UNRISDfor Social Development · for Social Development Contents ... of production prompted by Claude Meillassoux’s Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community

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Contents

Introduction 1

Opening Session—(Re)thinking Care:North and South,Past and Present,

Research and Reality 2

Session 1—StateResponses to Social

Change in Europe,Argentina and theRepublic of Korea 5

Session 2—ExtensiveFamilialism: India,

Nicaragua and Tanzania 9

Session 3—De-familializing Care:

The Role of Public,Private and Community

Care Workers 13

Session 4—Creatinga Policy Agenda for

Care: The Role ofPolitical Actors 15

Concluding Remarks 17

Agenda 18

Participants 19

The Political andSocial Economyof Care

Report of the UNRISD Conference6 March 2009, Barnard College, Columbia University,New York

Introduction

The parameters of caregiving have changed tremen-dously over the past two to three decades, as women’sentry into the workforce has intensified across diverseregional contexts, family structures have beentransformed (with the higher incidence, in some regions,of households with children that are maintainedprimarily by women), and demographic, epidemiologicaland sociocultural changes have created new demandsfor care as well as a new understanding of what “goodcare” should entail.

Care is commonly thought of as the activities that takeplace within homes and neighbourhoods, and structuredby relationships of kinship and community: caring forchildren and adults whether able-bodied, ill or frail. Butunpaid care work involves many additional tasks, suchas meal preparation, and cleaning of homes, clothesand utensils, which are particularly time-consuming inmany poorer countries where access to appropriateinfrastructure and labour-saving technology is limited.Care has also increasingly shifted outside the hometoward market, state and non-profit provision.

The way in which the provision of care is organizedand divided across household, market, state and non-

profit institutions has important implications for whoaccesses adequate care and who bears the burden.Feminist scholars and activists have repeatedly pointedout that current divisions of care labour are far fromeven. Instead there exists what economists would call a“free-rider” problem, with some individuals and socialgroups (mostly women and girls, especially those in low-income households) doing the bulk of the work andthe rest of society benefiting from the outputs of thiswork. That most care work is done on an unpaid basisdoes not mean that it comes without costs. Becausewomen and girls take on the lion’s share of unpaid care,they have less time for paid employment, self-care, rest,leisure, organizing and political participation. The politicaland social economy of care is therefore central to genderequality.

While care issues have increasingly been incorporatedinto the research and policy agendas of advancedindustrialized countries, this is not a global trend. Overthe past quarter-century, feminist research oninstitutionalized welfare states has generated a richliterature that challenges many of the premises andlimitations of the mainstream social policy literature.Care has been central to these debates. However, thisresearch has been remarkably local. Many of the trendsit has documented are not universal and not all of the

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The Political and SocialEconomy of Care

policy options it discusses are transferable. This isespecially true in a development context, where formalsocial provisioning is less institutionalized. Carearrangements in developing countries have not receivedthe same level of academic scrutiny as institutionalwelfare states. Indeed, little is known about the conditionsunder which caregiving takes place in developingcountries.

Since 2006, UNRISD has been carrying out acomparative research project, including eight countrystudies and a series of thematic papers, to address thislacuna. (Re)thinking and analysing care in a developmentcontext raises several crucial questions: what form docare arrangements take in diverse developing countries?How do these arrangements contest or entrench existinginequalities (of class and gender, in particular)? Arefamilies and households (in all their diversity) the onlysite where care is produced? Is it necessary to distinguishbetween different forms of familialism? How are statesresponding to structural changes and socioculturalnorms that shape care needs? Have issues of careentered the public debate? What forces have facilitatedtheir visibility and to what effect? What should the policypriorities be in each context?

The conference held at Barnard College (ColumbiaUniversity) in New York on 6 March 2009 broughttogether scholars from a range of countries anddisciplines to reflect on these questions, drawing ondiverse country experiences from Asia, Latin Americaand sub-Saharan Africa, as well as on broader caredebates based on research findings from Europe andNorth America.

Opening Session—(Re)thinkingCare: North and South, Past andPresent, Research and Reality

The presentations during the opening sessioninterrogated the place of care in research and reality,past and present, North and South, thus setting thescene for the country-level findings presented in thefollowing panels. While Joan Tronto showed how thepursuit of unlimited growth has led to a major “caredisorder” in current times, Elizabeth Jelin’s speechtraced academic and political debates about social

reproduction and care from the 1970s onward. Researchcoordinator Shahra Razavi added yet another dimensionfor (re)thinking care: she argued that in addition to seeingcare as a sector, it is also important to conceive of care asa perspective or lens through which broader policies andprocesses can be scrutinized—especially in a developingcountry context.

In her keynote address, Joan Tronto made a strongcall to move beyond the “counting games” of a “worldwithout limits”. Much of the marginalization of care,she argued, is due to the belief in unlimited wealthcreation and constant gains in efficiency, deeply rootedin contemporary economic thinking. Within thisframework, care is conceived as an expensive anddilemma-inducing endeavour, because it tends to runup against the limits of frail human bodies andrelationships. In a world without limits, care suffers from“cost disease” due to its resistance to productivityincrease, and provokes a “nice-person dilemma”,according to which those who provide care lose out inan economic structure that rewards participation in thepaid economy but offers little or no compensation forcare.

On a global level, thecommodification of care reinforcesdivisions, as many poor countries‘export’ care to countries whichcan afford to pay a higher price.

This dilemma is forced upon families and individuals.It triggers a vicious cycle within which already existingsocial, ethnic and gender inequalities are deepened. Ifthe price of care goes up, those who already have theadvantage in other realms of social and economic lifecan also afford more and better care. In the case ofchildren, receiving less or lower quality care is likely tolead to more inequalities in the future. On a global level,the commodification of care reinforces divisions, asmany poor countries “export” care to countries whichcan afford to pay a higher price. Finally, there is a growingcare deficit causing health, care and basic safety threatsfor children who are left without adequate adultsupervision across countries.

“We can address these inadequacies within the paradigmof unlimited growth, but we will not succeed [in

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resolving them]”, Tronto argued. An alterativeworldview—“genuinely and democratically inclusive”—can only be created from the recognition of limits,including those of the human body and the globalenvironment. This requires a broad and encompassingunderstanding of care as an activity “that includeseverything that we do to maintain, continue and repairour ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible.That world includes our bodies, our selves and ourenvironment, all of which we seek to interweave in acomplex, life-sustaining web”. Understanding care notas a prerequisite to economic growth, but as the centreof human life would allow a shift in priorities from“making money” (or “making stuff ”), to “makingliveable lives” and “enriching networks of care and

the next democratic revolution. A genuinely democraticcare politics would be characterized not only by itsopposition to a political economy based on the idea ofunlimited growth, but also by a strong commitment toequality, including the equal accessibility of good carefor all human beings. This politics of opposition requiresactors to perceive themselves as agents and asdependents: “Without this switch in awareness we willhit up against the reality of a world without limits atour own peril”, said Tronto.

Elizabeth Jelin’s keynote address looked back atthe 1970s in order to explore past and presentconceptualizations of the domestic sphere, where thebulk of care is provided in the form of unpaid andmostly female labour. She drew parallels between thefeminist debates about domestic and capitalist modesof production prompted by Claude Meillassoux’sMaidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the DomesticCommunity (1981),1 and more recent discussions of therole of families in welfare regimes inspired by the workof Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990).2

Meillassoux’s work examined different modes ofproduction and their role in capitalist economies. Heargued that in the transition to capitalism, the “domesticcommunity” was divested of its productive functions,but maintained an essential role in producing andreproducing labour power for the capitalist system. Whatkind of “product” this labour power was, and whetherit was produced for use- or money-value, generatedheated debates. Feminists were quick to point to thelimitations of Meillassoux’s theory, including hisahistorical use of the category “women” and theambiguity of his concepts. Nevertheless, Jelin argued,the attention to the domestic community and the family’srole within the larger economic context was the startingpoint of what is now discussed as “care”.

