Women - men - gender. - Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

38
POLITICS AND TRADE UNIONS
Care-Work or what a precautionary social welfare state must do,
so that men and women can live comfortably in their old-age
Within the feminist discourse, the concept of
“care” covers paid and unpaid work, which comprise
caring for dependents (be they old, ill or disabled).
Politics determines the scope and the type
of care provided. It specifi es private and public
responsibilities, it stipulates what constitutes paid
work and what does not and defi nes the rights of
care-givers and care-receivers.
In the programmes of every party, there are many
statements devoted to providing child care but
hardly any to those who need care and ministering.
On the other hand, trade unions, through
their campaigns (ver.di: ”We’ve had enough!”), are
drawing attention to the new crisis emerging in
this area, due to a paucity of care-givers. At the
political level, however, as in the past, there are
only discussions on the need for change in the fi eld
of nursing care. Experts feel that the problem with
the German care system lies, above all, in the fact
that the debate is shaped by stakeholders, those
providing care or those from the social insurance
German Federal Minister for Health Ulla Schmidt presents
the FES study “Gender in Care Giving” by Dr. Gertrud Backes
(right). On the left is Dr. Barbara Stiegler, the Head of the
Department for Gender and Women’s Policy at FES.
sector. There is no comprehensive vision and
neither is there a plan, supported and sustained by
politics for evolving a policy on nursing care in the
future.
The present care system in Germany is fragile and
this will become even more so in the future. The
following trends are contributing to this situation:
Women of every age are increasingly taking up
jobs. As a result the dual burden of nursing and
working will increase.
The increasing pressures of mobility and fl exibility
at work, which will make the daily caring for
those who require care at a certain place and at
certain times increasingly impossible to accomplish.
The low birth rates and the increasing numbers
of childless couples. The consequence of this
will be that nursing provided by relatives can no
longer be guaranteed.
The importance of marriage as a system for ensuring
livelihood is decreasing. Life-long fi nancial
support for female partners is no longer guaranteed
and with this the security of having
private nursing care fi nanced through matrimonial
maintenance will disappear.
The numbers of those requiring care will increase.
By 2020, there will be another million
people requiring regular nursing.
Till today, economic prospects hardly play any
role, when discussing the issue of providing care.
Feminist economists have always lamented this
oversight on the part of traditional economics. The
peculiarity of nursing care is that unlike industrial
production and even many other services, it creates
personal relationships. There is a particular
logic underlying this work and its productivity has
to be defi ned differently from that of the production
of industrial goods. In private care-giving, life
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