reentry was also related to the perception of poor employment opportunities, which in turn affected work aspirations.  Moore (1990) found that women and minorities have larger earnings penalties even after controlling for experience and training and that they face a longer average duration of joblessness.

    Older workers are also more likely to experience a longer duration of unemployment than younger workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2000).  Age cohort differences are attributed to discrimination by employers and older workers' resistance to relocate or retrain (Leana and Feldman 1992).  Increased age and job tenure are associated with longer spells of unemployment (Moore 1990).  However, Moore argues that job tenure criterion does not adequately account for employment difficulties because those with less than three years experience still averaged one year of unemployment.  In an analysis of data from the Displaced Workers Survey, Rodriguez and Zavodny (2003) find that between the periods 1983-87 and 1993-97 overall involuntary job loss declined, but it rose for middle-aged and older workers relative to younger workers.

    Research suggests that disparities in the duration of unemployment may also impact whether re-employment happens at all.  Perrucci and her co-authors (1985) found that seventy one percent of all displaced workers were still unemployed 8 months after a plant closing (Perrucci et al. 1985).  The longer a worker remains unemployed the lower her/his chances of reemployment (Bluestone and Harrison 1982; Moore 1990).  Moore attributes this tendency to the adverse affects of prolonged joblessness on worker's mental health and the stigma of long-term unemployment from the perspective of employers.  That is, employers are less likely to hire a person who has been unemployed for a long period of time. 

    United States manufacturing has undergone intensive economic restructuring over the last thirty years.  This has had a profound effect on rural areas, especially in the Southeast where textile, apparel, and furniture manufacturing have been based.  North Carolina, in particular, has been dependent on traditional manufacturing supplying most of rural counties' employment (Hossfeld, Legerton and Kuester, 2004; Scott 2001). 

    Throughout the 20th century, manufacturing jobs provided economic stability for individuals and communities in North Carolina.  Yet since the mid-1990s, this stability has eroded.  With the implementation of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the impact has meant displacement for thousands of North Carolina rural workers.  North Carolina manufacturing job loss between 1993 and 2003 reached more than 200,000 (The Rural Center 2005). 

    This particular research grew out of a larger research project that sought to understand the impact of massive job loss in Southeastern North Carolina.  Robeson County in North Carolina has lost more than 10,000 manufacturing jobs since 1993, the most in any North Carolina county.  This is the most ethnically diverse, rural county in the United States (38% Native American, 33% White, 25% African American, 5% Latino, 1% Asian).  From 1994-2002 the county lost over $115 million in wages due to job loss. Unemployment insurance payments rose from $8 million to $20 million.   Conservative calculations estimate the financial cumulative impact of job loss in Robeson County and the five county commuting region during the 10 year period to be close to $4 billion (Hossfeld et al. 2004; Dumas 2004). 

    In the United States, 60% of rural displaced textile and apparel workers are women (USDA-ERS 2005).  In North Carolina, 55% of rural displaced workers are female, and 45% of displaced workers are 45years and older (North Carolina Rural Center).  As our initial project of documenting the impact of job loss in one rural county unfolded, the story of the trajectory of older, female workers emerged.  It is this context in which this particular part of our research project is based. 

    A growing body of research has focused on the gendered aspects of carework expanding on long-standing feminist scholarship on gender inequality and response to essentialist notions of women as natural providers of care.  Research has demonstrated that women are disproportionately responsible for care inside the home and correspondingly overrepresented in carework occupations outside the home; work that is typically devalued and low paying and occupied by disadvantaged and vulnerable populations (England and Folbre 1999). 

    The field of carework has now developed into its own area of research.  For the purposes of this paper we use an inclusive definition of carework provided by Zimmerman, et al. (2007: 3-4): 

 Carework… is the multifaceted labor that produces the daily living conditions
  that make basic human health and well-being possible.  Carework includes home  management, housekeeping, and related domestic tasks such as laundry, clothing  repair, and meal preparation.  It also includes the care of others – that is, nursing  the sick, looking after and nurturing children, and assisting the disabled and  elderly.

    As discussed earlier, this research grew out of a long-term research project examining job loss and economic restructuring in Robeson County, North Carolina (see Hossfeld, et al. 2004).  One of the key findings from that research was the gendered nature of textile manufacturing job loss.  From that project, we expanded our research to focus on female displaced workers and their experiences.

    This particular research is based on data collected from two focus groups of displaced manufacturing textile, apparel and footwear workers in Southeastern North Carolina in 2004.   Focus group members were obtained through key informants in the region who work with displaced workers.  Ten women in total were interviewed, ranging in age from 34 – 76.   The 34 year old woman was the only member of the two focus groups under age 50; the average age was 58.   Most of the women (80%) were Native American, and two were white.  Four of the women held high school degrees; 6 did not.   Most of the women (60%) had been laid off from their jobs in 2000, the peak year of North Carolina's lay offs.  The average length of employment for these women was 24 years. 

