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Since 2001 when Lesotho embraced the neoliberal African Growth and Opportunities Act that offers preferential access to the US market, its garment industry has expanded dramatically to become the nation’s leading employer. Elsewhere, large-scale employment of women in low-paid factory jobs has entailed spatial restructuring of gender and age relations. Lesotho is a distinctive context, with socio-spatial relations historically adjusted to male labour migration, high levels of contemporary male unemployment and alarming AIDS prevalence. Based on semi-structured interviews with 40 female factoryworkers and 37 dependents, this article applies a relational timespace analysis to explore how financial and spatio-temporal aspects of factory employment articulate to alter women’s relationships with those for whom they have culturally determined responsibilities: their children, those suffering from ill health and their (generally rural) home communities. The analysis highlights that such employment is not merely adding to women’s responsibilities, but transforming how they are able to undertake social reproduction, as practical, social and emotional roles are converted to largely financial obligations. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
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This article deals with the changing relationship between work and motherhood during the first pregnancy among a group of twenty-one highly educated women living in Turin (Northern Italy), who were interviewed during the months before childbirth with their male partners, in 2010-2012. It aims to illustrate the tensions between the dominant ideas and ideals of motherhood (the 'intensive mothering' model) and the pressing demands of the changing labour market. The data shows that ideas, plans and decisions concerning childcare arrangements are highly gendered, being influenced by the expectations of partners, employers and colleagues and by a work culture which is not family friendly. Within this Italian social and political context, a mother-to-be faces a dilemma which is perceived as a private issue that concerns only herself. The new transition to parenthood forces women to redefine their identity and career in a highly gendered manner. © Institute of Modern Languages Research 2015.