On International Women's Day, who cares for the caregivers?

Care work consists of essential activities to guarantee the life of people, living beings and the planet. It has been historically carried out by women, based on the sexual division of labor in a framework of patriarchal power relations, which also meant that it has been largely invisible or low status. Paid and unpaid care work has led to and reproduced discrimination, gender inequalities and violence.

Privilege and oppression are power dynamics that intersect in caregiving contexts and relationships. Race, class, ethnicity, and other social identities intersect with gender to shape experiences of caregiving. To craft genuinely caring politics, we must acknowledge that care work includes many aspects of life from the individual perspective of self-care to the care of households and communities.

What is Food Care?

Care work includes food care: for what we eat, how we eat, who eats and when.  

Food systems, like care work, also rely on interdependent relations. Rural women’s care work is crucial to food production, processing, distribution and access. This interdependence also raises questions around redistribution, autonomy, sovereignty over bodies, love, relations, resources and life itself. Food is an act of love. And so is care.

The corporate food system anchors this interdependence in unequal power relations, with harmful consequences such as the homogenization of diets, the loss of biodiversity and the exploitation of unpaid care work done by the vast majority of black, indigenous, peasant, fisherwomen and rural women.

Why should we care?

The current system of production, distribution and consumption of food and other goods overexploits the productive and reproductive work of women, causing deep inequalities and sickening human beings and the planet.  

Rural women represent one third of the global population but 36% of the agricultural labor force yet earn 20% less than men. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, more than 20% of agricultural employees in Latin America and the Caribbean are women. Also in that region, women spend three times as much time on domestic work and unpaid care compared to men. In addition, there is a significant gap between women in urban and rural areas, with the latter spending three to ten hours more on daily care work than women in urban areas. 

Hegemonic narratives around care in food systems fail to look beyond recognition of these facts and leave aside the redistribution and representation of the agency of rural and indigenous women who produce food. Likewise, food systems see food only as the act of distribution and supply, ignoring all the care work that is behind real peasant-produced food.

There is a strong link between informal labor and the marginalization and impoverishment of rural and indigenous women. They are considered the most vulnerable group in society, as they mainly work as unpaid laborers on family farms with low pay, hazardous conditions, and without social security coverage. They face multiple obstacles to independence and economic autonomy. In contexts of crises, rural and indigenous women are most affected by poor access to resources, services and information, as well as by the heavy burden of care work and discriminatory traditional social norms.

In the current context of multiple and interrelated crises, a radical transformation of industrial food systems and the urgency of a transition to just, healthy, sustainable, and violence-free food systems is crucial. The feminist agenda and the right to food and food sovereignty agenda need each other more than ever to face the magnitude of current challenges. Reciprocity and cross-pollination should be the hallmarks of the strategy ahead for both living beings and the planet. Food, care, self-care and community care must be at the core of a much needed paradigm shift.

How can we care?

Social movements and civil society can help to push forward the care paradigm by:

• Putting the human rights of caregivers at the center of the global care agenda.

• Raising awareness of care work around food by peasant, indigenous and rural women. 

• Collectively building action tools to position care in the political agenda.

• Generating processes of mutual care and self-care relationships.

• Advocate for the recognition and redistribution of care and domestic work, as well as remuneration and representation of care workers or caregivers.

For more information or media interviews please contact Amanda Cordova Gonzales at cordova-gonzales@fian.org