| Popis: |
This chapter addresses two interrelated issues: first, the care gap in many developed societies, namely the growth in the ranks of those requiring care and the decline in the availability of traditional nonpaid family caregivers and second, the often exploitative conditions under which paid caregivers work, namely low pay, long hours, and lack of legal protections. The author argues that these problems stem from care work’s historical entanglements with gendered divisions of labor in the family and coercive labor systems such as slavery, indenture, and colonial domination. Any attempt to address these issues requires rethinking care work in fundamental ways. Both receiving and giving care need to be defined as fundamental social rights; providing care needs to be seen as a public good that involves “real” labor; that care workers therefore deserve benefits, protections, and rights equivalent to those accorded to other types of workers. The goals of these reforms would be to (a) define caring as a collective responsibility rather than a private family matter, (b) distribute responsibility for caregiving more equitably across, class, race, and gender lines, and (c) make access to quality care available to all members of society, regardless of race, gender, class, and age. The final section focuses on efforts by domestic workers, NGOs, and labor activists to gain recognition and to improve the conditions of care workers through legal and political means, such as collective bargaining and passage of international, national, and local laws and standards. |
