The Gendered Order of Caring: Care Commanders and Care Footsoldiers

1
The Gendered Order of CaringCare Commanders and
Care Footsoldiers

• Presentation to the National Womens Council of
  Ireland,
• European Year of Equal Opportunities November
  20th 2007, Dublin

2
Unpaid Carers of adults and persons with a
disability (Census 2006) 4.8 are carers
(160,917)

• 2006 Census
• Women comprise 62 of such carers
• 5.9 of women over 15 years are carers of this
  kind
• Source Vol. 11, 2006 Census, Carers Section,
  www.cso.ie

• 2006 Census
• Men comprise
• 38 of such carers
• 3.6 of men are carers of this kind
• Source Vol. 11, 2006 Census, Carers Section,
  www.cso.ie

3
Patriarchy in numbersMaking care invisible by
not measuring all of it

• Within the Census, care is defined as being given
  by persons aged 15 years and over who provide
  regular unpaid personal help for a friend or
  family member with a long-term illness, health
  problem or disability (including problems due to
  age) (CSO, 2007 63)
• This fails to count the largest body of unpaid
  care workers in the State Carers of children
  and those who are carers of adults children
• Women are almost 2.5 times as likely to be the
  carers of children compared with men

4
All types of Carers aged 16 (almost 1.2
million)(2001) European Community Household
Panel Survey (ECHP)

• Type of Care Female Male Total Total
• 
  Pop. Carer
• 
  
• Care of children only 34.0 14.0 24.0 85.0
• Care of persons due to
• Illness, age or disability 3.0 2.0 2.0
  8.0
• Care of Children adults 3.0 0.0 2.0 7.0
• No Care responsibility 60.0 84.0
  72.0 N/A
• Total 100.0 100.0 100.0

5
Hours spent caring

• The modal or most typical hours of work for women
  carers is 61 hours per week (40 do these hours)
• The modal or most typical hours of work for men
  carers is 14-28 hours per week (40 do these
  hours)
• Only 6 of men do 61 hours caring compared with
  40 of women
• 40 or four out of every ten women believe that
  their care work and lack of care supports
  prevents them doing the amount and kind of paid
  care work they would like to do just 8 of men
  think this (ECHP, 2001)
• (Irish Census only measures hours at caring to a
  Max. of 43 hours thereby underestimating long
  hours at care work)

6
The Economic Costs of Unpaid Caring for women

• Income differentials In 2004 the average income
  for all women aged 15-84 was 19,512 while it
  was 29,691 men when you control for hours in
  paid work womens pay is 86 of mens in 2004
• BUT Ways of measuring gender income differentials
  underestimate levels of gender inequality as
  women own far less wealth land/capital/property
  than men e.g. almost 90 of farmers are men
• The average income of women aged 55-65 is only
  53 of mens
• In 2005 52.5 of women in employment (aged 20-69)
  had no pension provision other than the state
  pension (and neither did 45.6 of men)
• Women in Ireland have the highest risk of poverty
  of all women in the 27 EU countries (Table 1.14)
  and men have the 3rd highest risk CSO, 2006 19)
• 23 of Irish women are at risk of poverty
  compared with 12 in the Netherlands 9 in the
  Czech Republic and 17 in Latvia which is one of
  the poorest EU countries
• (Source CSO, Women and Men in Ireland Report
  2006) Irelands low Social expenditure on
  welfare, health and education is a major equality
  issue

7
Are Social Expenditures a way of compensating for
inequalities in wealth in Ireland? No

• Country Total Social Expenditure on
  Education on Health
• as a of GDP as a of GDP as a of GDP
• Sweden 49.4 7.7 9.2
• France 45.7 5.8 9.7
• Netherlands 27.6 5.1 9.1
• UK 26.4 5.3 7.7
• Slovenia 25.3 6.1 8.2
• Czech Repub. 20.2 4.4 7.1
• Ireland 15.9 4.3 7.3
• Lithuania 14.1 5.9 5.7
• Social Expenditures have decreased from 1994
  (19.7 of GDP) to 2006 (15.9)
• Source Tables, 4.1 and 4,2, Central Statistics
  Office (CSO) Measuring Irelands Progress, 2006.
  accessed at www.cso.ie/ October 12th 2007

