For years, women, lesbians, intersex, non-binary, trans*, and agender people (FLINTA* for short) around the world have come together on March 8th to draw attention to injustice, violence, and even femicides – the murders of women and people perceived as women. The anger is immense! There are many reasons. Too many.
A wide range of demands are being voiced: from equal pay for equal work, reproductive justice, and the fight against violence against people of color*, to greater political participation and the recognition of care work as work. What all these demands have in common is that they affect essential aspects of our society. How do people grow up? Who can make decisions about their own bodies and how? What kind of work is valued and recognized?
Questions about care work, in particular, are repeatedly at the center of the debate. March 8, as a feminist day of struggle, is an important platform to underscore the importance of care work. This is especially true when unpaid care work is being protested and organized differently, namely more collectively, at demonstrations. This blog post addresses the debates about socialization, commonhing which and reducing working hours to identify possible solutions to the care crisis.
What is Care-Work? And how does they with capitalism?
Care work, often also called caring work, refers, on the one hand, to the care of others, be it friends, children, neighbors, relatives, or colleagues. It includes emotional and practical support, for example, for people with disabilities or in times of mental health crises, experiences of discrimination, or conflict, as well as the care and support of the elderly and sick. Activities such as washing clothes, changing diapers, shopping, cooking, and treating wounds are also included. Care work also encompasses caring for the planet and preserving the natural resources it supports.
All of these activities are often rendered invisible and not labeled as work. They are almost automatically expected by certain people, primarily FLINTA*. This invisibility and devaluation is inherent in the capitalist social system: profit is made at the expense of others.
In growth-oriented capitalism, paid care work is expected to be performed more quickly and efficiently. However, care work follows a different logic and often simply cannot be made more "productive" or faster: Feeding a bedridden person takes time, just as a peach tree takes several years to bear fruit. Thus, care has only limited profit potential, but in growth-oriented capitalism, it is forced into this profit logic.
A look at hospitals, counseling centers, or geriatric care, areas of paid care work, reveals that efficiency-driven and profit-oriented care are leading to poor care. The consequences are: hardly any breaks, understaffing, and stressful daily lives for many employees. Added to this is the federal government's austerity policies of recent months, which are taking their toll on many social services. For example, 300.000 nursing staff would return to work if working conditions were improved, which could counteract the staff shortage (see: study by the Hans Böckler Foundation).
On the other hand, unpaid care work is the foundation for the functioning of society. If people suddenly stop listening, cooking meals, or doing the dishes, the smooth flow of paid work is also disrupted. But even in paid care work, people regularly walk out of work to demand better working conditions. Strikes are used as leverage to enforce demands and shift power relations. Strikes are used to remind and emphasize the importance of care work: namely, vital for everyone, always. Without care, there is no society.
Strike against care work? Socialize care work!
On feminist day of struggle, FLINTA* workers take their strike to the streets with a loud voice, carrying cooking pots and banners. Or they refuse to perform the care work expected of them. March 8th can therefore be a space where we collectively seek ways to organize care work in a more solidarity-based way. One possible strategy is to socialize it. We're seeing the first beginnings of this in demonstrations where childcare and lunch are organized collectively. Then there are shift lists, solidarity contributions, and meetings for everyone. But what about the necessary care work in raising children when it's not March 8th?
Pia, a kindergarten teacher in southern Baden, tells us about her work. Balancing the expectations of politicians, parents, and the needs of the children, she reports that kindergartens are now merely care centers where the bare essentials function. She believes the reason for this is that more and more parents and caregivers have to work double full-time to make ends meet. As a result, the work is outsourced to institutions: "Someone has to do it." She talks about how parents pass the pressure of paid work on to teachers and insist on their right to a daycare place. Legally, there is a right to a daycare place from the age of one, but the reality is unfortunately different, as there are not enough places available. Somehow, everything has to function under these demands, including the children. Pia believes that more participation for children should also mean asking how long children actually want to stay in the facility.
Pia’s desire for more participation and time can be classified into central elements of a socialization of care work: Double deprivatization and democratizationBarbara Fried and Alex Wischnewski write about this in their contribution to the book "Public Luxury." By double deprivatization, they describe the need to free care work from private households and nuclear families, but also from the clutches of profit-oriented companies. Care work should be located in a broader social context that lies beyond the private sphere and the market. Fried and Wischnewski define democratization as making decisions about the design of care work collectively and democratically: They propose establishing care parliaments and councils in institutions where care workers and recipients can communicate with one another. An essential part of these negotiation processes is an analysis of the need for care work. Furthermore, democratizing care work also means making kindergartens, hospitals, nursing homes, and other places more accessible: for people with limited German language skills, for people without secure residency status, for trans*, inter*, and non-binary people, for people with experiences of racism, and even for people with low incomes. Socializing care work could anchor this work in a broader social and political context based on solidarity and democratic principles that takes into account the needs of all those affected.
