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When Labour Becomes Form
(knitted table-cloth, 130x160 cm, 2007)

In Slovakia, women over 45 years of age have a specifically weak position in relation to the labor market, they are frequently exposed to discrimination based on age and gender. According to family research, these women experience a double burden, as they combine care for their own families with assistance to their childrenŐs families and care for elderly relatives. Moreover, many ageing women live in constant fear of loosing their jobs before reaching the retirement age.

The project focuses specifically on this vulnerable group. We published an announcement in a Slovak newspaper, searching for an elderly unemployed woman, offering her our fee for participating in the show as a reward for knitting a table-cloth. The pattern we designed for this knitwork is a graph taken from the publication Women, Men and Age in Labor Market Statistics (issued by the Institute for Public Affairs, Bratislava, 2007), a chart that depicts and compares the unemployment rates of groups of women and men, based on age.

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