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Abstract: For several years now researchers have been observing the dynamics of practices in the voluntary sector pertaining to the social economy (Laville et Nyssens, 2001). The literature brings out the originality of its functioning, thus obliging it to be distinguished from the public or private for-profit sector. As much on the level of their financing as on the level of the mobilization of human resources or of their relation to the institutional environment, social economy services are evolving in the complex intertwining of the principles of reciprocity, domestic administration, market and redistribution and are answering varied social emerging demands.

In my lecture, I will first give some information on the voluntary sector in Belgium (“secteur associatif”). I will then look into one particular type of organization – the home based care services to elderly dependant people - and show a picture of the on-going “socialisation process” of domestic care. There is a lot going on in this deeply changing sector, on the level of the type of answers that the non profit sector is giving to new needs and on the level of women’s participation. For this reason, I will show, in the second part of my lecture, how the home-based care services observed can be considered as a social construction, at the crossroads of different socio-economical logics revealed by their financing mode and the type of human resources that are at the service of the users (Degavre, Nyssens, 2004). Home-based care utilises multiples different resources –public, market based and voluntary-. Its analysis requires an extended vision of its socio-economical organisation in an intermediary space, especially given by the polanyian framework (Polanyi, 1983 (1944)).

In the third part, I will focus on some issues concerning women’s participation in this type of services. It is a fact that the organizations we observed mobilise around the users many actors, professional and non professional, paid or voluntary, generally women. This is a typical case of “co-construction” of an activity or a service (J.L. Laville, 1994): each user needs a non-standard arrangement which implies a strong collaboration between suppliers and demanders, and registration of such an arrangement in the public sphere.

Consequently co-construction involves different types of economic participation. In my last part, for each actor observed, I will look at how his/her participation in the production of services leads to (incomplete) political participation.

Keywords: Women’s participation; voluntary sector; Belgium

10 pages, March 23, 2006

Note: Abstract of Paper given at the Cinefogo/LSE Conference on Gender Citizenship and Participation

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RePEc:hhh:senior:2007_045

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