New Directions in Caring Policies: Innovations and Resistances in the Care of Children, Elderly and Disabled People in European Countries

Abstract

Who is suppose to take care of the children, elderly or handicapped people, how. And why ? Caring refers to the provision of daily social, psychological, emotional and physical attention for people who are not able to take care of themselves. This concept, developed in the 1980's by the feminist research on social policy, represents a strong contribution to the democratic discussion: it implies to conceive of citizenship as to include the right to give or receive care and the dimension of gendered life courses and opportunities. It also involves a deconstruction of traditional welfare typologies revealing their gendered bias. For a long time, the Family-wage model (male bread-winner/women care-givers) has dominated the field. In the present context of major the demographic, economic and social transformations, how will, and should, European caring policies evolve? Nancy Fraser (1999) presented three alternatives: the Universal Bread-winner model (promoting women's employment), the Care-giver Parity model (aim to promote gender equity by supporting informal care-work) and the Universal-Caregiver Model ("to make women's current life-pattern the norm for every one"). In the light of these models, we suggest to discuss the new trends in caring policy, asking three questions: 1. What are the main political innovations in the field of care, and what are their main impediments? 2 .What are the consequences of this evolution in terms of citizenship and gender? 3. What kind of public policy can promote what kind of caring society?

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