Who Cares? The Hidden Labour Holding Everything Together

What holds society together? It’s not just laws or economies—it’s care. The invisible, undervalued work of keeping people alive, healthy, fed, and emotionally stable. Yet we treat care as if it just... happens. Naturally. For free.In this episode, we explore why care work is overwhelmingly done by women—especially poor women, racialized women, and migrant women—and why capitalism depends on this labor while refusing to pay for it. Drawing on Joan Tronto’s ethics of care, Nancy Fraser’s feminist economics, and Ubuntu philosophy’s principle of “I am because we are,” we examine how care is simultaneously essential and exploited.We’ll unpack the gendered division of care work, the crisis of social reproduction under neoliberalism, and what it would mean to build a world that actually values care as the foundation of human life.References:* Tronto, J. (2013). Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice* Fraser, N. (2016). “Capitalism’s Crisis of Care,” Dissent* Hochschild, A. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling* Mayaka, B., & Truell, R. (2021). Ubuntu and its potential impact on the international social work profession. International Social Work, 64(5), 649–662 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thesocialmosaic.substack.com