Is the path towards a ‘Caring Economy’ possible? Care work from ‘personal service’ to collective responsibility.

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to explore and analyse the existing interconnections between the Care work, both paid and unpaid, and gender inequalities on a social and economic level. In particular, the essay will be structured as follows: Chapter I, begins with an overview of the historically gendered nature of the unpaid Care work by drawing upon the feminist body of knowledge of the sixities and seventies in Europe and the US. It will shed light on the key concepts of reproductive labour, domestic work and their implications with Care work; work rendered invisible and undervalued. Chapter II, introduces the roles of the unpaid and paid carers in our contemporary societies; the ethnicization and marketization of Care work over the last decades, in conjunction with the massive entry of women in the waged labour market. It will be similarly illustrated how the underestimation of Care work in the ‘private’ sphere has spillover effects when this enters the market economy. Chapter III, shifts the attention to the analysis of Care work from an economic perspective of Feminist economists’ viewpoint. Care work, whether paid or unpaid, is in this sense scrutinised through the lenses of Bio-Capitalism, as a salient example of the impossibility to separate material from immaterial labour. In this chapter, moreover, it will be demonstrated how Care work, within a global economy, creates a twofold division of labour: a gendered and a racialized division of labour, due to the development of ‘global care chains’ spread from developing countries to developed ones. Chapter IV, attests the importance of Care work as a development issue and offers ideas for a better estimate of the work. Some forms of resistance together with social and economic policies that are shaping the current EU political landscape will be explored. Chapter V, will narrow the focus of the topic to the Care of the elderly and the challenges that our ageing societies are posing to our states. The United Kingdom in this context will be set as an illustrative example. Finally, the essay suggests the need for a ‘Caring economy’ to be carried out through some of the collective solutions proposed for a shared Care.