8
Inequality in Love and Care in the doing of
care and love work gender issues

• Womens exploitation as carers is the principal
  form of exploitation that applies specifically to
  them as women
• Most care labour is unpaid so women suffer a
  direct material loss in both the short and long
  term the doing of care work leaves others
  (mostly men) free to advance their material and
  social status and enjoy more leisure
• Rich and powerful (decision-makers) can claim
  immunity from care responsibilities they are
  Care Commanders being a leader or manager is
  almost synonymous with being a care commander
• Women are Cares Foot soldiers they do the
  everyday work of care it is assumed that it
  comes naturally

9
How do we understand the subordinate status of
women? The impact of Conceptions of Citizenship

• Liberal, Social democratic view prevails within
  the EU citizen is as person with a range of
  rights, civil, political, social and economic
  rights employed persons are best protected.
• The adult citizen is defined as an autonomous
  person (employed worker of a particular
  nationality)
• It ignores community voluntary work, care work
  and love work generally work that is not for
  gain/profit)
• Traditionally citizenship is equated with the
  public sphere
• citizen is defined as an economic actor
• citizen is defined as a socio-cultural actor
• citizen is defined as a political actor

10
Problems with Liberal conceptions of Citizenship
for Women

• Ignores the reality of dependency and
  interdependency
• Implicitly and often explicitly equate
  citizenship with being a paid worker not
  everyone can be employed and all of us are not
  employed for much of our lives
• Silence on the reality of human dependency and
  interdependency in so doing it is silent on much
  of the care and love work that women do without
  pay and that leaves they vulnerable to the
  control and abuse of others
• Feminist Egalitarian perspective emphasises the
  fact that the citizen is also a Universal
  caregiver and care receiver a person who has
  citizenship with or without paid employment
• based on a relational rather than autonomous view
  of the person sees the citizen as independent,
  interdependent and dependent

11
Neo-liberal concept of the citizen prioritises
the economic citizen

• The neo-liberal citizen is seen as an employed
  worker and economic maximiser and consumer.
• a hypothetical man supposed to be free from
  altruistic sentiments and motives interfering
  with a purely selfish pursuit of wealth and its
  enjoyment.
• Moral endorsement of the CARE-LESS model of the
  citizen in neo- liberalism ideal worker is a
  Zero-Load worker person with no care
  responsibilities
• The market has become the primary producer of
  cultural logic and cultural value encapsulated
  in the metaphor of choice - Rational choice
  theorys explanation for women staying at home to
  do care work free choice-(H. Becker, C. Hakim)
• Self-interested economic model is blind to the
  rationalities of caring which are not governed by
  purely economic self-centred calculation.

12
Rational Economic Actor (REA) Model of the
Citizen- citizen valued for performance
Competing Rational Economic Actors
 
X
X
X
X
Visible Political Cultural Relations
X
Economic Relations
X
X
X
X
X
Invisible Affective Relations
(Love, Care Solidarity Work)
O Self interested, Calculating, Competing
Economic Actors. X Competition Between Actors.
13
Why care, love and solidarity matter

• While conditioned in fundamentally significant
  ways by cultural considerations, dependency for
  humans is as unavoidable as birth and death are
  for all living organisms. We may even say that
  the long maturation process of humans, combined
  with the decidedly human capacity for moral
  feeling and attaching, make caring for dependents
  a mark of humanity. (Kittay, 1999 29).
• 4 Major reasons
• Survival depends on care
• Human flourishing needs caring
• Care involves work practical and sentient work
• Care produces outcomes human beings capable of
  enjoying and being fulfilled in life. It provides
  for
• general health and well being a sense of
  belonging, of being important or appreciated, a
  mutual sense of being needed, desired and wanted.
  The absence of love and care produces loneliness,
  isolation and illness, especially mental illness
  and psychological distress

14
CARE-FULL Model of the Citizen Relational
Perspective Concentric circles of caringFrom
Lynch, K., (2007) Love Labour as a distinct and
non-commodifiable form of care labour,
Sociological Review, Vol 55, No. 3 550570

• Tertiary Care Relations
• solidarity work

Secondary Care Relations general care work
Primary Care Relations love labour
15
Defining Love Labour

• It involves emotional and other work oriented to
  the enrichment and enablement of others and the
  bonds between self and others
• It is both a sentient (thinking, and planning for
  others, attentiveness, managing relations and
  conflict, and non-sentient activity (practical
  tasks)
• It involves the creation and transformation of
  persons and relationships
• The object is the enrichment of other persons and
  the reinforcement of the relationship itself
• It is a set of perspectives and orientations
  integrated with tasks
• attentiveness to the needs of others
  responsibility commitment
• Interdependency and mutuality involved often
  spread over time and unevenly distributed
• Moral imperatives on women to undertake love
  labour and care labour
• Love labour is often experienced as both burden
  and pleasure