Today, households and families are still central toeconomic and social processes. Yet the daily physical,social, emotional and moral reproduction of human

1 Meillassoux, Claude. 1981. Maidens, Meal, and Money: Capitalism andthe Domestic Community. Cambridge University Press, New York. TheFrench original was published in 1975 under the title Femmes, grenierset capitaux.

2 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.Polity Press, Cambridge.

A genuinely democratic care politicswould be characterized not only byits opposition to a political economybased on the idea of unlimitedgrowth, but also by a strongcommitment to equality, includingthe equal accessibility of good carefor all human beings.

relationship”. In such an alternative world, the physical,emotional and relational needs of humans would setthe limits within which other concerns (includingeconomic growth, employment and institutionalorganization) are addressed.

How would a new democratic care politics be fashioned?Who would benefit from such a political movement?In order to generate a sense of solidarity, Trontoproposed turning to a basic and much-neglected aspectof care, namely, the receiving end. Only through thinkingof all human beings—not only the frail and vulnerable—as continuous care receivers, can unity of caregivers beachieved. It is by articulating our own vulnerabilitiesthat we are less able to distance ourselves from careand more likely to perceive it as an activity which iscentral, rather than marginal, to our lives.

The current “care disorder” creates obstacles tocollective mobilization. These obstacles includecontemporary conceptions of democracy, which havetended to omit the need to receive and give care. Makingcare a political priority could thus become the basis for

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beings is absent from national accounting systems aslong as it is carried out in the domestic sphere and notremunerated. This invisibility of families and thecontribution of women’s unpaid work to social welfarecontinued to be a contentious issue during the 1990s.Indeed, Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of WelfareCapitalism—in which he depicted the role of, andrelationship between, markets and states as central tothe functioning of different welfare regimes—paid noattention to the role of households and families inwelfare provision. The critical engagement with his workgenerated an empirically grounded and theoreticallyinformed feminist literature that challenges mainstreamconceptions of social policy and the welfare state, andEsping-Andersen’s later work (1999)3 incorporated thehousehold into welfare regime analysis. In contrast toMeillassoux’s work, Jelin argued, the recent welfareregime literature is not limited to the relationshipbetween capitalism and the domestic community, butlooks instead at a range of different institutions involvedin the provision of welfare.

This growing analytical complexity moves currentanalysis away from the kind of “grand theories” thatMeillassoux’s work built upon. But while Meillassouxwas interested in and able to apply his hypotheses toAfrica and Europe alike, the current welfare regimeliterature builds almost exclusively on the experienceof advanced capitalist economies. Its concern withaccess and entitlements to social welfare and dignitymakes the state central to the analysis. Hence, its theoriesare less applicable to the other half of the world wherehouseholds, families and communities play a dominantrole in social provisioning.

In her opening statement, Shahra Razavi elaboratedon Jelin’s concern about the need to (re)think care in adevelopment context, outlining a set of questionsemerging from the UNRISD project. Drawing on JaneJenson (1997),4 she argued that it is useful to thinkabout care as a perspective or lens, rather than a sector orparticular set of activities. Because good care requiresa variety of resources, including material resources, timeand skills, broader policies and structures can facilitate

or hamper caregiving. This is particularly important ina development context, where many of the preconditionsfor caregiving cannot be taken for granted. These includeappropriate infrastructure and technology to increasethe productivity of unpaid domestic work, as well as

3 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. 1999. Social Foundations of PostindustrialEconomies. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

4 Jenson, Jane. 1997. “Who cares? Gender and welfare regimes.” SocialPolitics, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 182–187.

It cannot be assumed a priori thatthe processes of growth andeconomic development lead to animprovement in caregiving andhuman welfare. The question is,instead, whether capitalaccumulation facilitates caregivingand enhances human well-being, orwhether it occurs at their expense.

the availability of paid work to bring in a decent wage,with which to purchase some necessities for caregiving(such as nutritious food for the family and transportfees to reach the nearest health centre). It thereforecannot be assumed a priori that the processes of growthand economic development lead to an improvement incaregiving and human welfare. The question is, instead,whether capital accumulation—a necessity fordeveloping countries—facilitates caregiving andenhances human well-being, or whether it occurs at theirexpense.

Despite the fact that both welfare and care are mainlyassured through informal family networks andrelations, an exclusive focus on families andhouseholds can be misleading. The “care diamond”analogy put forth by the project illustrates themultiplicity of sites and institutions involved in careprovisioning. Families/households, markets, thepublic and the not-for-profit sectors work in acomplex manner, and the boundaries between themare neither clear-cut nor static. Although families andhouseholds are the bedrock of care provision in mostcountries, there is great diversity among developingcountries with respect to state capacity (fiscally andadministratively) and the willingness to provide socialand care services or put forth comprehensive socialprotection measures. The six project countries alsovary greatly with regard to the “familializing” (forexample, care leave provisions, transfers for caringand social rights attached to caregiving, such as

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pension care credits) or “de-familializing” (such aspublic provision of care services and public subsidyof market care services) emphases of their socialpolicies. The focus on public policies also allowsmoving beyond an agenda, currently pursued by somemultilateral institutions, focused exclusively on micro-level interventions aimed at getting more meninvolved in caregiving. According to Razavi, thesemicro-level measures around the promotion offatherhood, for example, are largely insufficient, atleast in many developing countries, where much moreneeds to be done in terms of putting in place thepolicies, programmes and structural changes that canhelp redistribute the costs of caregiving across socialclasses and also make it more viable for women torenegotiate their care responsibilities with men.

Finally, Razavi pointed to the problem of “welfarepluralism” in a development context, where care isspread thinly across the care diamond. In theory,governments can orchestrate the mix of public, privateand community provision, guaranteeing accessibleservices for everyone, as well as good workingconditions for care workers. But this requires a statewith both fiscal and regulatory capacities to regulatenon-state care providers, enforce quality standards andunderwrite some of the cost of service provision forlow-income users. It also requires the political will toinvest in basic public health and education services,and appropriate infrastructure, as the bedrock of socialprovisioning to reduce the unpaid care burden placedon families and households. However, the reason whygovernments often enter into public-privatepartnerships is to save costs (especially those relatedto staff). As a consequence, Razavi argued, particularattention needs to be paid to the kind of employmentthat public-private mixes offer to their workforce.Pluralism in the provisioning of social and careservices can have unequalizing, if not exclusionary,outcomes in contexts where the state fails to play aleadership role. In historically more unequal societies,pluralism can easily slip into fragmentation as gapsare filled by providers that offer services of varyingquality which cater and are accessible to differentsegments of the population. In such contexts privateprovision (of health, pensions and care services) forthe better-off may be underwritten by state subsidies,while meagre resources are channelled into poor-

quality public or “community” health, education andcare services for the majority who may be required tomake in-kind or “under-the-table” contributions inorder to receive them.

Session 1—State Responses toSocial Change in Europe,Argentina and the Republic ofKorea

The past decades have witnessed major economic,demographic and social changes that have hadimportant consequences for the organization of care.Among these shifts are declining fertility rates;changing marriage patterns, household and familystructures; ageing; and migration. How are statesresponding to these changes? How are responsibilitiesfor financial provision and caregiving (re)assigned indifferent contexts?

5 Lister, Ruth. 2003. “Investing in the citizen-workers of the future:Transformations in citizenship and the state under New Labour.” SocialPolicy and Administration, Vol. 37, No. 5, pp. 427–443.

While diversity is the definingfeature of policy measures inEurope—including funds, servicesand time for care, as well as theirrelative weight in each nationalsetting—the withdrawal of the stateemerges as a common feature acrosscountries, even those with a strongtradition of state-provided socialand care services.

