Instead of trying to walk the tightrope known as work family balance, maybe we should seek work family justice—something we all deserve rather than something we are easily blamed for not achieving on our own. This reformulation, inspired by a great book by Caitlyn Collins, Making Motherhood Work, defined a plenary session of the Work Family Research Network conference June… Read more →
Category: the meaning of care and the care sector
Social Capital vs. Social Climate
Social capital is a delightfully contradictory concept, which explains why academics kind of like it: So much room for elaboration and disputation, both qualitative and quantitative! Personally, I like the Simple English Wikipedia definition, which synchs with my own emphasis on pro-social motivations for care provision: “Social capital is the willingness of people to help each other. It often replaces money… Read more →
Pinko Economics
How colors mysteriously attain political significance. Pinko has a kind of vintage glow. Time magazine used it in 1925 as a snappy way of altering the term “pink,” long used to imply that leftist tendencies were effeminate, as in “parlor pinks,” a term the Wall Street Journal included in a list of derogatory adjectives applied to progressive politicians: “visionaries, ne’er… Read more →
Care, Affluence, and Development
I am gearing up to attend the annual meetings of the Indian Society of Labour Economics in Mumbai, with support from the Canadian International Development Research Centre. This seems especially important to me because several South Asian scholars are doing important research on the mis-measurement of women’s work, including Indira Hirway (sketch here, from the Mexico City Gender Statistics Conference),… Read more →
Defining “Alternative Systems”
The topic “alternative economic systems” is generally construed as “economic alternatives to capitalism.” This presumes we agree on what “capitalism” is. I don’t think we do. Many neoclassical economists won’t even use the word “capitalism” referring instead to a “market society” or sometimes a “modern” society. I think this a serious mistake. We need words to describe the institutional… Read more →
The Best Care Work Reporting of the Year
The British newspaper famous for its courageous investigative journalism on many different fronts wins my prize for the best reporting of the year on paid care work. A series of related articles, available in gallery format, address the underpayment of care workers in the U.K., recently dramatized by a report that 100 care agencies in the country are under investigation… Read more →
Care and the Great Transition
Because I think there are fundamental similarities between care and ecological services, I look for opportunities for dialogue with environmental researchers and activists. A particularly visionary network at The Great Transition Initiative recently invited me to comment on a provocative essay by Herman Daly called “Economics for a Full World. My post there offers a brief critique of the “empty-full”… Read more →