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TOWARD A CARING ECONOMY
Excerpted and Adapted from
WORK, VALUES, AND CARING:
THE ECONOMIC IMPERATIVE FOR REVISIONING THE RULES OF THE GAME
by Riane Eisler

 

"The most important things about a society are those that are seldom talked about.”

Sociologist Louis Wirth

“No problem was ever solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Albert Einstein

For a better life, more productive business, and a saner world, we have to change many of our assumptions about economics. We have to go beyond conventional categories such as capitalism vs. socialism to envision and create new economic models and rules.

We certainly have to look at areas traditionally studied by economists, such as government policies, business practices, and measures of productivity. But we also have to go deeper and look at the whole culture – from economic and political structures to social institutions and cultural assumptions that may at first glance seem unrelated to economics.

One unrecognized assumption that stands in the way of a more equitable and productive economic system is the cultural devaluation of the caring and caregiving work stereotypically associated with femininity. This devaluation has historically had extremely adverse effects. It’s kept women in a subordinate position and placed a double burden on women who have succeeded in entering areas from which they were once barred. But the damage goes further.

The cultural devaluation of the most essential human work – the work of caring and caregiving – lies behind seemingly intractable problems such as global poverty, hunger, warfare and terrorism. It’s a major factor behind the failure of conventional development policies to achieve more than surface gains. And it is particularly dysfunctional in the postindustrial world where economic and business success hinges on high-quality human capital.

TOWARDS MORE CARING POLICIES

The technological shift to the postindustrial economy offers an opportunity to reexamine and redefine what is productive work. It opens the door to identifying, developing, promoting, and testing economic inventions that recognize and reward the value of caring and caregiving work -- whether done by women or men -- in the market and nonmarket sectors.

Economic inventions are like any other human invention. They’re created by people who want to achieve certain goals. Everything about our economic life is an invention — from stock exchanges and sweatshops to banks and social security. Laws that permitted slavery or male ownership of women’s work were economic inventions serving a top-down dominator economic system. Laws prohibiting child labor and giving women property rights serve a partnership economic system. So do workplace safety regulations, unemployment insurance, and laws against workplace discrimination.

Economic rules, measures, and policies that recognize the real value of the essential work of caring for children and the elderly, keeping our families healthy, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment, are foundational to an economics that can meet the challenges we face. These economic inventions will lead to the higher valuing of caring and caretaking in our homes, schools, and workplaces. Equally important, they are essential steps toward a system of values that supports, rather than impedes, the more caring economic and social policies needed to move toward a more equitable, peaceful, sustainable, and prosperous world.

We decry the lack of caring of many economic policies and business practices. We deplore accounting practices that enable corporate officers to uncaringly, even unlawfully, enrich themselves at the expense of employee benefit plans and shareholder investments. We criticize corporate practices in, for example, the petrochemical and fast food industries that are uncaring of our health and natural habitat. We recognize there’s something basically wrong with government cuts in school lunches for millions of poor children. And we wonder why empirical evidence that caring promotes greater organizational competence and business success is still largely ignored. But why would we have caring policies and practices, when work that entails caring is not valued by our economic system?

Work that involves caring, particularly mothering, is idealized in rhetoric. But in reality, mothering is not valued. In programs to aid families with dependent children, for example, no economic value is given to the work of caregiving. In the wealthy United States, women over age 65 are the poorest segment of society. When work that involves caring is paid, it’s paid poorly. Professions that involve caregiving such as childcare and elementary school teaching are typically lower paid than those where caring and caregiving are not integral to the work, such as manufacturing and engineering. Workers in childcare centers often work for minimum wages, with no benefits. When it’s done at home, the work of caring for children, the sick, and the elderly is not even recognized as economically productive work. This work is not included in measures of economic productivity such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – which instead count work such as building and using weapons, making and selling cigarettes, and other activities that destroy rather than nurture life.

The failure to give value to caring and caregiving lies behind the fact that the mass of the world’s poor and the poorest of the poor are women and children. It’s a major factor in the replication from generation to generation of uncaring and abusive family patterns, such as wife beating and childbeating. It lies behind a host of problems – from crime, war, and terrorism. It lies behind massive economic inequities and dysfunctions. It lies behind failed policies such as Structural Adjustment policies that cut health, education, and other social services in the name of globalization.

Even from a conventional economic viewpoint, the failure to value caring and caregiving is counterproductive. Current economic rules and practices ignore the essential role caring plays in human development. Neuroscience shows that children who receive good care have a much better chance of growing into competent, flexible, innovative adults. Organizational development and management studies show that when people feel cared for they are more creative, caring, and productive. In short, what is good for people is good for business and the economy. And caring is good for people.

STEPS TOWARD PARTNERSHIP ECONOMICS

We already have some economic inventions that give monetary value to caring and caregiving. In the United States, parental leave for mothers and fathers, as well as flexible work options, are becoming more common. In the Nordic nations, as well as in France, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, and other industrialized democracies, there is paid parental leave. In Ontario, Canada, the government funds home visits and other support services for new mothers. All these enlightened developments are partnership economic inventions.

Economic systems can and do change — witness the economic changes of the last several hundred years. But the challenge is transformational change. Effectively dealing with global problems calls for a complex of interrelated changes in economic measurements, institutions, and rules. This will take time. Here are examples of changes we can work on right away:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead

The complete article, from which this paper is excerpted and adapted, is a chapter in a book to be published by Case Western Business School and Stanford University. A draft of the article can be downloaded here.


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