    The focus groups were conducted at two different community centers in the county, both were quiet settings in which only the focus group members and researchers were present.  Participants received a small stipend to cover their travel costs to attend the focus groups and received lunch after the focus group had ended.  The research questions were designed to gain an understanding of the type of work these women did within the textile plant, the resources they used to get by during displacement and mechanisms to survive without income, and their plans after job loss.  Each focus group lasted about 2 ½ hours and each was tape recorded and transcribed.  All participants signed Informed Consent forms; the names of the women have been changed, as have the names of the textile plants where they worked. 

    Researchers reviewed focus group transcriptions for common themes which emerged from initial review of the data, such as working conditions, barriers to re-employment, health issues, and social services.  Focus group transcripts were coded using WinMax (renamed MAXQDA), a data analysis program.  Upon initial coding for such topics, additional themes emerged, such as carework as a barrier to women's re-employment. 

    Women spoke of strong networks of social support among workers at their previous jobs.  They mourned the loss of relationships developed over much of their working lives.  Rachel expressed a common sentiment, "I miss working with the people. I do. It was like your second family."  Mary tried to keep in touch with her "buddies" from her previous job, "but they had to get them a job somewhere else, and I had to get mine….Yeah, I lost a lot of them behind."  Now Mary says she has no one to talk to but her family.  Though some workers maintained contact with people they worked with through reunions and gatherings, as a result of job loss, ties to friends/co-workers were weakened.  Accordingly, women became further enmeshed in family networks as both a source and recipient of needed support and assistance.

    These women's accounts make it evident that they have always been responsible for household labor, even when both partners had full time jobs, a trend supported by a plethora of research on dual-earner families (see, for example, Shelton 1992; Tichenor 2005; and reviews in Coltrane 2000; Gerstel and Sarkisian 2006; Thompson and Walker 1991).  Women were still expected to do the social reproduction for the family as well as keep up with the physical toll and schedule of working in the factory.  Rhonda and Francine's discussion is illustrative.

RHONDA:  You got no rest.  You'd wake up all through the night.  Your bones are hurting.  Everything is hurting about you.  And you still have to get up and go back out there….all your life.  …8 or 10 hours out there and then its time to come home and do your little bit of housework.  You got to go to bed and get up and go back out there.
FRANCINE:  Cook a little supper and hope somebody will wash the dishes (laughs)

    Women came to rely on their family members as a means of support through the sharing of resources in family meals, sharing a car, combining households, and/or exchanging child care.  Complex and interdependent social networks developed within families following job loss.  For example, Rhonda cared for her aging mother, while her children financially supported her.  "If it weren't for my children, I wouldn't know what to do because they give me money to go to the doctor."  Mary, her mother, and siblings, who were all laid off from work at the same plant, relied on each other for support, as she explained. 

Yeah, we eat down there at my sister and them's [home].  She worked at [the textile plant] also and my momma and then I had another sister who worked there but she hasn't been to work since.  She's staying down there with my grandmother, taking care of her.  And they are a really big support.  …I got my apartment and my car and my child to take care of and um, its hard to try to keep groceries in the house and sometimes I get short on my bills and we all try to look out for each other around here and with me, I'm the only one who got a car. …between me and my sister, … so when I get off of work I have to come down here and take them around …because she had a car and when [the textile plant] closed, she lost her car. 

Over the years [my grandchildren] have lived with me as my child…I was their caretaker completely for several years after their granddaddy died, but their daddy's out of the home.  Their mother works all of the time and she really has a hard time, so I try to step in and do as much as I can.  When I was working, I helped her financially.  Now I'm not workin.  Don't have any money coming in so I can't help her there, but I can help her with the children.

All of us gets together at mommas and uh we bring our food together and we prepare it together and we all eat together.  And that keeps everybody fed every day.  And you know, that's the way we had to work it because uh, Renee's not working so she gets a few food stamps so then uh Diane's not working, she doesn't get any food stamps at all.  …And then, like mine that we get for me and momma, we take and combine our food and I cook everyday and then everybody eats and then pretty much I fix breakfast and dinner and supper for momma.  So then if anybody comes in, you know there's food for everybody to eat. 

MOLLY:  I try to keep my lights out, my doors closed.  But it all don't work 
that way.  My house is like [Interstate] 95 traffic. 
SARAH: Hey, my momma's too.  I mean, it's like in and out.  In and out. 
Constantly.