In her presentation, Mary Daly provided an overviewof trends in the European context, focusing on thedrivers and ideological underpinnings of contemporarycare-related reforms in the areas of health, socialprotection, family and employment policies. She arguedthat reforms are not really driven by an interest in careitself, but rather by what is perceived as demographic,social and economic exigency. Aside from the economicinstrumentalism around labour market activation andinvestment in the development and well-being ofchildren as the “citizen-workers of the future”,5

care-related policies seem to be driven by concerns over

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the family as a key institution in the creation andmaintenance of social fabric and order. While diversityis the defining feature of policy measures—includingfunds, services and time for care, as well as their relativeweight in each national setting—the withdrawal of thestate emerges as a common feature across countries,even those with a strong tradition of state-providedsocial and care services. Furthermore, consensus seemsto be emerging on some key ideas about the linkagebetween people’s family and market roles that ultimatelyunderpin social policy making.

Five tendencies become particularly apparent. First,governments increasingly treat all women as workers,pursuing a rise in the share of dual-earner households;and second, they regard paternal involvement in familylife as desirable. Third, child well-being and developmenthas increasingly become an independent concern ofsocial policy as an investment in human capital, whichleads to the fourth tendency, the fact that some non-maternal childcare is seen as necessary. Last, there areseparate debates about elderly care with differentcombinations of self-sufficiency and public fundingbeing promoted mainly from the areas of health andpensions. Although the first two tendencies have rootsin feminist thought and movements, Daly argued thatthey are underpinned less by concerns over genderequality, than by hard-bitten economic considerations.On the one hand, support for traditional malebreadwinner/female caregiver households has come tobe seen as costly and, thus, dual-earner families whocan fend for themselves have become the desired norm.On the other hand, policy makers hope that malebonding with small children will be good for childdevelopment and make men more likely to provide fortheir offspring at later stages—thus relieving publicbudgets of child support.

Work and family reconciliation policies have becomea major topic for discussion on care in the Europeancontext. According to Daly, these are not only drivenby the desire to increase parental employment throughworking time and leave regulations that facilitate theparticipation of both parents in the paid economy.The aim is also to soften the hard edges andharmonize market and family institutions, becausethe quality of family life in the short term is perceivedto be crucial for maintaining social order in the long

term. This perception goes hand in hand with therecognition of the limits of the processes ofindividualization and de-familialization. It hastriggered policies that provide families with morerights to provide care and try to harmonizeinstitutions and spheres of life.

Daly concluded her remarks by arguing that Europeanstates are “hopelessly confused”, with care policiesendorsing several directions at once. Greaterprovision of care services (de-familialization andcommodification) provides incentives to dual-earnerfamilies. At the same time, greater time rights (suchas care leaves, working-time reductions, flexible hours)enable parents to provide more care (familializationand de-commodification). Consequently, there is nosimple trend toward an “adult worker model”.6 Thetrend to individualization also needs to be qualified,Daly argued, as policies are directed at children infamilies, in communities and in markets, and atwomen and men as embedded in family contexts. Asa result, care is still provided through a mix of states,markets, the voluntary sector and families. Womenare increasingly assigned a dual role—as carers andearners—and gender equality is being replaced as apolicy priority by concerns over public finance,investment in children as the citizen-workers of thefuture and the quality of family life as a stabilizingfactor of long-term social order.

Ito Peng’s presentation echoed many of Daly’sremarks. First, she said, economic motives have been akey driver of recent care policy reforms in theRepublic of Korea. These reforms suggest a possiblemodification of a regime that has historically been basedon a male breadwinner model and strong familialism.Indeed, state support for time, cash and services forcare has increased since 2003, mainly under the bannerof family/work reconciliation policies. The duration offully paid maternity leave has been extended to 90 daysfor both standard and non-standard workers (that is,temporary and daily workers), and a three-day paternityleave introduced. The government also pursued

6 Lewis, Jane and Susanna Giullari. 2005. “The adult-worker-modelfamily and gender equality: Principles to enable the valuing and sharingof care.” In Shahra Razavi and Shireen Hassim (eds.), Gender andSocial Policy in a Global Context: Uncovering the Gendered Structureof “The Social”. UNRISD and Palgrave, Basingstoke.

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part-time work and flexible work time regulations.Furthermore, parents in standard employment now havethe right to nine months parental leave during whichthey are entitled to a monthly state subsidy. Monetarychild benefits have been increased and extended, andchildcare services have been expanded from around 2,000centres in 1990 to almost 30,000 centres in 2007. Manyof these centres are run by private for-profit and not-for-profit institutions whose activities are heavilyregulated and subsidized by the state.

A combination of interconnected demographic,economic and political factors has led to thisunprecedented social policy turn toward familiesand children in the Republic of Korea. First,plummeting fertility and rapid population ageinghave spurred the concern about labour shortagesin a country which, historically, has been unreceptiveto immigration. Second, since the 1997 Asianeconomic crisis, the Republic of Korea has beenstruggling to reinvigorate the economy and createemployment. As a response to economic crisis andthe International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) bail-outconditions, the government undertook profoundlabour market restructuring, including deregulationand flexibilization. This process under-mined malebreadwinner arrangements, as “family wages”increasingly disappeared. At the same time, thegrowing numbers of women jo in ing labourmarkets reduced the time available for unpaid care.Third, women’s movements and “femocrats”,whose representation in government has risen overthe past decade, have been demanding genderequality. To address the different demands, thegovernment turned to “social investment”–stylepolicies aimed at mobilizing female labour andincreasing fertility through an expansion of optionsfor reconciling work and family life. At the sametime, the expansion of childcare services wasperceived as a route to job creation and investmentin human capital, as well as a way to respond tosome of the demands of the women’s movement.While this logic has spurred important policychanges, it is also based on a very narrow definitionof care—the care of dependents, mainly childrenand the elderly. Taking care of their needs has cometo be perceived as instrumental to economic growthand development.

Eleonor Faur’s presentation on childcare arrangementsin Argentina focused on how care-related social policiesare shaped by and contribute to the reproduction ofthe marked social inequalities that characterize thecountry. Similar to the Republic of Korea, Argentinahas experienced profound changes in poverty, inequality,employment patterns, family and household structures,as well as recurrent economic crises, over the pastdecades. These changes have modified childcare needsand demands. Because social policy is highly stratified—with some entitlements being universal, while othersare subject to targeting and means-testing—and incomeinequalities are severe, care strategies differ accordingto household income. This is why, Faur argued, there isno such thing as a “care policy” in the country, and it isdifficult to identify a “care regime”, as the conceptimplies a relatively stable configuration. Instead, shesuggested “social organization of child care” as away of characterizing “the constantly developingconfiguration of childcare services provided bydifferent institutions”.

In Argentina, because social policyis highly stratified—with someentitlements being universal, whileothers are subject to targeting andmeans-testing—and incomeinequalities are severe, carestrategies differ according tohousehold income.

Three different sets of policies shape the socialorganization of care in Argentina. First, regardingemployment-related rules and regulations, thestratified nature of the labour market translates directlyinto different entitlements with regard to care.Maternity leave entitlements, for example, arerestricted to those in formal employment (in a contextwhere half of the female workforce is informallyemployed). They are further stratified along the linesof employment in the private sector (90 days) andpublic sector (up to 165 days for public schoolteachers, for example). Due to lax enforcement,mandatory company-based childcare largely dependson collective bargaining agreements, which varywidely across sectors and firms. A second set of care-related policies are to be found in the realm of anti-

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poverty strategies. In response to the 2001/2002economic crisis, poverty reduction programmeshave targeted poor families with cash transfersand nutritional programmes aimed at improvingeducational, health and nutritional indicators. To alarge extent, these programmes rely on theunpaid care work of poor women, while the statehas been reluctant to extend education and healthservices. Thus, far from providing options for de-familialization, Faur said, Argentina’s povertyreduction programmes seem to promote “familialismand maternalism for the poor”. According to Faur,it is the third set of policies—early educationservices—that could potentially universalize childcarearrangements across social classes. The introductionof mandatory preschool attendance for five-year-olds in 1993 has significantly narrowed the regionaland class inequalities in this age group’s access toearly education. However, significant class differencesremain among younger children, with lower incomefamilies much less likely to put their children inpreschool. Although coverage for lower age groupsis higher in the city of Buenos Aires, a large shareof the enrolment is absorbed by private providers,while state provision has remained rather stagnantover recent years. This raises serious issues with regardto affordability. In poor communities, on the otherhand, the state supports alternative community-basedchildcare programmes that rely on volunteer or non-professional staff.

