“Motherwork” and communicative labor: A gendered analysis of hunger in marginalized US women

Abstract

IntroductionThe feminization of hunger plays out in communities across the globe where poverty exists, including the United States, the world's wealthiest nation. The feminization of hunger and poverty can be traced to the “gender system”—deep seated gender inequities resulting in job segregation, discrimination in pay, unpaid caring work, and gender-based violence.MethodsExploratory qualitative research study with two focus groups comprising low-income women (n = 20).ResultsThe analysis identified three key themes: toxic stress related to food work, welfare stigma and racism, and the invisible loads of care work and communicative labor.DiscussionThe analysis shows how women's experience of hunger and food insecurity in the US is linked to forces of economic deprivation and symbolic violence. Consistent with Allen's (2007) theorization of “motherwork”, for women and mothers the experience of food insecurity is distinct because of its gendered link to the care work, food work, and communicative labor necessary for the survival and wellbeing of children.

Foodwork: Racialized, gendered and classed labors

“…Thirdly, their domestic reproductive labor in the private sphere is unpaid. Unpaid caring work, together with low pay and discrimination in jobs and benefits leads to the feminization of poverty and hunger at global and local scales (de Souza, 2023).…”

“…But foodwork itself was rarely studied because of white western feminists' public antipathy towards cooking and so subsumed under other kinds of household chores. And yet, “food is central to creating and producing human beings as social, cultural, and physical beings and given the gendered linkages between food and care, women tend to assume most of the food/nutritional responsibilities in the home” (de Souza, 2023, p. 2). Not much has changed since these first social reproduction theories from the 80s.…”