The right to care

Justice is a well-established principle by which societies and the actions of individuals are measured. But what about care? Stephan Meyer, Tamara Shefer, Thenjiwe Meyiwa and Vasu Reddy report on why care matters, based in part on a forthcoming book titled Care in Context: Transnational gender perspectives. Care has been gaining considerable attention over the last three decades as an important concept of concern to researchers, activists and policy makers. Even though care is vital to our survival and development, it was long taken for granted. Such disregard arises from the hidden interest to perpetuate the uneven distribution of the giving and receiving of quality care. As a result, women and girls and people who already suffer economic discrimination remain locked into disproportional degrees of caregiving. In turn, men and boys, and people who are economically advantaged, are locked out of it. While many - including the World Bank - emphasise the ways in which this obstructs women's capacity to participate in education, economic, political and social life, a big silence hangs over how this reproduces forms of masculinity that are damaging to both females and males. Caring is an option open to all, irrespective of their biological sex and social gender.