Creating Caring Societies: Rethinking Care Justice and the Politics of Care

The social organization of care refers to the institutions, norms, and practices that govern the distribution of caring responsibilities and access to caring resources in unequal ways (Glenn 2000; 2012). There is compelling evidence that everywhere women still do the bulk of unpaid care work and that this restricts their opportunities to participate in economic and political life. These inequalities further spill over into the wider economy as many care occupations are poorly paid and predominantly filled by racialized and immigrant women, as well as women from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. Feminist scholarship demonstrates that care is not only an issue in its own right. It also lies at the heart of many other political phenomena from the development of welfare states (Ciccia and Sainsbury 2018; Gordon 1991; Koven and Michel 2013), to democratic backsliding and the rise of far-right parties (Briggs 2018; Farris and Rottenberg 2017; Meguid et al. 2025), to the politics of race, immigration, and same-sex families (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2024; Ferree 2021; Hancock 2004). Therefore, the social organization of care is a root cause of gender and intersecting inequalities.