Faur concluded by summarizing the stratified natureof care arrangements in Argentina: poor families relyon unpaid maternal care or care by other relatives.They struggle to access public or alternative child-care services, while state-run poverty reductionprogrammes attempt to keep care familialized, basedon poor women’s unpaid labour. Middle-incomefamilies, particularly formal workers, usually combinestate or employment-based provision with differentkinds of family care. Higher income households, onthe other hand, are able to choose from a wide rangeof sometimes overlapping public, employment-basedand market provision of childcare, including the hiringof domestic workers. Labour market and incomeinequalities are thus reproduced through thepatchwork of current care-related policies inArgentina.

DiscussionThe discussion that followed delved further into theissue of inequality raised by Faur. One participant voicedconcern over the fact that only the Argentinapresentation had focused on class inequalities in care,and questioned whether this stemmed from thedeliberate choice of the researchers or whether itreflected different social realities. Several participantspointed to the differences in economic developmenttrajectories which had resulted in significantly lowerlevels of income inequality in the Republic of Korea.There, Peng argued, postwar economic growth had beenpremised on a national narrative of one homogenous(mono-ethnic, mono-racial) nation. This led to a growthpath which was more inclusive and less prone to

The need to reconnect debates aboutcare to larger debates about socialtransformation and socialcitizenship was also underlined,with the argument that an inclusivefeminist agenda also needs toquestion inequalities of race,ethnicity and national origin.

perpetuating income inequalities. As anxiety overdemographic change increased, however, thisnarrative proved problematic. Opening the country toimmigration in order to confront possible labourshortages would have meant questioning the narrativeon which national identity and cohesion had been built.Another participant added that lower income inequalityin the Republic of Korea had restricted the market fordomestic workers—a common care solution for higherincome households in Argentina—as the pool of poorwomen who traditionally staff these services has beensmall or inexistent. This, together with the reluctanceto provide entry to immigrant labour, could have urgedthe state to take on a larger role in terms of careprovision in the Republic of Korea than in Argentina.However, recently signed bilateral agreementsliberalizing immigration rules for care workers fromIndonesia and the Philippines could unravel thesedynamics.

Particular interest was expressed in racial and ethnicinequalities, which had not been addressed by any ofthe presentations. Two participants raised this point with

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regard to the emerging European policy consensusdepicted by Daly in her presentation. To what extent arecurrent reforms driven by concerns over integration andadaptation of ethnic minority and immigrant children?How do care-related policy reforms affect women, menand children of ethnic minorities and immigrantcommunities? The need to reconnect debates about careto larger debates about social transformation and socialcitizenship was also underlined, with the argument thatan inclusive feminist agenda also needs to questioninequalities of race, ethnicity and national origin. Dalyagreed with these comments, stressing that inequalitiesof both race and income are extremely important in thecurrent European debates around care. The concernabout child welfare and development, she argued, wasvery much a concern about minority children and theperceived failure of immigrant parents to integrate. Atthe same time, debates about demographic change—mainly triggered by falling birth rates or “fertility strike”among educated, white, middle- and upper-classwomen—are also underpinned by concerns about classand ethnic structures.

Another strand of the discussion focused on the“confusion” of European policy makers with regard tocare, also raised by Daly in her presentation. Oneparticipant argued that not only states but womenthemselves are confused, wanting to be workers andmothers, and actively demanding a right to work andcare at the same time. Daly agreed about the complexityof the issue, and stressed that the contradictory policiespursued by European governments are largely due tothe fact that care is not a priority in any of thesecountries. Furthermore, rather than treating care as aconcern of its own, policy initiatives often originate inministries that perceive care as an obstacle that needsto be overcome in order to achieve other goals, forexample, parental employment.

Session 2—Extensive Familialism:India, Nicaragua and Tanzania

Most low-income countries have been characterizedby a much lower level of state responsiveness to thecare needs of their populations, relegating the bulkof care provision to households and communities,which in turn rely heavily on unpaid and “voluntary”

female carers. While resources and capacities forsupporting care are lower in these countries, manyface additional care challenges in the form of highcare-dependency ratios, health pandemics or highnumbers of war orphans and people with disabilitiesresulting from armed conflict. India, Nicaragua andTanzania display high levels of familialism in the wayboth material livelihoods and care are organized.Taking into account differences in administrativeand fiscal state capacity, however, India’s careperformance is particularly worrying. While India andNicaragua have similar gross domestic product(GDP) per capita, absolute poverty rates anddependency ratios, Nicaragua outperforms India onseveral indicators, including infant mortality andcoverage of early childhood education and careservices, despite the fact that bureaucratic capacityis arguably higher in India. This points to differenthistorical and political legacies, as well as differentlevels of state commitment to care in both countries.

Rajni Palriwala argued in her presentation that India’shistory of elaborate social programmes and “rhetoricexcess” tend to obscure the largely residual nature ofthe state in welfare provision (that is, minimal assistanceavailable only after all other forms of provision haveeither failed or been exhausted). She argued that theIndian social policy regime is characterized by apatchwork of programmes, few universal components,serious underfunding, low quality of public services,ad hoc solutions and patronage. The 1990s were markedby high rates of economic growth that led to the riseof a small educated and globally competitive middleclass, but left masses of informal urban and agrarianworkers and their families largely excluded from thecountry’s international success and employment-basedsocial protection. The struggle to make ends meet, bothin terms of financial resources and time for care, isevident in extremely long working hours and low wagesas well as the continuing importance of self-employment, especially for women in family enterprisesand home-based work. Within this scenario women’swork, both productive and reproductive, tends to remainfamilialized and uncommodified (that is, unremunerated).Both welfare and wage policies, Palriwala said, aredesigned to discourage these unpaid workers fromentering the labour market, based on assumptions about“a woman’s place” in the family and the community.

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One of the major current workfare programmes, theNational Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme(NREGS) that aimed to enhance livelihood securityof rural households by legally warranting at least 100days of wage employment per year to each household,both belies and underscores these assumptions. Whileclose to 40 per cent of the participants are women,most worksites are not equipped with child supervision,let alone childcare services, despite both being specifiedin the legal act that set up NREGS. Apart from that,care issues have entered government policy ratherinadvertently through attempts to improve nutritionlevels, and lower infant and child mortality rates. TheIntegrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), whichemerged from concerns over child nutrition, as well asinfant and maternal mortality, developed a minimal carefunction over time to the extent that some of thenutritional programmes required that children stay onthe premises. This took the form of government crèchesor anganwandis. However, coverage remains low, openinghours are short and erratic, and staff-to-child ratiosare abysmally low. Furthermore, ground-level anganwadistaff suffer from low pay, ambiguous employmentstatus and excessive workloads. Workers are notconsidered public employees and although stipendshave increased over the years, they remain far belowthe average wage of primary school teachers. However,there seem to be increasing efforts to organize andmake demands for the regularization of theiremployment status, access to social security benefitsand better wages.