16
Care Labour and Love Labour

• All love labour involves caring but not all
  caring involves love labour you can care for
  someone without feeling emotionally attached to
  them
• Paid care is an important supplement to love
  labour but does not replace it as there is a
  mutuality and commitment at the heart of intimacy
  that is not commodifiable
• You cannot commodify the feelings and intentions
  of others or the quality of a given relationship
• To attempt to pay someone to do a love labour
  task (having a meal with a partner, visiting a
  friend in hospital, going to play a game
  together, reading a story to a child or changing
  an ageing parents bed linen) is to undermine the
  premise of care and mutuality that is at the
  heart of intimacy and friendship
• Other Issues
• TIME Time is a scarce resource, you can buy
  other peoples but not increase your own Crises
  in society over time for love labour
• Conflict between caring values and capitalist
  values (other-directed work and self-directed
  work)
• Two different ethical principles are in conflict
  in our society self interest principle and the
  other-centred principles-
• Debate is repressed we pass as not having
  these conflicts or keeping them in the private
  sphere

17
Primary care (love) relations and secondary care
relations

• In the concentric circles of interdependency, we
  tentatively suggest that love relations refer to
  relations of high interdependency where there is
  greatest attachment, intimacy and responsibility
  over time. They arise from inherited or
  contractual dependencies or interdependencies and
  are our primary care relations. Love relations
  are either chosen relations (close friendships,
  partners) built around intimacy, commitment and
  belongingness, or relations of obligation that
  are inherited or derived from the deep
  dependencies that are integral to our existence
  as relational beings (child care relations being
  the most obvious type).
•  Secondary care relations are lower order
  interdependency relations. While they involve
  care responsibilities and attachments, they do
  not carry the same depth of moral obligation in
  terms of meeting dependency needs, especially
  long-term dependency needs.
• There is a degree of choice and contingency about
  secondary care relations that does not apply to
  primary relations.

18
Tertiary care relationsSolidarity is the Social
Form of Love

• Tertiary care relations refer to relations of
  solidarity and do not involve intimacy. Sometimes
  solidarity relations are chosen, such as when
  individuals or groups work collectively for the
  well being of others whose welfare is only
  partially related to their own (as in trade union
  solidarity or campaigns for environmental
  protection), or whose welfare is not immediately
  related to their own well being (as in global
  solidarity).
• It also applies to our democratically agreed
  solidarity responsibilities to care - via
  taxation and the redistribution of wealth

19
The inalienable is not commodifiable

• The rationality of caring is different from, and
  to some degree contradicts, scientific and
  bureaucratic rationality (Waerness, 1984).
  There is no hierarchy or career structure to
  relations of solidarity and love labouring. They
  cannot be provided on a hire and fire basis.
  There is no clear identifiable project with
  boundaries illuminating the path to the
  realisation of the goal. Indeed, as the goal is
  the relationship itself, there is no identifiable
  beginning, middle and end. The goal or objective
  is often diffuse and indefinable.
• The structural status of love labour
• love labour occupies a similar structural role
  in relation to one's affectual life that material
  labour occupies in relation to the natural world.
  Just as use-value-creating-labour can be seen as
  'an eternal natural necessity' mediating between
  'man and nature' (Marx, 1976133) so love labour
  is also an eternal necessity mediating human
  beings' relations to each other as affectual
  relational entities

20
Why Women are exploited as Carers and Lovers

• The Denial of the Universal Caregiver model of
  the citizen has led to
• The Privatisation of the debate about care and
  love
• Care and Love labour being made inadmissible
  subjects of mainstream politics
• Failure to cost care work in the family sphere in
  economic terms and this has contributed to the
  trivialisation of caring and of the women who do
  most of the unpaid work - no financial
  recognition
• The non-contested gender division of care and
  love labour which in turn leads to a situation
  where the personal identity of women is highly
  care-driven and fostered systematically
  throughout society (institutionalised sexism in
  state and other services - primary school
  timetables health services etc. care as a
  duty and as natural)
• Moral imperative on women to care that does not
  apply to men
• A sense of empowerment and moral approbation that
  comes with being a carer, especially in the
  absence of other opportunities, making caring
  attractive to women