Boletín nº 7 Junio 2020
Who is taking care (of us) in the midst of this health crisis?
Tania Cáceres Navarrete
Daniela Smith Véliz
MMM FíoFío-Chile
Daniela Smith Véliz
MMM FíoFío-Chile
The social and health crises triggered by COVID-19 is making even more visible those who have to assume the work of caring for others, and who are made vulnerable by the social body: women. Women who are studying and working women, who have highly precarious lives due to the restricted access they have to their rights, such as housing, health, education, or migration; women with or without kids, heads of households—in many cases, with only one parent; women that are responsible for the care of children, younger siblings, older parents, and sick family members. Women who are disabled, sheltered in their own homes or hospitals, or who have family members locked in prison, or even children who are in foster homes. When it is women those who are locked in, it is frequently their mothers who visit them and who care for the children, as only in a few instances, it is the partner or the husband who assumes this responsibility or other household tasks.
While women care, nurture, accompany, visit, and preserve the health of others, they also have to obtain resources to sustain life, in a cycle of life that is fragile, exhausting, increasingly solitary, and fragmented in relation to the community and the social space in its totality. As such, women are the pillars that support a social body shaken permanently by an economic model that is always impacting it; a model seeking the most profitability based on only basic rights, where the exchanges are marked by money and getting the maximum productivity out of people’s bodies; in which difficulties, and even life, are solved alone, individually, by “scratching one’s own back.” The sense of community and sharing are resented, and there is even a stronger need for a pedagogy of self-care and care for others, as a way to recover vitality, the power of the collective.
From the perspective of a feminist economy, it is necessary to make a reflection on how to make care-work a part of a public policy that recognizes the time women spend on caring, in addition to the work spent outside of the home. In an article written by Sonia Santoro, she points out that in the Latin American context, Colombia was a pioneer in passing the Care Act or Act 1413 (Ley de Cuidado o Ley 1413)in 2010, that incorporates domestic work to the accounting system of the country, by considering this work as another economic item along with the others. Similarly, Ecuador has recognized “unpaid domestic work for self-support and care” in their definition of the economic system in Articles 325 and 333 of the Constitution. Chile, however, has addressed this issue insufficiently yet and only under the shape of ‘benefits’ or ‘vouchers’, such as the Voucher per Child (Bono por hijo), and through extending the post-natal period from 3 to 6 months. In this sense, care-work still has low social value, despite being indispensable for the life of the social body. From a political point of view, care implies not only knowing who does the caring, who is cared for, and its expenses, but also incorporating these dimensions as legitimate issues in the different social agendas directed at achieving gender equity in the political, social and economic institutions.
The acknowledgement of what has to be urgently demanded in the sphere of public policies regarding care-work does not exhaust the analysis we have to do around this issue. We urgently have to recover and strengthen our collective power, while sharing and practicing personal and community care by opening the doors of our homes; seeing each other; being attentive to what is not said; identifying us as belonging to a neighborhood, population, workplace, place of study, recreational place; recognizing ourselves inter-generationally and culturally in our difficulties and possibilities of mutual aid; undermining the historical and social conditionings that make us think women ought to assume care-work; socializing tasks and expanding them beyond women, students, and mothers.
The question of who does the care-work and for what allows us to identify other ways of wielding power and politics, and to recreate mutual care practices sprouting out from the same networks to which women belong. This is not something new for many groups and communities that historically have organized life in a dignified and collective way; but we urgently need to share this and revitalize it by opening the doors to care and getting it out of the constrained family space, out from inside the door; and returning it to the community, to our friends, to the neighborhood, to the workspace with our co-workers, to the different organizations in which women participate, and where they congregate, recognize, and help each other. Redistributing care also means not only to reorganize and rethink it from a social and economic perspective, but also from a political perspective that allows us to identify as well what is the function of our work in the socio-economic context. As such, a more just redistribution of care would imply then establishing an active alliance with mutual protection, strengthening the mixed-gender and women’s community support networks. This is our challenge.
