Caregiving, Work, and the Debate on “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”

Given the massive transformations work has experienced in the last decades, I consider work, specifically, the link between paid work and caregiving and their contrasting conceptual paradigms, one of the most important topics for feminism to consider. The conflicting relationship between paid work and caregiving lies also at the center of the recent debate on women and work initiated by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Yet the significance of the conceptual differences between paid work and caregiving, which could be summarized as prioritizing the autonomous liberal subject versus humans as embodied and vulnerable, has not been sufficiently recognized in the extensive public debate. It is crucial, I contend, to identify these different perceptions, which I analyze with the help of feminist theory, in order to fully understand the distinct nature of caregiving and its implications for social norms and policies. Following Martha C. Nussbaum, I conclude that valuing care and vulnerability calls for a new social contract.