Needless to say, this scenario leads to a highly stratifiedfamilialism in access to care, with affluent and middle-class families opting for private care solutions (includingdomestic workers), thus reducing their stake in thequality and accessibility of public care services, orfinding family care arrangements. In view of the absenceof adequate childcare services and the difficulty infalling back on other family members who arethemselves likely to be in the labour market, poorfamilies tend to rely on extremely precarious carearrangements, including neighbour, sibling and self-care,which put care-recipients and their welfare in jeopardy.

Juliana Martínez Franzoni’s presentation focusedon care for children in Nicaragua, the second poorestcountry in the western hemisphere. Low public social

spending (approximately $957 per capita in 2006) isreflected in poor coverage of public childcare: eightout of 10 children under the age of six have no accessto public social services, including a diverse set ofpreschool and nutritional programmes. Furthermore,the extent to which existing programmes can be classifiedas public is also questionable, given their reliance onunpaid community work, co-payments in cash or kind,and donor funding. Indeed, preschools andfood programmes are run through “communityparticipation” and depend on family members—mostlymothers—for cooking and serving food as well assupervising children. Different sources of funding, bothdomestic and external, and different implementingagencies convert existing services into a patchwork ofprojects and actions.

Despite this rather poor record of state performancein the social sector, there seem to be relatively highexpectations among the population with regard to theideal or desired role of the state in social provisioning.This can be attributed, at least in part, to the legacy ofthe Sandinista revolutionary period (1979–1990), whenpublic health, education and care services experienceda significant expansion. Indeed, a large part of existingchildcare centres date back to this period. Thesignificance of volunteer work in social service deliverycan also be seen, in part at least, as a legacy of therevolutionary project within which communityparticipation was central, particularly in health andliteracy campaigns. Martínez Franzoni argued thatduring its time in opposition up until 2006, the SandinistaParty sought to “govern from below” by keepingcommunity movements alive. Conservative post-revolutionary governments, on the other hand, reliedincreasingly on community and volunteer work in theprocess of state retrenchment.

Martínez Franzoni concluded her remarks by drawingout a series of policy implications, including the needto turn unpaid work carried out by family orcommunity members in social programmes into paidwork, the dire need for higher levels of public socialexpenditure, and the need to pool domestic and externalresources into coordinated programmes for socialprotection and care.

7 All $ figures refer to US dollars.

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Marjorie Mbilinyi examined care in the context ofHIV/AIDS in Tanzania. She argued that the country’sHIV/AIDS strategy must be situated within the contextof its macroeconomic policies, which reduced statesupport to public health, water and sanitation systems.This led to growing poverty and income inequality,increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS and, as a result, agrowing care burden arising from both HIV/AIDS–related infections and tuberculosis. Public sectordownsizing and severe cutbacks in health servicedelivery have led to a shortage of drugs and medicalsupplies, as well as an overall deterioration of thephysical infrastructure of health and education. Thespread of HIV/AIDS thus placed further stress on ahealth care system that had serious problems inaddressing citizens’ basic needs even in the absence ofthe pandemic. While there has been some revision oforthodox policies since the early 1990s, it is far fromclear whether the increase in funding for the socialsectors is being channelled effectively into buildingpublic social services.

In this context, home-based care (HBC) programmeshave been integrated into the government’s HIV/AIDS strategy. These programmes train community-based volunteers who then visit HIV/AIDS patientsin their homes, thereby relieving the care burden onfamily members. The Tanzanian government hasadvocated strongly in favour of HBC programmes,and with the availability of external sources offunding, several non-governmental, faith-based andcommunity organizations have responded positivelyto this cal l . However, in pract ice the HBCprogrammes face innumerable challenges: referralsystems are weak; volunteers, most of whom arewomen and themselves poor, receive little trainingon even the rudimentary skills of how to care foran ill patient and how to take care of themselveswhile caring; and they are not always supplied withthe basic kits and stipends. Additionally, HBC servicesare severely underfunded, and receive only between1 and 2 per cent of government and donor spendingon HIV/AIDS. According to Mbilinyi, moreresources are needed to support self-organizing andnetworking by people living with HIV/AIDS, theirfamilies, communities and caregivers. Moreover,volunteers also occupy a grey zone between paid andunpaid care work. Although they often share many

of the characteristics of full-time workers (in termsof hours of work, for example), their work isneither recognized as employment nor adequatelyremunerated (if it is remunerated at all). In Tanzania,these “volunteers” increasingly fill the gaps left bydeficient public health systems.

In addition to family, state, community and (verylimited) market provision, international donors seemto constitute a fifth corner of the care diamond inTanzania. As in Nicaragua, external resources accountfor more than one-third of the public budget, and there

In addition to family, state,community and (very limited)market provision, internationaldonors seem to constitute a fifthcorner of the care diamondin Tanzania.

is large off-budget funding, especially of health andHIV/AIDS–related programmes. Donors are extremelyinfluential in the definition of HIV/AIDS policies andprogrammes, Mbilinyi said, and often bring in “new”ideas that may not match core strategies and needs.Thus far donor funding has included very little, if any,funding for HBC.

Activists in search of community-based solutions to“good” care for people living with HIV/AIDS, whilereducing the amount of unpaid care work borne byindividuals and taking it out of the home, haveadvocated the creation and strengthening of communitycentres for meals, health care and recreation, homevisits by trained community health workers andcommunity hospices for the very ill. However, all thisrequires adequate funding and more public resourcesthat actually reach people living with HIV/AIDS andtheir caregivers.

DiscussionTwo main issues were raised during the discussion.The first one was related to the role of religiousinstitutions and their influence on care-relatedpolicies. One participant argued that a familialistapproach may be chosen by governments orinternational organizations in order to circumventthe opposition of conservative religious forces. Since

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these forces have gained political influence in bothIndia and Nicaragua, it may have had a bearing onthe tendency to re-privatize care. While Palriwalaargued that Indian familialism likely pre-dates thereligious Right in many ways, increased internationalopenness has allowed concerns about identity andtradition to grow beyond the movement. In thiscontext, India has experienced a resurgence of caste-based marriages and other religious rituals that requirea large amount of unpaid family labour. MartínezFranzoni remarked that religion—both in the way itshapes how women perceive themselves and theirroles as mothers and caregivers, and in the way thatfaith-based institutions influence care policies—wasan important issue that had not been sufficientlyaddressed by the project. According to her, the

agreed that population policy is a factor in state socialprovision, reflected in several benefits and rights thatdo not apply to mothers or families with more thantwo children. However, the direct relationship betweensuch interests and care service provision is morecomplicated. Palriwala suggested, for example, thatavailability of cheap child labour, which is likely toshrink with the expansion of preschool and childcarecoverage, may also play a role.

Martínez Franzoni stressed the fact that (de factoand ideology-led) resource constraints are not theonly factor for poor state capacity and performance,as comparative evidence from El Salvador andNicaragua shows. Throughout much of the 1990s,both countries had Right-wing parties in power thatsupported the idea of a residual state. However, ElSalvador has developed more capacity in addressingsocial needs than Nicaragua. Donors and lenders areimportant actors and factors in explaining why statecapacities remain underdeveloped, because they oftenprefer to spend money on social services rather thanstate capacity building. The role of women’sorganizations and movements also comes into play.During years of state retrenchment, women’s NGOsin Nicaragua moved into the niche of social serviceprovision and contributed to the reliance onvolunteer-run social services. She underlined the needto develop alternatives for the collective allocationof resources that do not rely on women’s unpaidwork in contexts where state investment and capacityare low. This would include an analysis of the waysin which donors and business can be mobilized forcollective social provisioning.

Summarizing the session, one participant said that thecases showed how the “neoliberal tsunami” hasshattered notions of “public-ness”. However, while inNicaragua the Sandinista legacy allowed for a certainlevel of expectation of the role of the state, herimpression was that in India—despite a vibrant sceneof social movements—the view of the state seemed tobe rather cynical. She stressed that the future of carewill depend not only on these expectations of public-ness, but also on how they are mobilized when windowsof opportunity open up for social demands to bearticulated—with the current economic crisis potentiallybeing such a moment.