    These women were pulled into the increased traffic of family caregiving as a result of job loss.  Their accounts demonstrate the centrality and importance of women's carework to their families.  Women became saddled with finding support not only for themselves, but also for their children and for others for whom they care.  For example, Sarah was responsible for navigating social services not only for herself but also for her mother.  This is no easy task.  Her account illustrates the high emotional toll in dealing with agencies. Women talked about being treated poorly by service agents.  Displaced women are not only subject to disrespect when they seek assistance for themselves, but also when they seek assistance for their children, grandchildren, or aging parents.

A lot of times when you go in there they act like that you're just trouble; they don't want to deal with you.  Um, you should be out there working instead of being in there aggravating them.  I mean, that's the attitude they have and it's just um, that's what I've run into everywhere I went as far as um, health situations, trying to find a job.

     How do women's carework networks affect their efforts to seek employment?  In some cases, leads on re-employment were passed on through women-centered family networks.  For example, after getting laid off from the factory in which she spent most of her life working, Molly's niece told her about work at another textile mill.  She gained employment there for a short while until it was time for lay offs.  Since she was last hired, she was the first fired.  It appears that after plant closings, women went through a series of short stints at other textile factories, which never lasted very long because of the seniority system.  In other cases, women pooled their efforts to make ends meet by working together in the informal economy, as addressed in the following section.

    Though their family support networks provided women with needed assistance, women's increased carework also came at a cost.  Once women were pulled into caring for parents, children and/or grandchildren, such circumstances complicated their job search.  Sandra described a common predicament. 

And I have asked, been so many different places and asked if they are hiring and stuff, and see I'm having to work it around my school, taking care of momma, taking care of the grandkids.  And I told some of my family the other day.  I said, 'Look, somebody is  going to have to help because if I can find a job, I've got to go to work. 

Well, I started but I had to quit to take care of my mother.  …I know I need a job, but I ain't just gonna put my mother to the side and go get a job.  You know what I mean.  I ain't going to do it. 

Um, I've went and talked to them…out there at social services about um, you know, if they had jobs that you could tend to children or take care of elderly people.  But see my problem is that I'm having to take care of my momma, so it restricts me in a lot of ways.  I'd have to do a whole lot of uh, juggling around to get someone to go stay with momma the amount of time I stay with her.

    Not surprisingly, women's efforts at re-employment often pulled them into paid caregiving.  Most women who were lucky enough to find reemployment have found home health care jobs.  Not only are women taking care of their own families, but they are also responsible for caring for the sick and elderly in the formal economy.  Carework permeates all aspects of their lives.  However, some women found the pay and conditions of such employment insufficient to support them and their families.  Rhonda was a temporary elder care worker for a short while but she was not able to sustain herself on this income.  "I took care of a elder lady for a little while.  That was $5.15 too.  …spent that on groceries, you know what I mean?"

    In order to draw unemployment, some women moved into the informal economy where they found paid carework cleaning people's houses.  They drew on women-centered networks and cleaned houses in teams, splitting the money.  Molly, her adult daughter, daughter in law and daughter in law's mother split the cost of gas and cleaning supplies. 

MOLLY: But I know some people who go to like Myrtle Beach and Holdens and 
they clean condos, like on Saturdays.  …Me and my daughter drove the last time I was laid off and we drove down there every Saturday.  And my daughter-in-law and her momma. …We cleaned all summer. …You have to buy your own supplies, and then you go clean it, and drive down there.  That's what?  Sixty some miles? But you go down there and clean and drive all the way back.
TERRI:  Your money's gone in gas right there.

    All forms of work and retirement are "shaped by the intersections of gender with race and class" (Calasanti & Slevin 2001, p.93).  Historically, Southern women have had high levels of participation in the work force (Frederickson 1998, Reed 1993, Wadsworth 2002).  This is not borne out by official government statistics, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Census did not begin listing women's occupations until 1860 (Betts:1999:ix, Wadsworth 2002).  Furthermore, women tend to have nonlinear work trajectories as they move through the labor force during their lifetimes. 

    There are two ironies of note when thinking of women and carework. One is that paid carework pays so poorly and typically offers little to no benefits (such as health insurance, retirement plan) that it is often not economically feasible for women to continue in such a poorly compensated line of work (Hooyman and Kiyak 2011:429). 

    The second irony of carework as done by these women is that when they reach the point of needing carework themselves, due to the vagaries of age or illness; as a result of lack of savings and/or ready income, they will be less able to afford such services.  For example, because it was necessary for them to participate in the informal economy in order to survive financially on a day-to-day basis, being paid "under the table" in cash for services such as housekeeping and working as "sitters" for elderly or ill persons in the community, that income will not show up in the Social Security system. This creates problems on two levels.

