2024-03-04 17:00:07
The health crisis has highlighted the social and societal importance of care and human contact professions. However, these professions, mainly carried out by women, remain undervalued, with the tasks, responsibilities and difficulties they face remaining invisible.
In 1983, the Roudy law established the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. However, after forty years, this goal has still not been achieved. In France, the women continue to receive lower wages than men. And this disparity is partly explained by the fact that the most feminized professions receive lower salaries.
In order to better understand the daily life of these professions, their responsibilities, their working conditions, their remuneration and their aspirations, we conducted a research based on their testimonies. Between December 2021 and March 2022, we launched an online consultation for the Institute of Economic and Social Research (Ires) entitled “My work is worth it”, in collaboration with unions and professional associations. Nearly 7,000 employees participated, from fifteen professions related to care and connection to others (nurses, nurses, AESH, home help, etc.). They represent nearly 4 million people in France.
Swiss army knife professions
They do not form a homogeneous group, and present differences in terms of status, missions and qualifications, evolving in various professional environments such as hospitals, schools, nursing homes, in people’s homes or in their homes. However, despite this diversity, they share many points in common.
These fifteen professions firstly share the management of intense emotional loads, strict organizational constraints and strong physical and mental demands. They require great versatility, requiring you to juggle several tasks simultaneously. A nurse testifies:
“Task interruptions are our daily life: listening to patients, answering the phone, distributing medications… And we have to do everything at the same time! »
Beyond the central activities of these professions, we asked the respondents to give us an example of tasks carried out outside their role. The following word cloud summarizes the answers. Administrative and management activities come first, then come care tasks, carried out by link professionals, for example home help who will help with taking medication, or conversely care professions who will have to take into account responsible for maintenance or monitoring activities.
Busy and pressing jobs
Responding to all these tasks requires time, a resource that is sorely lacking for the vast majority of these professions. This sometimes forces professionals to sacrifice the quality of services or to make choices between care and social interactions. They also have to deal with constant interruptions, juggling from one emergency to another. Their real work involves a capacity for adaptation and a continuous reorganization of their activities. A caregiver highlights the intensity of her work:
“I have to feed several people with multiple disabilities while leading the meal and eating my own meal.”
Certain activities, particularly administrative and management activities, also conflict with the very essence of these professions, generating particular pressure. In addition, engaging in the daily lives of people with disabilities, the elderly or very young, often involves atypical working hours: starting early in the morning, finishing late in the evening, working at night or on weekends.
The care and human relations professions are also subject to numerous physical constraints similar to many manual workers and which also have an impact on their health. They have to carry heavy loads, maintain uncomfortable positions, perform repetitive movements and deal with noise. They are also exposed to potentially dangerous products, dirt and constant physical proximity to other individuals. Most employees in these professions have to manage aggressive situations, calm people in distress, be faced with isolation, be forced to hide their emotions or even be afraid, activities which are part of the main psychosocial risks identified in scientific research.
Minimized skills
Emotional work and human-related responsibilities do not always receive the recognition they deserve because they are too often associated with “natural” or even “feminine” qualities. The comparison carried out in another part of the Ires study between hospital engineers (a predominantly male profession, requiring a bac+5 level diploma) and midwives (a predominantly female profession, also requiring a bac+5 level) shows that engineers earn almost 500 euros more per month at the end of their career; the enormous human responsibilities of midwives thus seem much less recognized than the technical knowledge of engineers.
Human-related responsibilities are often underestimated because they are taken for granted. However, they seem fundamental: 90% of respondents working in care and connection professions must guarantee the confidentiality of data, particularly medical data, 95% contribute to the safety and protection of people, and 97% ensure health or well-being. -be individuals.
And overall, the required qualifications are not always highlighted. Respondents frequently mention the absence of a job description: the work is not standardized, and therefore lends itself to adding tasks or responsibilities, often forcing them to do the work of other colleagues or other trades. In addition, the learning of knowledge and human and social skills is based on a great practice. Professionals take their personal time to complete their knowledge, as highlighted by an AESH who mentions having to carry out “Internet research on disabilities concerning the child(ren)” in her care.
Between great pride and lack of recognition
Despite everything, pride in work predominates for the vast majority of respondents, driven by the feeling that their work is useful to others and that it carries strong values.
At the same time, 92% of professionals believe they are poorly paid, especially among those with low salaries. This observation is both subjective and objective. THE results by François-Xavier Devetter, also a researcher at Ires, show the underpayment of these professions, by comparing them with the average salaries corresponding to the actual level of diploma of those who exercise them. Low salaries are then the first reason for not recommending your profession, like this childminder who doubts:
“Is it recommended to work 56 hours per week for €3.25 per hour? »
This reality creates a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, the desire to promote a socially useful profession of which one is proud, and on the other, not to recommend it because the salaries there are well below what they should be. be.
These care and connection workers are the subject of few in-depth studies. Ours highlight the lack of recognition of these professions, which demand both a real increase in salaries and an increase in numbers. The entire Ires study shows the urgency of investing in these professions of care and connection to others; both to “form society” but also because it is a central issue for equality between women and men.
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#urgent #recognize #true