Care and social reproduction: reflections from the field of labour and its organisations

Abstract

The issue of care has been emerging as a problem and as a demand in the world of work in Argentina and in the region, evidencing the advances in gender issues as well as the dialogues between academic reflection and feminist mobilization. On the other hand, in our country there is also a novel feminist activism in and among workers' organizations, which produces significant transformations of variable meanings, depending on the characteristics of the actors within the heterogeneous organizational space. However, the participation of labor organizations in the so-called social organization of care is an issue that has not been sufficiently problematized. Although it is possible to account for a set of productions - more or less oriented towards public advocacy - that outline horizons of action for these organizations, the meaning of the proposed relationships between inequalities in the field of care and the generalized structuring of the world of work is not evident. This article proposes a critical review of some perspectives that address the relationship between work and care, as a framework for the analysis of the place and tasks of labor organizations in the social organization of care and the proposal of some possible horizons for action.