While low state responsiveness andreliance on unpaid voluntary workin Nicaragua (and Tanzania) can bepartly explained by fiscal stress,dependence on external donors forfunding and low state capacity, thisis not the case in India, where donordependence is low and statecapacity relatively high.

former—that is, the way religion shapes women’sperceptions of themselves—seemed more relevant thanthe latter, at least in Nicaragua.

The second issue concerned the causes of differentpatterns of state irresponsiveness to care needs inNicaragua and India. While low state responsivenessand reliance on unpaid voluntary work in Nicaragua(and Tanzania) can be partly explained by fiscal stress,dependence on external donors for funding and lowstate capacity, this is not the case in India, where donordependence is low and state capacity relatively high.Razavi suggested that the Indian state’s negligence ofpublic care services could stem from concerns aboutcontrolling fertility, especially among low-class, low-castegroups. While the state can trust affluent families toaccess care offered by market institutions, it may notwant to encourage the poor to have more children byproviding accessible and quality services. Palriwala

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Session 3—De-familializing Care:The Role of Public, Private andCommunity Care Workers

In recent decades, many of the intimate tasks associatedwith care have moved out of households and into thepublic sphere of markets and states, as women’s growinglabour force participation has reduced the time availablefor unpaid family-based care. Commodified forms ofcare—provided within public, private or non-profitinstitutions—are thus intrinsically connected to broadercare arrangements. It has long been argued that theundervaluation of care and social reproduction is dueto its confinement to the private realm of the home.However, the growing provision of care through market,government and community services has not resolvedits undervaluation, or the fact that it is carried outpredominantly by women. In both developed anddeveloping countries, women constitute the majorityof care workers and are overrepresented in thesesectors compared to their share of the total workforce.Non-household care work includes a number ofoccupations that differ significantly in terms of status

conditions and issues of quality. She started out bystressing similarities of paid and unpaid care work,both of which are based on personal relationshipsand intrinsic motivations. The assumption that thesepersonal, emotional and relational dimensions of carework disappear once care is commodified and paidfor is misleading. Indeed, the promise of “quality”in the paid care sector relies to a large extent onintrinsic motivations, personal interaction andemotional attachment. While consumers benefit fromcaring motivations because they help guaranteequality, the same motivations render care workersvulnerable, since struggles for an improvement ofworking conditions and wages are likely to affect thewell-being of the people they care for. Emotionalattachment to care recipients converts caregivers(whether paid or unpaid) into “prisoners oflove”. From an economic point of view, intrinsicmotivations and attachment are thus relevant to theproduction function of care services. Consistentassignments and low turnover rates are likely toincrease the opportunities for continuous personalinteraction and engagement that affect attachment.

Current developments in the care sector of the UnitedStates, however, are moving in a very differentdirection. The concern over rising costs of education,health and care services has led to “low-road” strategiesaimed at cutting the costs of care. Indeed, care priceshave been rising faster than the prices of other personalconsumption items. Two factors have contributed tothis trend. On the one hand, growing female labourforce participation has reduced the supply of unpaidcare services. The relational and interpersonal characterof care, on the other hand, complicates the adoptionof labour-saving technologies. The effort to reduce costsis therefore largely absorbed by the care workforce inthe form of stagnating wages and deteriorating workingconditions. This tendency jeopardizes the quality of careand is increasingly being challenged by producer/consumer coalitions in the United States. Efforts topromote “high-road” strategies in the care sector, suchas the Worthy Wages Campaign, have focused on raisingthe wages of care workers by persuading consumersthat higher pay would lead to higher quality services.Folbre agreed with Tronto that the unifying factor fora broad-based care coalition is that everyone dependson care services. The common interest in accessible,

It has long been argued that theundervaluation of care and socialreproduction is due to itsconfinement to the private realm ofthe home. However, the growingprovision of care through market,government and community serviceshas not resolved its undervaluation,or the fact that it is carried outpredominantly by women.

and skills—with medical doctors at one end of thespectrum, and domestic workers at the other end.Although wages and working conditions of care workersvary across categories and countries, there is empiricalevidence that in many countries care workers face wagediscrimination compared to workers with comparablelevels of skill and education in non–care relatedoccupations, a phenomenon referred to as the “carepenalty”.

Nancy Folbre’s presentation focused mainly on therelationship between care workers’ wages, working

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high-quality services can therefore be an importantmobilizing factor in moving toward the greatersocialization of care.

Valeria Esquivel followed with a presentation onworking conditions and wages of paid care workers inArgentina, focusing on the contrasting cases ofpreschool teachers and domestic workers. While bothoccupations are highly feminized, they differ significantlyin terms of wages and working conditions.

As in many developing countries, domestic service hasbeen an important source of employment for womenin Argentina and one of the prime forms of market-based care provision. Low remuneration and status, aswell as poor working conditions of domestic workers,are among the most notorious expressions of thedevaluation of care work. In Argentina, most domesticworkers are middle-aged and display low educationallevels. Domestic service employment is weaklyregulated. Indeed, it is explicitly excluded from thecountry’s labour code. Despite recent efforts toformalize employment, two-thirds of domestic workersremain unregistered and thus excluded from socialsecurity benefits. One-third of domestic workers livein poor households, which is a higher rate than thenational average. The fact that domestic workers areemployed by individual households further complicatesworkers’ organizing. As a result, the wages of domesticworkers are well below the economy-wide minimumwage level.

Preschool teaching, in contrast, appears as a highlyprofessionalized activity, with almost all preschoolteachers having a tertiary degree. Like other educationalstaff in the Argentine public sector, preschool teachersare unionized, with intermediate organizations thatnegotiate salaries and working conditions witheducational authorities on a centralized basis (preschoolteachers’ salaries are negotiated along with primaryteachers’ salaries). Teaching personnel thus benefit froma high level of institutionalized workers’ rights and enjoyaccess to highly regulated, stable and relatively well-paid employment.

With regard to care workers’ wages, Esquivel found noevidence for an across-the-board “care penalty” inArgentina, where wage gaps seem to be driven by high

levels of informality and gender segregation rather thanby a care component. However, as the data for domesticworkers suggest, there is a specific penalty associatedwith paid work in the domestic sector.

DiscussionMuch of the discussion that followed focused on issuesof solidarity and coalition building among care workers,despite high variations in working conditions, wages andstatus. Two participants pointed to the difficulties offorming producer/consumer coalitions, particularly incontexts with high social inequalities. One of them arguedthat “building a political coalition for care with a Ginicoefficient of 0.3 is very different from building thiscoalition with a Gini coefficient of 0.6 or 0.5”. ManySouthern countries are characterized by stark socialstratifications that permeate social movements,including women’s movements.

Jelin noted that the session on care workers may be thewrong place to talk about coalition building. Althoughmost care occupations are characterized by high degreesof feminization, domestic workers and preschoolteachers should not be expected to have similar interests.This would be like expecting car mechanics andphysicists to share similar employment-related concerns.Rather, coalition issues have to be located in the contextof rethinking the way the economy is built, as Tronto’spresentation suggested.

Folbre argued that despite the difficulties, discussionsneed to move beyond what she considered the cynicalstance—“there is nothing we can do”—triggered by thedominance of neoliberalism over the past decades.There is a need to think more positively and creativelyabout alternatives. According to Folbre, the basic driverbehind reform of the care economy is that the currentsystem “simply does not work”.

