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WORK, VALUES, AND CARING:
THE ECONOMIC IMPERATIVE FOR REVISIONING THE RULES OF THE GAME
 
© 2003 Riane Eisler

Riane Eisler is President of the Center for Partnership Studies. She is author of The Chalice and The Blade, Sacred Pleasure, Tomorrow’s Children, and The Power of Partnership. She is senior author of Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life and The Partnership Way. Dr. Eisler is a consultant to business and government on use of the partnership model in organizational development and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and the World Business Academy. She keynotes business, technology, women's, educational, and environmental conferences on the new perspective on our future identified by her research. Her work has impacted fields ranging from economics and education to the arts and sciences.
 

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

Sociologist Louis Wirth

Many of us recognize that we live in one of the most challenging times in the history of our planet – the dislocation of rapid technological and economic change, the worldwide escalation of violence and terrorism, the widening gap between haves and have-nots, the extermination of entire species, the threats to our natural habitat. Many of us also realize that old economic models are proving incapable of effectively addressing these problems. We share the vision of an economics that gives real value to human life, human development, and human dignity. We realize that to move toward this more caring and sustainable economics, we must collaboratively work for transformative change.

Starvation, slavery, and sweatshops are not the result of inevitable economic laws. Neither are homeless children, workers toiling for pennies a day, illiterate and malnourished populations, corrupt and greedy CEOs, or rampant industrial pollution inevitable. Nor are tax breaks for the super-rich, government handouts to huge corporations, or cuts in health, education, and welfare programs. They are the result of human-made laws and policies.

The move to a more equitable and productive future requires a reexamination of the assumptions and valuations underlying these laws and policies. We certainly have to look at areas traditionally considered by economists such as government policies, business practices, and measures of productivity. But to shore up a more equitable and truly productive economics, we have to address the whole culture – from its economic and political structures to cultural beliefs and social institutions that may at first glance seem unrelated to economics.

This paper looks at a foundational issue that stands in the way of transformative change: the inadequacy of current definitions, measurements, policies, and rules governing what is considered productive work.

It proposes that, particularly in our postindustrial age, we need new economic rules, models, policies, and measurements that recognize the value of the most socially essential work: the work of caring for children and the elderly, of keeping our families healthy, of developing and sustaining relationships, and of maintaining a clean and healthy environment.

It also proposes that a culture that supports caring is critical for effective organizational capacity building, creating relational resources through greater trust, felt connection, and positive emotions. And it suggests that if economic and business policies are to be more caring of people and our natural habitat, more visibility and value must be given to caring and caregiving.

It further suggests that an appropriate response to the challenges of the postindustrial world requires investment in the development of the high quality human capital that can meet these challenges and that this calls for the construction of new rules of the game that give value, training, and support to the essential human work of caring for ourselves, others, and our natural environment.

In addition, it suggests some economic inventions that can lead to the higher valuing of caring and caregiving in both the market and nonmarket sectors of the economy, and with this, to less violence, more business productivity, creativity, environmental sustainability, and greater economic and social equity worldwide.

THE ALIENATION OF CARING LABOR

We are not used to think of caring when we think of economics. 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.1 We criticize corporate practices found in businesses such as the petrochemical and fast food industries that are uncaring of our health and our natural habitat. We recognize that there is something basically wrong with government cuts in school lunches for millions of poor children while corporations get million-dollar handouts and the wealthy get tax refunds. 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 really valued in our economic system?

Work that involves caring, particularly mothering, is sometimes idealized in rhetoric, as in the American mantra “motherhood and apple pie.” But in reality, mothering is not valued. For example, in programs to aid families with dependent children, no economic value whatsoever is given to the work of caregiving. When work that involves caring is paid, it is 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 still work for minimum wages, with no benefits. When it is 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.

Indeed, a major, though still generally undiscussed, feature of present economic models and rules – whether capitalist or socialist – is their failure to recognize the economic value of the socially and environmentally essential work of caring and caregiving.

In describing the exploitation of agricultural and industrial work, Marx wrote about the alienation of labor. I have in the course of my research come to see that the alienation of caring and caregiving labor is the hidden mass of the iceberg of which many of our global problems are only the tip.

The failure of current economic models to give real value to caring and caregiving labor, whether in families or in the larger society, lies behind massive economic inequities and dysfunctions. It lies behind economic theories, rules, measures, and practices that do not recognize caring and caregiving as integral to economic and social health. All this, in turn, lies behind seemingly insoluble global problems.

There is much talk about the need to more effectively address the problem of poverty. But still ignored in this discussion is that worldwide the mass of the poor and the poorest of the poor are those who do caring work: women. Globally, women and children are at the bottom of the economic ladder. Even in a wealthy nation like the United States, older women are much poorer as a group than older men, and woman-headed households are the poorest families. This poverty is the direct result of the failure to give visibility and value to the work of caring and caregiving stereotypically relegated to women.

