Women, home care and social change in a rural Newfoundland community

Abstract

This thesis is an examination of women and social change in a rural Newfoundland fishing community. Social change is documented and is investigated through the shift in women's employment from the fishery to home care. This thesis argues that the groundfish moratorium, coupled with shifts in governmental health care policy, has radically reconfigured the nature of women's social space in rural Newfoundland society and created a complex medical and social scenario. The move to home care, as an economic and health issue, is one which provides some social advantages to workers and clients but also one that remains financially exploitative and medically suspect.