Care is a right, in so far as it is a basic need that structures communal life, coexistence and solidarity between generations, and guarantees a decent life and participation in our communities, labour market and every sphere of social life.
To ensure that everyone can receive care and that care is provided under fair conditions for the whole of society, we need to work to make the way we care for each other and the way we are cared for fairer and more democratic.
The main goal behind the government measure is to transform social, economic and institutional relations and common perceptions of how care today is organised in our society. At the same time, we also aim to guarantee that everyone can provide care and be cared for under conditions that ensure the quality and universality of the service. We understand that decent care cannot be provided at the expense of the diversity of experiences, needs and life trajectories we find in the city.
To achieve these goals, we propose four strategic areas of action, two central and two cross-cutting.
Strategic areas
The central areas are as follows:
Recognition of the social centrality of care work
We need to raise the profile of care work, extricating it from the situation of invisibility and isolation in which it takes place and recognising the invaluable contribution it makes to sustaining the economy and the whole of society.
As part of the measure, a survey will be conducted on time use in the city area to help to quantify all the work, knowledge and skills encompassed within care work. We also need to build new imaginaries and narratives on care work that are not stereotypical and which encourage the individual and collective empowerment of carers, promoting society’s shared responsibility for carer rights and duties.
Guaranteeing that access to decent care is not achieved at the expense of the rights of any other person is another of the measure’s priority goals. The situations of inequality and social exclusion that are created by the way care is currently organised, whether or not it is paid or is within the family context, must be made known. We aim to identify and call attention to the impact that a long-term dedication to care has on health, relationships and life projects, and to reduce the social and job precariousness that typifies paid care work. Launching a new model for organising care work involves denouncing the fact that when access to care is guaranteed it is often at the expense of another person’s rights.
Socialisation of the responsibility of care work
This area of action focuses on distributing care among a larger number of stakeholders, taking it beyond the boundaries of the private, domestic and family environment to tackle the high burden of care work, the fact that there are few available financial resources and the reality of the diversity of existing families. It also involves opening up spaces for sharing uncertainties, knowledge, experiences and states of mind among carer individuals and families, and reducing the loneliness and isolation that people who provide or receive care may experience.
We have defined two cross-cutting areas of action that intersect with the other two:
Eliminating the social divisions in work that arise from sex, age, origin and social class
The bulk of the responsibility for caring in the current model for organising care work is placed on the family household. We need to tackle this workload overload that women carers experience in families, which has very negative impacts on health, well-being and short-, medium- and long-term life projects in personal, financial and employment areas. The measure promotes a more egalitarian share of care work in the family and the community among men and women, and between the public administrations and the private sector. And it will work to combat the stereotypes and perceptions of gender, class and origin derived from the inordinate proportion of women, poor people and immigrants in paid care work.
Empowering the people who provide or receive care
We aim to generate and foment processes to raise awareness of individual and collective care providers and receivers by promoting a personal appreciation of care work, highlighting the role of its main stakeholders and facilitating and fomenting the creation of individual and collective spaces for personal and group growth.
We understand that all four areas must be developed in synchrony for there to be true progress in the democratisation of the organisation of care from a gender perspective.
Eliminating the social divisions in work that arise from sex, age, origin and social class
Empowering the people who provide or receive care