There is today also much talk about the need to more effectively address the problem of violence – from escalating warfare and terrorism to murder, rape, wife battering, and child abuse. This discussion, however, generally ignores that uncaring and abusive childhood experiences are major factors behind this institutionalized violence. Patterns of uncaring and violent treatment of children are heavily implicated in perpetuating other culturally transmitted patterns of violence as a means of imposing one’s will on others, whether in families or the family of nations. Yet social investment in education for childcare, in high quality childcare centers, and other measures that could help cut through these cycles of violence are still low priorities.

Discussions of learning difficulties, inability to hold jobs, difficulties in relationships, drug addiction, and problems with impulse control also generally fail to connect these problems with the loss of human potential flowing from the social and economic failure to give visibility and support to caring and caregiving. In short, a myriad of socially and economically costly
problems flow from an economic paradigm that invisibilizes and devalues the work of caring and caregiving. This paradigm also leads to business practices and social policies that fail to care for human development and welfare, even though studies show that people’s work performance is greatly enhanced in caring environments.

It is considered natural to have government-funded training to teach soldiers how to kill, and to provide publicly-funded pensions for soldiers. But government-funded training and pensions for those who perform the work of caring for children is still a rarity – even though high-quality caregiving is essential for children’s welfare and development and without it there would be no labor force, and even though there is today solid scientific data on what kind of childcare fosters or inhibits human development. Some will argue that we cannot have these kinds of policies because we cannot accurately measure the effectiveness of training for caregiving. But we also do not have accurate measures for the effectiveness of combat training, and still invest in it. So the issue is actually one of social and economic priorities.

WORK AND POSTINDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

Today, caring and caregiving are more urgently needed than ever before. There are many reasons for this in a world interconnected not only by instantaneous technologies of communication but by almost instantaneous technologies of destruction that threaten the stability needed to sustain, not only business and commerce, but life itself.

There are also urgent economic reasons. To begin with, in the postindustrial information/service economy, the most important capital is human capital. The postindustrial economy requires what we today call “high quality human capital” — people able to learn, relate, work in teams, and solve problems flexibly and creatively. This high quality human capital is not just produced in universities or through job-training. Findings from psychology, and more recently neurobiology, show that the quality of human capital is, to a much greater extent than has been recognized, shaped by the quality of childcare and early childhood education. It is during the early years of life that neural pathways are laid, influencing such critical matters as whether or not we are venturesome and creative, whether we can work harmoniously with peers or only take orders from above, whether we are flexible or rigid in our responses to challenges, and whether or not we are able to resolve conflicts nonviolently. People can and do change throughout life. But the early years are critical. Therefore, if we are to have an adequate workforce for the postindustrial age, empathic and effective early caregiving must be given much more economic support.

This is particularly important in our globalized economy, where empathic relations with people of other cultures are a large component of success. It is also increasingly important at a time when business success largely hinges on good relations with customers, suppliers, co-workers, and communities. Training and support for caregiving that promotes the optimal development of the human capacity to learn, relate, and solve problems flexibly and creatively is an essential investment in our economic and business health.

There is a second, equally critical, economic issue that requires a re-examination and redefinition of what is productive work. As we move further into the postindustrial economy, the industrial job base will shrink as radically as the agricultural job base shrank earlier, from employing a majority of workers to less than five percent today. The consequences, not only in unemployment and underemployment but in a less financially secure consumer base, are already beginning to be felt. Many well-paying jobs, such as middle management positions, are disappearing. “Blue collar” jobs in factories are being massively cut. The loss of manufacturing jobs is in part due to their export to nations with cheaper labor. But it is also due to automation, to huge job cuts in major economic sectors such as the automobile and aircraft industries. “White collar” jobs, such those of telephone operators and receptionists, are also being phased out by automation. There is a polarization of jobs, with well-paying jobs largely requiring advanced degrees or high technology skills, and masses of people relegated to low wage jobs that are often part-time and without benefits.

As automation and robotics become more commonplace, the number of jobs in both the developed and developing world will continue to shrink. In light of this, the conservative economist Milton Friedman proposed a negative income tax to prevent extensive violence and the collapse of social and economic infrastructures. For similar reasons, the liberal economist Robert Theobald proposed a guaranteed annual income.

These measures recognize that much of what has been considered productive work will gradually be phased out by new technologies in both agriculture and manufacturing. However, these measures just entail doling out money, contributing nothing to economic or personal development. They do not give recipients the opportunity to do meaningful work and rob them of the feeling that they are doing something of importance. They do nothing to encourage productivity and creativity. They fail to reward positive behaviors and do not discourage harmful ones. They do not address the power imbalances that lie behind chronic economic inequity and inefficiency. They do not address uncaring economic policies and business practices. They fail to take into account the damage to our health and our natural habitat of such policies, as well as the loss of human potential they entail.