(1)  Social Security retirement income is based upon the amount paid into the system on an individual's average earnings, over their working lifetime. Women are more likely than men to have gaps in their earning history, due to time taken away from paid labor to deliver and raise children, as well as to meet necessary family caregiving needs throughout their life course (Quadagno 2011:283, Hooyman and Kiyak 2011: 398-9). Social Security benefits are directly connected to earnings, and are based on the earnings of the best 35 years of paid labor (Calasanti and Slevin 2001: 96-7). On average, women have 12 zero years of earnings out of this 35 year time period. (Calasanti and Slevin 2001: 97) No allowance or compensation is made for these absences in our capitalist system; the end result of these absences means less Social Security benefits received upon retirement, and a decreased likelihood that these women will have access to private or company retirement plans (Quadagno 2011: 364).

 (2) According to the latest information from the Social Security System regarding disability before full retirement age; after six months with no reported income you can receive disability benefits "if you have enough credits from earnings (depending on your age, you must have earned six to 20 of your credits in the three to 10 years before you became disabled); and a physical or mental impairment that's expected to prevent you from doing "substantial" work for a year or more or result in death" (United States Social Security Administration).

    Survival needs of women and their families often dictate the necessity of participation in the informal economy. The end result is that these women will show less quarters of income paid into the Social Security system, and receive less money from Social Security upon retirement. Should they become disabled and unable to work prior to Social Security retirement age, they will be less eligible to receive necessary medical and/or social services and as a result less able to meet every day costs of living. 

    Gender and age permeate many aspects of the experience and impact of job loss, as well as the search for re-employment.  As these women in their 40-60s with a long work history in factory work are laid off, they lose the strong women-centered support networks that played such an important role in their lives.  As they turn to their families for support, they are pulled further into already established obligations of care for aging parents, grandchildren, and children.  Although such family-based care networks provide them with needed support, they also serve as a potential barrier to their reemployment as they become further entrenched in obligations of care. 

    Gender is a pervasive force pushing and pulling women in and out of families, care-networks, and the paid labor force in various ways.  What is consistent about all of these movements and fluctuations is the connection between gender and care (Cancian and Oliker 2000).  Just as care-based networks shaped women's friendship circles while they were employed, so too did the work of caring draw them further into family networks.  Women became drawn into the need for family care when unemployed, complicating their efforts at re-employment. 

    The salience of gender in shaping these women's experiences becomes most apparent in comparison to the existing research on men's experience of job loss.  While men typically experience stress and emotional duress resulting from the loss of the provider role in families, women appear to be saddled with finding support not only for themselves, but for their children and others for whom they care.  While women are further drawn into the gendered work of caring for family members, even with the loss of the provider role, men are not similarly pulled into the role of family care (see Rubin 1976, 1994).  Thus, the source of stress for women and men after job loss appears to be gendered. 

    A gendered labor market also shaped women's efforts at re-employment, pulling women into the increasing service sector.  When women found work, it was often in formal carework, such as health care at hospitals, caring for an elderly person, or cleaning houses.  And all the while, whether employed or unemployed, women remained responsible for reproductive labor in their families, a daunting burden in many cases. 

    Based on the findings from this research project, the lead researcher in this project worked closely with the Center for Community Action (CCA) in Lumberton, North Carolina to help create the Women's Economic Equity Project (WEE), a Career Pathways project targeting skills development for rural women workers.  Working closely with the growing sectors of health and education, CCA partnered women with employers in a skills-training and coaching model to help former textile workers translate their manufacturing skills into living wage jobs in the region.   Through funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the WEE project includes coaching, peer support, asset development, referral, advocacy, education and training, and need-based scholarship assistance with unemployed and underemployed women in Robeson County, NC.  At full capacity, the WEE project will serve 600 women and assist 100 women in moving out of poverty each year. 

    With increased economic globalization, women have been incorporated into the global economy as a source of cheap labor.  Transnational corporations operating under free trade agreements have outsourced production to developing regions of the globe where women are overrepresented in low paying, labor intensive, economically insecure jobs.  In many respects, the global economy is maintained by gendered labor inside and outside the home; both waged and unwaged labor.

    This research examines the intersections of economic restructuring, gender and carework and adds to the growing body of research on globalization and what Zimmerman, et al. (2007) describes as a crisis of care.  This research provides a domestic story on economic restructuring and the gendered effects of globalization of the lives of women and families.  Our task is to use this research and others like it, to inform policy and influence policy makers.  Trade agreements that negatively impact the livelihoods of women, families and communities must be rethought and removed.

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