Author: Lucía Carbonell, general assistant of Art to Rebuild
Care is a value that crosses and gives meaning to the way we relate both internally and with the people who participate in the projects of the Prolongar Foundation. In the midst of a situation that has exposed human vulnerability and interdependence as has happened with the current pandemic, care is being the protagonist, not only in daily conversations, but also in discussions and public decisions. Therefore, I take advantage of this medium to reflect on the social imaginaries that we have configured around care and the challenges that the context of the pandemic has presented us and that force us to question and transform them.
Care has historically and culturally been associated with the private sphere and individuality. When we talk about care, we usually refer to a sum of activities or resources for the well-being of the body, which we continue to understand as a private matter. An example of this is the frequent use of the word in advertisements about skin or hygiene products.
In everyday life we also relate care to the assistance to people in illness or disability, to niñ@s and / or ancian@s. This association is accompanied by the identification of certain people as responsible for such 'assistance': women. It is enough to do a brief search in the Google image search engine of 'nursing', 'elderly care' or 'child care' to find that most of the images represent feminized people as responsible*.
Care is also generally related to household 'chores'. This imaginary is also fed by prejudices about care such as minor tasks or 'dirty work', which also place it in a feminized field. Women have been and continue to be responsible for care at home through unpaid work. As evidenced by the report Unpaid Care in Colombia: Gender Gaps by UN Women and DANE (2020), in Colombia, "78% of the annual hours allocated to all unpaid care in homes are performed by women" (2020, p.2).
This is how we associate care with the family environment and our 'closest circles'; it is a value that we relate little to public and masculinized spheres. As some academics such as Buckingham (2010) and Soto (2013) have expressed, public space is not gender neutral. Today we continue to reproach women who dare to 'walk alone' in certain areas or at certain times, prejudice that expresses our association between male bodies and public space. Similarly, political scenarios are also a masculinized sphere, which is expressed in the inequality against the participation of women in public entities: the Colombian Congress, for example, has only 19.7% of women (Legal Affairs, 2019).
This is related to the feminization and privatization of certain emotions that we associate with gestures and acts of care. Tenderness, love, affection and, in general, affections, which we consider 'feminine' attributes, we reserve for 'our loved ones'; our families, friends and couples. For the person we come across on the street, tolerance and sometimes respect remain. Moreover, in the political sphere there is even less scope for affections. It is hard for me to imagine any political agenda that promotes and defends tenderness as a mobilizer of society, instead of the iron fist, honor or order.
However, the pandemic raises the need for people, regardless of gender, to assume the role of caregivers. Care, far from being a naturally feminine characteristic, is something that concerns all human beings. In addition, the pandemic has made it visible that care is not only limited to the body and individuality. The conjuncture suggests that the body of each person is not isolated, rather, it is in constant interrelation with other bodies. This makes it clear that processes at the individual level are related to the interpersonal and collective level, so care is transversal to social life.
Perhaps, the most perceptible thing at this time is the relevance of care on an interpersonal level; our most immediate relationships are affected by our actions. Also, our behaviors affect people we don't know, for example in a supermarket or on the street. Likewise, in the workplace we face challenges in the face of the care of the teams in the face of the new dynamics of teleworking. From Prolong we recognize the importance of self-care, and therefore we insist that working on mental health and its relationship with corporeality is a priority (see article Welcoming the pandemic). But we also emphasize the importance of care at the relational level, so we promote the strengthening of relationships and communication at the community level and in work teams. This is a process that we have even promoted internally in our organization, when facing new challenges in the face of the care of the team in the midst of the current conjuncture.
Thus, the pandemic has exposed the need to transform our imaginaries in the face of care. In the midst of this conjuncture, the need to stop considering care as a minor task is becoming evident. In the same way, the context raises the need to generate cultural transformations that allow us to expand our imagination when we talk about care to 'deprivatize' it, to stop associating it with feminized spheres and people, and thus strengthen our relationships at the interpersonal and collective level.
To conclude, in this historical moment that we are going through as humanity, I invite you to reflect on the imaginaries we have around care, through the following questions: What emotions or sensations do I associate with care? What actions do I consider acts of care? Which people do I consider to be caregivers and what gender do they identify with? In what aspects of my life have I found that care is vital?
*Screenshot of 'Aged care', 'childcare' and 'nursing' searches on Google.
References and bibliography: Legal issues (March 4, 2019)
Women's participation in Congress is less than 20%, the report reveals. Taken from: https://www.asuntoslegales.com.co/actualidad/participacion-de-las-mujeres-en-el-congreso-es-inferior-al-20-revela-informe-2835360 Buckingham, Shelley.
(2010) Analysis of the right to the city from a gender perspective. In Ana Sugranyes and Charlotte Mathivet (eds.), Cities for tod@s. For the right to the city, proposals and experiences. Santiago: Habitat International Coalition, pp. 59-64. Full document available in <www.hic-al.org/>
Comins, I. (2003) From Fear to Diversity to the Ethics of Care: A Gender Perspective. Convergence. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 10, no. 33, September-December, 2003 Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México Toluca, MexicoDANE
and UN Women (2020) Unpaid care in Colombia: gender gaps. Taken from: https://www.dane.gov.co/files/investigaciones/genero/publicaciones/Boletin-estadistico-ONU-cuidado-noremunerado-mujeres-DANE-mayo-2020.pdf
Soto, P. (2013). Between the spaces of fear and the spaces of violence: discourses and practices about corporeality and emotions. In P. Soto and M.A. Villagarán (eds.), Bodies, spaces and emotions. Approximation from the Social Sciences, pp. 197-218. Mexico City: MaporrúaTronto
, J.(1987). Beyond the gender difference. Towards a theory of care. Signs: Jornal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 12, University of Chicago.
Tronto, J. (2018) Economics, ethics and democracy: three languages around care. Gender and care. Theories, scenarios and policies. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, Universidad de los Andes and Universidad Javeriana.