Women from post-socialist countries started migrating to Turkey in the second half of the 1990s to work in the domestic work sector. Migrant domestics have formed their niche as live-in caregivers, due to the disinclination of the existing local labour power to work in the care sector. Yet, the employer mothers, besides asking their live-in workers to tend their children, often demand that they also do the daily chores in the home, purposely leaving the heavy cleaning to their Turkish domestics. (...) This way, live-in migrant domestics are promoted from the status of foreign employees to fictitious family members, to eventually embody `the ideal housewife'. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which friendships between women may promote gender transformation. The study is based on 25 in-depth interviews with young women in Geneva disposed to gender transformation but not necessarily considering themselves to be ‘feminist’. The findings, based on a dispositional and contextual analysis, show that female friendships provide women with a place where they find respite from men, become aware of gender relations, take action to further their emancipation and receive support for changes made. Furthermore, (...) this research shows the way in which women are shaped by their friendships, but also how they shape them actively to model their emerging critical dispositions. It therefore indicates how women are active in modelling their dispositions within the dynamics of gender relations and other social forces. (shrink)