Another strand of the discussion interrogated the roleof paid care workers’ wages and working conditionswithin a larger theoretical framework for care. Initiallyraised by Peng, this concern was taken up by severalparticipants. Jelin questioned the analytical usefulnessof lumping different types of care (for example, feedinga sick patient and educating children) together. Accordingto her, the main challenge resides in doing justice toheterogeneity among different types of care workers

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(including highly qualified preschool teachers at the veryformal end as well as domestic workers at the veryinformal end), without forgetting to put the puzzle backtogether and integrate these findings into a broaderframework. Esquivel felt that, theoretically speaking,there was an extensive literature on paid care workerswhich tried to explain low status and remuneration,including, for example, the “prisoner of love”framework mentioned by Folbre. Instead, the focusshould be on better working conditions and wages forall workers. Although this may seem very basic, Esquivelargued, the right to work, to a living wage and to decentworking conditions cannot be taken for granted,particularly in a development context.

The evidence from India, Nicaragua and Tanzaniashowed a growing tendency to use volunteer workersin social and care service provisioning. Regardingvolunteer caregivers in the context of HIV/AIDS inTanzania, Razavi raised the question about policyresponses to this situation. While some grassrootswomen’s organizations are making demands for donorresources to be channelled directly to their organizations,community-based organizations cannot replace thestate. Mbilinyi affirmed that community-basedvolunteers can only complement public social policies.A reason for the emergence of these organizations hasbeen the combination of poor basic social services(severely debilitated during structural adjustment) andthe HIV/AIDS pandemic. In this context, while thestate requires the financial resources to provide theseservices for citizens, it also needs to be constantlyreminded of its responsibility to do so.

Session 4—Creating a PolicyAgenda for Care: The Role ofPolitical Actors

The two presentations in this session looked at politicalframes and discourses around care at national andinternational levels. Both argued that nationalgovernments and international organizations have takenup some of the issues and concerns expressed byfeminist and civil rights movements. However, they havedone so only partially, sidelining some of the keydemands related to care from a social and gender justicepoint of view.

In her presentation, Fiona Williams laid out twocompeting discourses that underpin contemporary socialand care policy making: (i) care as an issue for socialjustice; and (ii) care as an issue for social investment.Claims for care support have been made on the basisof social justice by different movements around theworld, including women’s, disability and home-basedcaregiver movements. Gender equality in the home andin the workplace; children’s right to good-quality care;the right to time for care; and visibility, voice andcompensation for unpaid caregivers have been amongtheir main concerns. To address these issues adequatelyrequires both the recognition and redistribution of careresponsibilities. Affordable, accessible, high-quality careservices that take caregivers’ needs and preferencesinto account have been part and parcel of feministdemands around care. The disability movement, on theother hand, has rejected the concept of care andadvocated a social model of disability. According tothis model, it is the physical, social and culturalenvironment in which people live that disables them,rather than their impairments. The focus here has thusbeen on creating an enabling environment and providingcare users with greater voice and control.

In contrast to social justice andrights-based conceptions ofcare, the last decade has witnessedan emerging convergence aroundideas of social investment as thedominant frame and rationale forpublic care policies. ... While thisprovides some space for greaterstate engagement in care, it doesnot promote the right to give andreceive care.

In contrast to these rights-based conceptions ofcare, the last decade has witnessed an emergingconvergence around ideas of social investment asthe dominant frame and rationale for public carepolicies among national governments from differentregions as well multilateral institutions, such as theEuropean Union (EU) and the Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (OECD).While issues of gender equality and social justice havenot entirely disappeared from the agenda, they have

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been subordinated to the larger thrust of creating acompetit ive knowledge economy. The socialinvestment agenda targets mothers as workers, andchildren as future workers, who need to be mobilizedand invested in through labour market activationpolicies, anti-poverty measures, early education andchildcare services. While this framework providessome space for greater state engagement in care, itdoes not promote the right to give and receive care.Care is not conceived as a value in its own right, andcaregivers and recipients are not granted more voice.The disregard for older or disabled people’s rightsand needs is particularly striking. Indeed, Williamsargued, social investment–led policies imposed aspecific way of organizing care instead of recognizingdifference and enabling people to pursue their carechoices.

Turning to the global level, Kate Bedford’s presentationinterrogated the ways in which the World Bank’s genderand development approach involved attention to both“restructuring markets” and “restructuring intimacy”.According to Bedford, this process is shaped by a criticalassessment within the Bank’s gender programme as wellas feminist policy advocacy and research from outsidethe Bank. While it is true that the Bank’s post–Washington consensus gender and developmentprogramming has paid more attention to unpaid work,the dangers of overstretching women and the need toinclude men in gender and development approaches,Bank gender experts have focused rather narrowly onintrahousehold relationships between men and womento tackle these issues. The “adjustment of intimatelabour burdens within loving couples” has come to beseen as a way to address development problems. Itpromotes men’s participation in unpaid care work as“efficient” and “empowering” for both women andmen, particularly poor men who are portrayed assuffering a “crisis of masculinity” following the loss oftheir roles as breadwinners in the course of structuraladjustment.

The evidence the Bank has used to promote thisapproach comes from commissioned research oftencarried out by feminist policy entrepreneurs tryingto influence the World Bank gender agenda. Citingseveral examples from Latin America and theCaribbean, Bedford illustrated how the Bank hasfollowed a “selective politics of measurement,publication and citation” upon which officials relywhen designing interventions around partnershipstrategies for sharing unpaid care and paidemployment. The knowledge generated by feministpolicy entrepreneurs thus only partially filters up theinstitution’s hierarchy of texts and may even bedeliberately ignored when it does not fit theinstitution’s policy priorities. This process imposesimportant constraints on the setting of a feministagenda within the Bank. It also reinforces theneed to critically examine the knowledge produc-tion processes involved in making claims aboutinternational development and care.

Indeed, the emphasis on male inclusion in the homecan also be interpreted as a “reprivatization of socialreproduction” and may freeze out feminist priorities

To create a social environment forcare, transportation as well as otherservices and physical infrastructureneed to be added to traditionaldemands of money, time andservices.

As starting points for reshaping demands around care,Williams proposed to align care to citizenship by stressinginterdependence, social solidarity and related civicvirtues. Negotiations around time and space can alsoprovide useful avenues for broadening people’s carechoices, including collective bargaining around familytime or “time-in-the-city” projects. Innovative work-based measures include annualized hours, working timesavings accounts, time banking and shorter workinghours. City-time projects carried out in France,Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy have broughttogether employers, trade unions and communityorganizations to align different timetables—services,personal time, travel time and family time—across thecity. Space is another important realm in which careissues can be addressed through the development ofsafe and accessible public spaces, shops and transportfor old, young or disabled people, or nursing mothers.To create a social environment for care, transportationas well as other services and physical infrastructure needto be added to traditional demands of money, time andservices.

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that go beyond balancing and “sharing” within lovingcouples, such as, for example, accessible and affordablepublic care services that can enhance women’s accessto paid employment, economic security, and politicalparticipation independent from the presence and supportof a male partner in the home. It is also clearly basedon a normative model of heterosexuality which notonly excludes alternative household and family forms,but also ignores the role of intrahousehold powerrelations and conflict.

Concluding Remarks

Slowly but surely, the assumption that households andfamilies can cover care needs without any furthersupport, is being eroded. However, responses to whathas been framed as a “global care crisis” seem ratherbleak when compared to the zeal with which politicaland economic leaders have responded to the mostrecent collapse of the global financial system. The“other” crisis does not come about as a noisy crash.Rather, it can be described as a gradually expandingdeficit in adequate care for children, the elderly, frailand sick; an ever-increasing material, physical andemotional burden on unpaid caregivers; and the growingdeterioration in working conditions for care professionalsin public and private institutions. The HIV/AIDSpandemic has made these deficits dramatically visible,

Responses to what has been framedas a ‘global care crisis’ seem ratherbleak when compared to the zealwith which political and economicleaders have responded to the mostrecent collapse of the globalfinancial system.

and it is within this context that care has appeared onthe political agenda of national and internationalinstitutions.

