This paper focuses on the discourse of the second shift and domestic work in the Czechoslovakia presented by journals of women´s organizations, 1945-1948. After the mobilisation of the workforce in the post-war Czechoslovakia, women started to be encouraged to take up paid jobs. Together with the rising number of women in paid jobs the so called second shift was established. That means that women were burdened with two roles: those of breadwinners and housewives. The help offered by women´s organizations was represented by the delegation of housework on other women. The solution of the lack of the domestic help consisted in qualification and professionalization, thus establishing this job as a regular one. The establishment of the institution with a suitable name "Liberated Household" was perceived as the ideal solution.
The article covers the topic of women's migration from poorer countries to the so called First World to provide domestic work and care giving. On the one hand, their movement is caused by the demand for domestic labour in rich countries where double career couples resolve the dilemma of reconciliation of public and private spheres by externalization of domestic work. On the other hand, the supply is significant. Migration and provision of domestic service is often the only survival strategy available to women from developing countries due to high unemployment and few working opportunities. The practice of hiring a migrant as domestic worker creates global care chains (Hochschild, 2001) that connect women engaged in care giving - those who are postponing it and those who are providing it. Migrant women hold an unequal position in these chains. They comprise a cheap labour in the informal private sector and so are vulnerable to abusive treatment. To tackle such discrimination, the patriarchal system stereotyping both women's and men's roles has to be challenged on the both sides of the care chain: in the developed as well developing countries.
The article focuses on gender aspects of globalisation and global restructuring and criticises the masculine bias of mainstream theories of globalisation. It is aimed at adding a global dimension to Czech gender studies. It looks at the way in which globalisation is gendered and based on gender ideologies, and how global restructuring affects and change gender systems. Primarily economic globalisation is addressed, and the changes in the organisation of labour globally are examined. Global production is dependent on cheap women's labour in the factories of multi-national corporations in the global south. The process of rendering labour more flexible and informal is associated with its féminisation. Care work and migration are also becoming feminised on a global scale. The article also analyses domestic work performed in the United States and Western Europe by women migrants from developing countries. All these processes are occurring within the context of neo-liberal policies and the changing role of states amidst a global restructuring, which needs to be examined from a gender perspective.