Caring Practice and Politics:

From the Fair Redistribution of care to Democratic Practice of Caring

Abstract

  This paper takes as its starting point the “lack of care” that has come to be recognized as an important political issue in the midst of the Corona pandemic. While learning from the critique by feminist economics regarding care labor, it also discusses the possibility of a feminist political theory based on care practices and opposing the neoliberalism that has brought about the lack of care.

  The care work historically carried out by women has brought time poverty as well as a lack of resources to women and deprived them of political bargaining power. On the other hand, public support for care work also creates a paradox that keeps women in care work. Feminists focusing on the ethic of care have criticized the image of the human beings and citizens assumed by political science from the perspective of the interdependence of people in need of care. This critique has produced a close linkage between care theory, which envisions a society in which care is redistributed fairly, on the one hand, and an ethic of care, which envisions morality and human relationships that practice good care, on the other.

  By focusing on the experience of time in care practice, this paper reveals that feminist ethics of care started to argue for a foothold of the resistance to the “neoliberal time regime” and a more democratic and care-filled time regime.