What might a practical implementation look like that would remove care work from isolated and commercialized structures? What does this look like with regard to kindergartens? Would outsourcing unpaid care work to daycare centers be a step toward socialization? Who would benefit from it?
Commoning Care and Aworking time reductiong
The concept of ccommoning care takes socialization further in practical terms by calling for concrete practices for the collective use and organization of care. Understanding care as a common means bringing the associated resources – consisting of time, knowledge, and skills – under collective control. The starting point of care commons is our shared needs for care, which are met by various solidarity-based and self-organized institutions. One example of this is grupos de crianza (German: Eltern- oder Betreuungsgruppen) in Spain: Self-organized care networks between parents, especially mothers, who support each other in accompanying and raising children (more on this in Zechner, 2021). Central to these care commons is the democratic and power-critical organization of decision-making processes, in which all participants and their needs are to be included.
Manuela Zechner joins commoning care Specifically, it proposes organizing childcare more communally. This means that the care of children by individuals becomes the responsibility of the community as a whole. The concept envisions childcare being organized through cooperative structures, such as parent-child initiatives, cooperatives, or community childcare centers. In these structures, children's caregivers and other caregivers work together to share responsibility for childcare and utilize shared resources. Decisions and their implementation are made democratically by all parties involved, including the children themselves.
Practically tangible commoning care in the policies surrounding the Caring City in Barcelona (Ezquerra and Keller, 2022). Part of this is the municipal childcare program Concilia in Barcelona: It primarily addresses the care needs of single mothers who lack financial resources and a large social network. The program provides them with childcare during the weekday afternoons and on weekends, allowing them to organize their daily lives more independently. In addition to the program, "Social Superblocks" (Superilles socials) and "Social Superblocks" (Superilles de les cures) were created, transforming individual areas of Barcelona into care neighborhoods. These include social facilities and self-help groups for care workers, as well as counseling centers for domestic workers and contact points for families.
Where does the time come from for such projects?
A collective reduction in working hours (AZV) is an important lever in this regard that could create new freedom. If people spend less time on paid work, it can reduce stress and increase well-being. People would have more time for democratic participation in self-organized structures and organizations, such as clubs and initiatives. If a AZV is embedded in a cultural shift in gender norms, it would lead – in the best case – to a redistribution of care work between different genders. It would be important for its implementation to include full wage and staff compensation. This would mean: people reduce their paid working hours from, for example, 40 to 25 hours, but receive the same salary as before. And to cover the 15 hours they work less, new staff would be hired. The goal of this would be to redistribute personally available time and income, thus enabling a good life for everyone and a socio-ecological transformation (see: Dossier on Reducing Working Hours).
Now what?
The International Feminist Day of Struggle offers an important forum for questions surrounding care work, alongside diverse demands for self-determination, access, and an end to violence and discrimination. By making the importance of care work visible and striking against it, we can break the invisibility of this work. But in light of the current crises, we must fight for more: the socialization of this very work. By removing it from the nuclear family and the logic of the market, we can understand it as our social responsibility. A reduction in working hours would lay the foundations for commoning care Together, these two strategies would contribute to understanding care work as a shared responsibility and addressing structural inequalities. These are two important first steps toward making care work more accessible and organizing it democratically. Let's get started! March 8th!
Sources
Ezquerra, S. & Keller, C. (2022). Towards a democratization of care work. Experiences with feminist care policies at the municipal level in Barcelona. Download
Fried, B. & Wischnewski, A. (2023). Feminist Socialization. In: Public Luxury. Dietz Verlag. Download
Hans Böckler Foundation (2022). "I will return to nursing when..." – Potential analysis for returning to work and increasing working hours for nursing professionals. Short version of the study
Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie (2023). Dossier "Reducing Working Hours" Download
Zechner, M. (2021). Commoning Care & Collective Power. Childcare Commons and the Micropolitics of Municipalism in Barcelona. Transversal texts. Download
Many thanks to Alex Gerber for researching the text and Pia for the conversation about the current conditions in kindergartens!
© 2024. This work is openly licensed via CC BY-NC 4.0 DEED
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