What's so economic about the economy of care?

In recent years, the concept of "the economy of care" has been used to resuscitate a longstanding feminist debate on the inequitable distribution of domestic responsibilities between private households and the State, on one hand, and between women and men, on the other.

The reframing of this debate in terms of the economy of care is no coincidence, rather it stems from the importance of the economy in the configuration of all aspects of life in the context of capitalist societies. The concepts of efficacy, efficiency and rationality are the basis for all public policy; they channel our productive efforts and even have a major impact on the most trivial decisions of daily life.

In this context, the debate on the distribution of domestic responsibilities is linked to a notion of economy of care that makes reference to a rather undefined set of goods, services, activities, relationships and values related to the most basic and essential needs entailed in the existence and reproduction of people in our societies.

The concept of "care" invokes all those elements that nurture people in the sense that they provide us with the physical and symbolic elements necessary for our survival in society. Thus, care refers to the actions and goods by which people are fed, educated, kept healthy and able to live in a suitable habitat. Associating the term "care" with the concept of "economy" implies a concentration on those aspects of care that generate or contribute to the generation of economic value. In other words, the economy of care is particularly interested in the relationship between how societies organize the way in which people are cared for and how the economic system works.

The following article offers a brief review of the principle elements of this relationship and what it implies in terms of equity. (1)