(Re)thinking Care in a Development Context

1. (Re)thinking Care in a Development Context Shahra Razavi Research Coordinator, UNRISD18 June 2009

2. Feminist literature on Welfare Regimes and Care Regimes • Response to mainstream “welfare regime” literature: conceptual & theoretical • Focus: post-industrial, democratic welfare states • “Global care chains” –unequalizing tendencies of neolib glob. but empirical emphasis on the “North” • Where is the rest of the world?

3. Feminist research with a focus on the “South” (including UNRISD’s) (1) Care as a lense to interrogate policies and socio-economic structures (2) Care economy and what ever happened to domestic work (3) The care diamond—multiple institutions to highlight the role of public policies and collective provision (4) Care diamond and the “welfare mix”

4. (1) Care as a lens • The welfare state was/is also about CARE (health, education, nursing homes, pensions) • The responses to the “social question” also about problems of dependency and care (of children, when old and sick, etc.) • The “family wage” also about allowing the “breadwinner” to earn enough to allow the family to care of itself • Care as a lens/perspective (versus a sector) to interrogate all policies (wage policies, macroeconomic policies) for their care implications √ crucial for developing countries: PRECONDITIONS of care-giving cannot be taken for granted

5. What are these PRECONDITIONS of care-giving? √ TIME √ COMMODIFICATION OF LABOUR (esp. female labour) with decent wages √ Appropriate INFRASTRUCTURE • Time poverty AND income poverty √ Time-poor and income-rich √ Time-poor and income-poor (e.g. India, Tanzania) √ Time-rich and income-poor (e.g. Southern Africa)

6. Care lens to look at the process of capital accumulation rather than assuming a priori that development/growth will lead to an improvement in care-giving and human welfare. • What are the Policies/Development Paths that Generate Structural Unemployment or Low-Wage/Return employment? √ Why does capital no longer want the labour it pulled from rural households over generations? √ Why does labour earn such low wages despite v. long hours of work (« the working poor »)? • What happens to care in the process of capital accumulation (a necessity for developing countries)? √ e.g. Export-Oriented path: Are there investments (in infrastructure, services) to reduce the time squeeze on care? • What happens to care in contexts of crisis which liberalized economies are prone to (as more of social reproduction shifts back into the household and women are pushed into the paid work force)?

7. (2) Care economy and what ever happened to domestic work • Care work: interpersonal dimension, building human capabilities • Income and class bias • UNRISD definition of unpaid care work: person care AND domestic work

10. (3) The Care Diamond (sector view) Multiple sites of care provision: Why emphasis on multiplicity? √ highlight role of public policies in developing countries (not only families) √ avoid an agenda that is exclusively focused on microlevel interventions (better fatherhood, new masculinities); √ STRUCTURES matter (labour markets) and so do PUBLIC POLICIES/PROGRAMMES (to collectivise care and redistribute its costs across social class towards low-income large families).

11. (4) Care diamond and the “welfare mix” • To orchestrate public, private (for-profit) and non-profit provision requires states with strong fiscal and regulatory capacity (to subsidise and regular quality of service and working conditions of service workers) • In contexts of high income inequality pluralism can lead to exclusion (inability to pay fees/bribes or give unpaid time), fragmentation and varied quality of provision • There is always the risk of labour exploitation

12. Project Countries and research reports available on UNRISD website (*). India, Nicaragua, Tanzania, South Korea, Argentina, South Africa Japan and Switzerland; Uruguay (desk study) *RR1—political, economic, social and demographic background *RR2—time use analysis *RR3—care diamond *RR4—care workers and their terms and conditions of work (being revised RR5—synthesis of findings and conceptual elaboration (due in June 2009) www.unrisd.org/research/gd/care

13. Comparative Country Data: Overview