Several entities have promoted the #AmbSumaCura campaign, including IInteRed, Més que cures , la Inversa, Espai ambiental Cooperativa Sagrada Família Community Plan in collaboration with the Ateneu Coòpolis and BarcelonaActiva (Barcelona City Council) . The goal is to recognize the importance of homework and care for sustaining life. They have done so from a manifesto that already has about fifty memberships and through the review of three stories focused on interdependence, the economy of care and to make visible options for careful consumption of care. Barcelona Cuida, adheres to the manifesto.
They claim the right to care and to be cared for as a fundamental right and the need to provide it with resources by the State and support responsible consumption options. “The care projects do take into account the rights of the workers and the quality of the services and practice contracting in the General Regime, full hours and decent salaries, and provide quality, professional services with a guarantee of good treatment,” explain the campaign.
Furthermore, the invisibility of care tasks, performed mainly by migrant women, perpetuate the social gender gap and the global chain of cares. These irregular and precarious labor relations are caused “by an unjust regime that precarious already fragile groups, allowing unjustified dismissals, denying basic rights and authorizing extensive working hours.”
The entities endorse the demands, such as promoting actions aimed at enhancing domestic work and priests, the immediate ratification by the State of ILO Convention 189, the elimination of the Special System for Domestic Workers within the Social Security, the repeal of the Immigration Law, the incorporation of the intercultural and gender perspective in public and private contracting policies, and the recognition by public administrations of the social value of self-organized non-profit experiences .
Three videos that revolve around responsible consumption of care
Cares continues to be undervalued, precarious and invisible, although it is essential for the survival and development of society. That is why one of the main actions that the campaign has promoted with different people and entities of the Social and Solidarity Economy of the city is the review of three stories focused on interdependence, the capitalist economy and the search for alternatives.
The first video of the campaign reviews the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” and talks about the inequality of care tasks between men and women. In Catalonia, households and families have the main responsibility for caring. And within these, women. On weekdays, women dedicate an average of 1.91 hours a day to domestic activities and men 0.92. During the weekend, the average hours dedicated to domestic activities by women is 2.81 hours and in the case of men 1.61.
The second video reverses the story “The Devil’s Bridge” and puts on the table offered by the capitalist economy and the underground economy to solve the crisis of care that many households have to face and the unequal relations between the sexes in the framework of the heterosexual nuclear family, which “generates a growing situation of neglect, which is being covered by the work, energy and resources of families and women.”
The last clip of the campaign is a version of the classic “The rebellion of the washerwomen” and revolves around self-organized alternatives that promote responsible consumption of care, making visible the initiatives that work with criteria of work quality and services from the proximity.