Contenu du sommaire : Luttes de care. Entre résistances et action collective

The article examines ordinary forms of conflict between women, educators and care workers, in a home for youth with multiple disabilities where the socio-educational project focuses on the empowerment of youth. With attention to the forms of expression and involvement in daily care activities, we show first of all that tensions around such practices oppose different visions of the care relationship with dependent persons. In contrast to the professional norms articulated by educated female employees, subaltern women use the language of sensitivity to other people's needs. Although in the course of work interactions, the latter's defense of ethics is rooted in a predominantly emotional language, in the absence of their white upper-middle-class colleagues, it is thought out and structured through a moral framework that resists the prescription to put professional care in opposition to domestic care.

The revelations of abuse and violence in the world of care are upsetting the representations of this world. But what about the violence suffered by female workers at the hands of beneficiaries? Based on an action-research that brought together a feminist association and a home help and support service, the article reports on original data both from the point of view of the employees' exposure situation and their self-protective practices. In doing so, it also demonstrates, from a pragmatic perspective, the relevance of a feminist intervention tool, feminist self-defense, to guide the work of knowledge and prevention.

This contribution discusses a research project carried out in Beirut (Lebanon), which focused on a temporary migration program aimed at providing domestic work for private individuals, with the obligation for the workers to reside in the employing household. In a context of coercion to care work, the article focuses on the "whore stigma" which functions as a tool to limit the mobility of migrant women and disqualifies female workers who fail to be permanently available in the household. It describes the re-signification of the stigma by those concerned, bringing a critique of the criteria of respectability that affects the trajectories of care workers.

This article explores the processes of politicization of care brought about by mutual aid initiatives that emerged in working-class neighborhoods during the Covid-19 crisis. The concept of « care coalition » is used to designate the networking of agents who provide care in vulnerable urban communities in a situation of emergency. The health crisis provides these coalitions with the opportunity to advocate for a revaluation and redistribution of care among political authorities, both through direct confrontation with institutions, and by making care visible in the press and on social media. Such politicization « from below » questions the articulation between private initiatives and public policies, and opens up avenues for a right to the city that takes into account care-related dimensions.

Although not widely used, there is currently a growing interest in “natural methods” of contraception, which are promoted by some organizations. This article examines current use of these methods through interviews with users as well as an online ethnography of dedicated websites and forums. A historical analysis of natural methods of contraception and how they are implemented in society shows that the promised “nature” is in reality only available to certain women. A study of their status in the French birth control landscape, where they meet a broader desire on the part of some women to “free themselves from hormones” and to get to know themselves better, but also to better balance the contraceptive burden in the heterosexual couple, shows that such practices are strongly based on the essentialization of the female body and gender roles according to which procreative work remains the woman's role.

Since the very first demonstrations of the 2010-2011 revolution, Tunisian women have taken to the public space to demand their right to dignity. After taking part in the revolutionary process from the beginning, women continue to fight today for gender equality in a society that remains strongly patriarchal. In this post-revolutionary context, a national survey (the first ever in the Arab world) was conducted between 2014 and 2016 by a team of university researchers in collaboration with the Center for Research, Studies, Documentation and Information on Women (CREDIF) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) with the aim of reporting on the different types of violence against women in the public space in Tunisia. This article presents the main results of this research and shows that, although the revolutionary process has given women the opportunity to consolidate their rights, their presence in the public space is still controlled by men. Violence, whether real or perceived by women, is the instrument of gendered control over bodies.

The legalization of sex reassignment surgery in the Islamic Republic of Iran can be analyzed as the result of a secularization process. Regressive dimensions of fiqh exist alongside progressive dimensions regarding issues of sexuality. The analysis of the secularization process used in the medico-judicial protocol of the gender transition leads us to characterize this secularization as a sectorial and heterogeneous techno-secularization. This model of secularization will be analyzed through the history of modernization, drawing on the links between secularization and medicalization, women's rights, gender relations and Islamic bioethics.