Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2009, 45(1): 9-30 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2009.45.1.02

Towards a Feminist Concept of Care as a Critical Category of Social Inequality

Zuzana Uhde

Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Praha

The author of this article focuses on the theoretical framework of the concept of care as a critical category of social inequality in order to outline possibilities for a redefinition of the relationship between work and care. Gender inequalities as well as inequalities that are based on other social categories, such as class, ethnicity, nationality, geopolitical location, marital status, and so on are incorporated in the social organisation of care which retrospectively reinforces them. Feminist debate has thus far formulated demands for the recognition of caring persons mainly at the national level, but the author of the article, referring to Arlie Hochschild and Allison Weir, shows that the current challenges of global capitalism point to the need to articulate these demands in a transnational context and to embed care in the discourse of transnational justice. She critically addresses the challenges that efforts to attain recognition for caring persons by including care as a labour-market activity are confronted with owing to the current changes in the social organisation of care under global capitalism, which involves among others the employment of marginalised groups of women and women immigrants in the caring professions. Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, the author formulates two normative criteria for reconceptualising care as a social engagement without subjecting it to the logic of market valuation.

Keywords: care, gender, feminist theory, social justice, transnationalism.

Published: February 1, 2009  Show citation