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The political and social economy of care in a development context: contextual issues, research questions, and policy options

Reviewing approaches to gender and care giving



Authors: S. Razavi
Publisher: United Nations [UN] Research Institute for Social Development , 2007

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Historically and across a diverse range of countries, women from disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups have tended to provide care services to meet the needs of the more powerful social groups, while their own needs for care have been downplayed and neglected. This paper by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development traces the evolution of ideas in the area of gender and care, and analyses some of the main strands of thinking. The author analyses the contribution of feminist economics to the conceptualisation, as well as the measurement and valuation, of the unpaid economy, including its care components. The author shows how in approaching the issue of care from their distinct disciplinary perspectives in social policy and sociology, gender analyses of welfare regimes have contributed to the theorisation of care in important ways, some of which intersects with the work of feminist economists.

The strengths of this literature are reviewed in the paper and it is argued that ideally, society should recognise and value the importance of different forms of care, but without reinforcing care work as something that only women can or should do. This is especially important given the well-known and adverse consequences of such gendering: women’s financial precariousness and their exclusion from the public domain. The paper considers the renewed interest in social policy, trailing after the high neoliberalism of the 1980s that was epitomised by the ‘social investment state’ allegedly focused on productive and active welfare, and on investing in children’s opportunities. It asks what the implications of these ideas might be for the redesign of social policy, what space is likely to be given to issues of care and whether gender equality and women’s movements’ claims for services and supports are likely to be accommodated in this new welfare vision.