„Das bisschen Haushalt ... sagt mein Mann“ - Die politische Regulierung von Haushaltsarbeit und Implikationen für die geschlechtliche Arbeitsteilung / Just a bit of housekeeping... or so my husband says. The political regulation of domestic work and its implication for the gendered division of labour

The unequal and gendered division of care and household work is persistent in Europe and elsewhere, and, as time-use studies show, also is not altered by partially outsourcing of this work to domestic workers or external service providers. In the EU, this sector is seen as a growing market. This article analyzes various approaches of regulation of domestic and care work in relation to the resulting implications for the gendered as well as the international division of labour. We argue that regulatory efforts are not concerned with a more equitable gender division of labour, but that instead have rather restorative effects, pointing to the externalization and further commodification of this work, and carry a class bias. The article looks at regulations in Germany as well as at the French and Belgian “household check” models. The latter are considered to be widely accepted measures to formalize the sector. The article concludes with a problematization of the separation of the productive and reproductive sphere embedded in the regulations which are a cause for a continued gender-hierarchical division of labour. Therefore, it is worth revisiting proposals of integrated perspectives that discuss rather than “banalize” (Jany-Catrice) commodification.