While women care, nurture, accompany, visit, and preserve the health of others, they also have to obtain resources to sustain life, in a cycle of life that is fragile, exhausting, increasingly solitary, and fragmented in relation to the community and the social space in its totality. As such, women are the pillars that support a social body shaken permanently by an economic model that is always impacting it; a model seeking the most profitability based on only basic rights, where the exchanges are marked by money and getting the maximum productivity out of people’s bodies; in which difficulties, and even life, are solved alone, individually, by “scratching one’s own back.” The sense of community and sharing are resented, and there is even a stronger need for a pedagogy of self-care and care for others, as a way to recover vitality, the power of the collective.
From the perspective of a feminist economy, it is necessary to make a reflection on how to make care-work a part of a public policy that recognizes the time women spend on caring, in addition to the work spent outside of the home. In an article written by Sonia Santoro, she points out that in the Latin American context, Colombia was a pioneer in passing the Care Act or Act 1413 (Ley de Cuidado o Ley 1413)in 2010, that incorporates domestic work to the accounting system of the country, by considering this work as another economic item along with the others. Similarly, Ecuador has recognized “unpaid domestic work for self-support and care” in their definition of the economic system in Articles 325 and 333 of the Constitution. Chile, however, has addressed this issue insufficiently yet and only under the shape of ‘benefits’ or ‘vouchers’, such as the Voucher per Child (Bono por hijo), and through extending the post-natal period from 3 to 6 months. In this sense, care-work still has low social value, despite being indispensable for the life of the social body. From a political point of view, care implies not only knowing who does the caring, who is cared for, and its expenses, but also incorporating these dimensions as legitimate issues in the different social agendas directed at achieving gender equity in the political, social and economic institutions.
The acknowledgement of what has to be urgently demanded in the sphere of public policies regarding care-work does not exhaust the analysis we have to do around this issue. We urgently have to recover and strengthen our collective power, while sharing and practicing personal and community care by opening the doors of our homes; seeing each other; being attentive to what is not said; identifying us as belonging to a neighborhood, population, workplace, place of study, recreational place; recognizing ourselves inter-generationally and culturally in our difficulties and possibilities of mutual aid; undermining the historical and social conditionings that make us think women ought to assume care-work; socializing tasks and expanding them beyond women, students, and mothers.
The question of who does the care-work and for what allows us to identify other ways of wielding power and politics, and to recreate mutual care practices sprouting out from the same networks to which women belong. This is not something new for many groups and communities that historically have organized life in a dignified and collective way; but we urgently need to share this and revitalize it by opening the doors to care and getting it out of the constrained family space, out from inside the door; and returning it to the community, to our friends, to the neighborhood, to the workspace with our co-workers, to the different organizations in which women participate, and where they congregate, recognize, and help each other. Redistributing care also means not only to reorganize and rethink it from a social and economic perspective, but also from a political perspective that allows us to identify as well what is the function of our work in the socio-economic context. As such, a more just redistribution of care would imply then establishing an active alliance with mutual protection, strengthening the mixed-gender and women’s community support networks. This is our challenge.
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What did we read while thinking about this topic? We share it in here:
Sonia Santoro: Yo cuido, ella cuida, ¿él cuida? Norma Villanueva Fernández: Mujeres privadas de libertad: Víctimas silenciosas de la política punitiva. |
Cooperativa Mujeres Manos Libres, Red de apoyo a mujeres privadas de libertad y a quienes salen de la cárcel.
Alméras, D. (2000). Procesos de cambio en la visión masculina de las responsabilidades familiares. En J. Olavarría, & R. Parrini (Eds.), Masculinidad/es, identidad, sexualidad y familia (p. 91-102). Santiago: FLACSO-Chile perspectiva. |
Hacia la V Acción Internacional 2020 Boletín de Enlace |
https://marchemondiale.org¡Nueva Página web!
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