Women, Work and Care-giving

Care-giving is all those activities women normally do to keep others alive and healthy. Historically invisibilised, poorly paid or unpaid, and relegated to the domestic environment, care-giving is one of the key issues of feminisms. Here are some debates, articles and audiovisual contents on work, gender, race and social class; on types of families and motherhood, and on time management and responsibility for day-to-day tasks.

The World Belongs to Those Who Work

Soy Cámara online

To close the exhibition "Feminisms!" this episode of Soy Cámara looks at some of the social struggles not yet resolved by certain sectors of feminism, much less by the vast majority of our society: providing a concrete response to recognition of care-giving and reproductive work, and taking a plural, broad-based look at the theme of control and exploitation of women’s bodies, in which classism and racism are the underlying ideologies.

Orna Donath, María Llopis, Brigitte Vasallo and Bel Olid

The Family Is Dead. Long Live the Family

Access to cheap and effective contraception has been one of the driving forces of feminism: released from the obligation of reproducing women could, finally, decide what they wanted to do with their lives. However, how do those of them who have decided to have children actually live motherhood? ...

Jane Lazarre and Bel Olid

Maternity, Activism and Democracy

Behind the idealised image of maternity there are many truths that are frequently hidden, namely physical pain, tiredness, professional and career concerns, dissatisfaction, and even regret. There is a gap between the contradictions a mother may experience and what her milieu and tradition ...

Work-life f[r]ictions

Soy cámara online

A reflection on women in their work spaces. In these spaces, the limits between work and life, independence and carer roles, often presumed to be real, are shown to be fictitious, constituting the feminisation of precariousness. This piece sets out to show what cannot normally be seen with ...

Subversive Motherhoods

Soy cámara online

This episode explores different models of motherhood and family, from the joy and pleasure of the body during gestation, birth and breastfeeding, to more radical feminist theories, to mothers’ regrets, today. The episode comprises interviews with participants in the debate “The ...

Lynne Segal

The Scandal of Ageing

Perhaps old women need to begin ageing scandalously, to beat back the scandals of ageing. As Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies Lynne Segal illustrates in her book Out of Time: The Pleasure & Perils of Ageing, across times and places older women, although usually devoid of ...

Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek

After Work: What Is Left?

There is a certain tension when reflecting on the post-work era. With automatization of the most repetitive tasks, jobs traditionally associated with men are rejected, whilst stereotypically female jobs flourish. At the same time, the automatization of the world may lead to a situation in which ...

Helen Hester: «Biology is not destiny, it can be technologically transformed»

Toni Navarro

A conversation with philosopher Helen Hester about xenofeminism, a gender technomaterialist proposal that aims to offer tools for a collectively construction of a new post-capitalist world.

Parvati Nair, Maggie O'Neill, Bombo Ndir, Joice Ortuño and Deepti Golani

The New Barcelonians. Migration, Work and Family in the City

What are the lives of immigrant women in Barcelona like? How have they established themselves and made a new home in this city? The United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM), based in Barcelona, has carried out research with immigrant women from diverse social and cultural origins to see how they have constructed personal and professional lives in our city, placing special emphasis on those aspects that affect women.