That care is often taken more seriously in contexts ofthreat to the current economic and social order—including the HIV/AIDS pandemic, plummeting fertilityrates and rapid population ageing—reflects the moregeneral fact that much of this work continues to betaken for granted. While ad hoc policy responses tocare crises can represent windows of opportunity, theyare likely to fall short of acknowledging the centralityof care to the process of human and socialdevelopment, and produce patchy, short-term solutions.In order to ensure an encompassing, long-termcommitment to care, Tronto has reminded us of theimportance to strive for a “counter-paradigm” that putscaring for one’s own and other people’s well-being atthe centre of human existence.

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Friday, 6 March 2009

Opening SessionOpening SessionOpening SessionOpening SessionOpening Session9.00 – 9.15 Welcome and Introduction, Gisela Fosado and Shahra Razavi

9.15 – 9.45 Keynote Address—Democratic Care Politics in a World of Limits, Joan Tronto

9.45 – 10.15 Keynote Address—Gender Inequalities in Caring and Coping: Public Debates and Private Dramas,

Elizabeth Jelin

10.30 – 11.00 Introduction to the UNRISD Research on Political and Social Economy of Care, Shahra Razavi

Session 1:Session 1:Session 1:Session 1:Session 1: State Responses to Social ChangeState Responses to Social ChangeState Responses to Social ChangeState Responses to Social ChangeState Responses to Social ChangeChair—Sakiko Fukuda-Parr

11.00–11.20 State Policies towards Care in Europe, Mary Daly

11.20–11.40 The Political and Social Economy of Care in South Korea, Ito Peng

11.40–12.00 Care Policies and Programmes in Argentina: The Reproduction of Social Inequalities, Eleonor Faur

12.00–12.40 Discussion

Session 2: Extensive FamilialismSession 2: Extensive FamilialismSession 2: Extensive FamilialismSession 2: Extensive FamilialismSession 2: Extensive FamilialismChair—Rosalind Petchesky

13.50–14.10 Nicaragua: Familialism of Care under an Exclusionary Social Policy Regime, Juliana Martínez Franzoni

14.10–14.30 Stratified Familialism: The Care Diamond in India, Rajni Palriwala


Session 3: De-familializing Care: The Role of Public, Private and CommunitySession 3: De-familializing Care: The Role of Public, Private and CommunitySession 3: De-familializing Care: The Role of Public, Private and CommunitySession 3: De-familializing Care: The Role of Public, Private and CommunitySession 3: De-familializing Care: The Role of Public, Private and CommunityCare WorkersCare WorkersCare WorkersCare WorkersCare Workers

Chair—Linda Gordon

15.00–15.20 Paid Care Work, Nancy Folbre

15.20–15.40 Care Workers in Argentina: Preschool Teachers and Domestic Workers, Valeria Esquivel

15.40–16.00 Home-Based Care and HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, Marjorie Mbilinyi


Session 4: Creating a Policy Agenda for Care: The Role of Political ActorsSession 4: Creating a Policy Agenda for Care: The Role of Political ActorsSession 4: Creating a Policy Agenda for Care: The Role of Political ActorsSession 4: Creating a Policy Agenda for Care: The Role of Political ActorsSession 4: Creating a Policy Agenda for Care: The Role of Political ActorsChair—Shahra Razavi

16:50–17:10 Claims and Frames in the Making of Care Policies, Fiona Williams

17:10–17:30 Questioning the Imperative of Male Inclusion: How Multilateral Institutions Shape Care Policies,Kate Bedford

17:30–18:00 Discussion

Agenda

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Participants

Gladys Acosta, United Nations Fund for Women–LatinAmerica and the Caribbean (UNIFEM-LAC),United States

Linda Basch, National Council for Research on Women,United States

Kate Bedford, University of Kent, United Kingdom

Gwendolyn Beetham, London School of Economicsand Political Science, United Kingdom

Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College, United States

Daphne Berry, University of Massachusetts Amherst,United States

Francesca Bettio, University of Siena, Italy

Hadas Cohen, The New School for Social Research,United States

Mary Daly, Queen’s University, Ireland

R.A. Dello Buono, New College, United States

Valeria Esquivel, University National General Sarmiento,Argentina

Eleonor Faur, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),Argentina

Barbara J. Fields, Columbia University, United States

Nancy Folbre, University of Massachusetts Amherst,United States

Gisela Fosado, Barnard Center for Research on Women,United States

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School, United States

Adam Gannaway, The New School for Social Research,United States

Asha George, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),United States

Linda Gordon, New York University, United States

Judith Green, Fordham University, United States

Rebecca Harshbarge, Women’s eNews, Uganda

Ben Holtzman, Routledge, United States

Evelyne Huber, University of North California, UnitedStates

Rounaq Jahan, Columbia University, United States

Devaki Jain, Institute of Social Studies Trust, India

Elizabeth Jelin, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Gloria Jimenez, The New School for Social Research,United States

Miranda Johnson, City College New York, United States

Mala Kumar, The New School for Social Research,United States

Hymok Lee, Cornell University, United States

Valeria Lizardo, The New School for Social Research,United States

Valeria Llobet, University of San Martin, Peru

Juliana Martínez Franzoni, University of Costa Rica,Costa Rica

Marjorie Mbilinyi, Tanzania Gender NetworkingProgramme (TGNP), Tanzania

Sujata Moorti, Middlebury College, United States

Ana Maria Muñoz, World Bank, United States

JoAnne Myers, Marist College, United States

Rajni Palriwala, University of Delhi, India

Edison Peña, City College New York,United States

Ito Peng, University of Toronto, Canada

Rosalind Petchsky, City University of New York(CUNY), United States

Shahra Razavi, UNRISD, Switzerland

Mary Sue Richardson, New York University,United States

Linda Schoener, Columbia University, United States

Silke Staab, UNRISD, Switzerland

Joan Tronto, City University of New York (CUNY),United States

S. Venkateswar, National Council for Research onWomen, United States

Donato Villalba, University of Pennsylvania,United States

Sam Vong, Yale University, United States

Fiona Williams, Leeds University, United Kingdom

David Woods, Fordham University, United States

20


The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) is an autonomous agencyengaging in multidisciplinary research on the social dimensions of contemporary problems affecting development.Its work is guided by the conviction that, for effective development policies to be formulated, an understandingof the social and political context is crucial. The Institute attempts to provide governments, development agencies,grassroots organizations and scholars with a better understanding of how development policies and processes ofeconomic, social and environmental change affect different social groups. Working through an extensive networkof national research centres, UNRISD aims to promote original research and strengthen research capacity indeveloping countries.

Current research programmes include: Social Policy and Development; Democracy, Governance and Well-Being;Markets, Business and Regulation; Civil Society and Social Movements; Identities, Conflict and Cohesion; andGender and Development.

A list of the Institute’s free and priced publications can be obtained by contacting the UNRISD ReferenceCentre, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland; phone 41 (0)22 9173020; fax 41 (0)22 9170650;[email protected]; www.unrisd.org.

UNRISD is grateful to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Canada); the Swiss Agency forDevelopment and Cooperation and the United Nations Development Programme (Japan/WID Fund) for theirsupport of the project. UNRISD also thanks the governments of Denmark, Finland, Mexico, South Africa,Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom for their core funding.

This UNRISD Conference News was prepared by Silke Staab.

United Nations Research Institutefor Social Development (UNRISD)Palais des Nations1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Phone 41 (0)22 9173020Fax 41 (0)22 [email protected]

Printed in Switzerland GE.09-01981-September 2009-2,000 UNRISD/CN24/09/2 ISSN 1020-8054

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UNRISDfor Social Development · for Social Development Contents ... of production prompted by Claude Meillassoux’s Maidens, Meal and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community