Who cares anyway? Theorising democratic vulnerability at the intersection of older women’s unpaid caring and domestic abuse

This paper examines how older women providing unpaid care within familial relationships are positioned within Welsh policy frameworks addressing domestic abuse and care. It explores a gap at the intersection of ageing, gender, and unpaid care, analysing how experiences of harm within care are recognised or excluded within policy discourse. Foucauldian discourse analysis is applied to Welsh policy documents, complemented by thematic analysis of two illustrative cases drawn from semi-structured interviews with family carers. Drawing on feminist care ethics and critical gerontology, the analysis identifies four interconnected mechanisms through which older women carers’ experiences of harm are marginalised: (1) linguistic gatekeeping within statutory definitions that exclude carers from safeguarding protections; (2) hermetic policy silos preventing meaningful connection between domestic abuse and care frameworks; (3) subject position impossibility, whereby occupying the identity ‘carer’ forecloses recognition as ‘victim’; and (4) gendered neutrality obscuring the unequal distribution of care. These mechanisms operate across institutional and lived dimensions, shaping how experiences can be articulated and responded to. We initially develop these insights into the concept of democratic vulnerability; the compounded exclusion of a population from epistemic recognition, institutional protection, and political participation while experiencing ongoing harm, with implications for social work research, policy, and practice.