There is a more appropriate response to the challenges of the postindustrial world: one that invests in the development of the high quality human capital that can meet these challenges. This response calls for the construction of new rules of the game that give value, training, and support to the essential human work of caring for ourselves, others, and our natural environment.

HIDDEN SYSTEMS OF VALUATION

Unrecognized assumptions are dangerous. Moving toward a new economic paradigm begins with a better understanding of the assumptions underlying the current one.

We can start with a basic question: Why has the essential work of caring and caregiving been given so little economic value? We would all be dead if it weren’t for the work of caring for children, the elderly, and the sick. We would be in very bad shape if our day-to-day needs for food, clean clothes, and a habitable place to live weren’t cared for. There wouldn’t even be a labor force to go to their jobs or businesses if it weren’t for the work of caregiving.

The systemic devaluation of the work without which we would not survive has nothing to do with logic. It is our inheritance from a time when our society oriented far more closely to what I have called the domination model: a social and economic organization based on rigid top-down rankings of domination ultimately backed up by fear and force.

A mainstay of this model, which pervaded relations in families as well as in the family of nations, was the ranking of the male half of humanity over the female half. This led to the automatic valuing of men and anything stereotypically associated with “real” masculinity over women and anything stereotypically considered feminine, including the “women’s work” of caring and caregiving. In other words, with the subordination of women to men, anything associated with the gender stereotype of men and masculinity was given higher value than anything stereotypically associated with women and the feminine. The results were economic systems — tribal, feudal, capitalist, communist — that give little or no value to the work of caring and caregiving.

These stereotypes of masculinity and femininity do not have anything to do with innate male or female traits. Women can do "men's work," be it as welders, politicians, or priests, and sometimes do it better than men. Men can do the "women's work" of caring for children, and some men do so better than some women.

But according to the belief system we inherited, the work of caring and caregiving is unfit for “real men.” It is supposed to be done by women for free in male-controlled households. It is “soft” work that has no visibility and is given no real economic value.

This devaluing of traits and activities stereotypically associated with women is a hidden system of valuations deeply embedded in prevailing economic rules and models. In the workplace, the push for "comparable worth" legislation to achieve economic parity in professions such as childcare, nursing, and elementary school teaching – professions that entail caring and are primarily female – has achieved only minimal success. At home, despite all the rhetoric, caring and caregiving work is given no real economic value. It is therefore still harder to get men to assume equal responsibility for housework and childcare than it even is for women to get into professions that until recently were exclusive male preserves.

Politicians give us catchy slogans like “a more gentle, caring world” and “compassionate conservatism.” But when it comes to caring for children, for the sick, the elderly, and the homeless, their policies are far from caring. And why would these policies be caring when the devaluation of the “women’s work” of caring and caregiving is deeply embedded not only in our unconscious minds but in the economic rules and models most politicians accept? How realistic is it to talk about a more equitable economic system as long as the indispensable, life-sustaining caring work is given a lip service but few if any economic incentives or rewards? Indeed, how can we seriously talk of more caring communities, when caring work is not really valued?

Learning to value or devalue caring is a basic lesson for life. Learning or not learning skills for giving care is another basic life lesson. Which of these two very different lessons people are taught at home, at work, and in our communities profoundly affects all of our relationships – from intimate to international. It also profoundly affects what we consider valuable, and this in turn is reflected and perpetuated by our economic models, rules, measures, and policies.

ECONOMICS AND CULTURE

We have been taught to accept the economic devaluation of caring and caregiving work as natural, as just the way things are. But it is not natural. It is cultural.

Economic systems do not spring up in a vacuum. They are part of cultures. And economic systems are very different depending on the degree to which a culture orients to the domination model or the partnership model.

The core configuration of the domination model is top-down control in the family and state or tribe, the rigid ranking of the male half of humanity over the female half, a high level of socially condoned violence, ranging from child and wife beating to warfare, and a system of beliefs that presents this way of relating as natural, even moral. Examples of twentieth century cultures orienting closely to this model are Nazi Germany, Khomeini’s Iran, and Stalin’s Soviet Union – cultures that are different in religion, location, and ideology, but share these characteristics.

The core configuration of the partnership model is a democratic and egalitarian family and social structure, equal partnership between the two halves of humanity, a low degree of violence, as it is not needed to maintain rankings of domination, and beliefs that present this way of relating as normal and moral. Twentieth century examples of cultures orienting to the partnership model are the Teduray of the Philippines, the Minangkabau of East Sumatra, and Nordic nations such as Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

These cultures too are different in many respects, such as location, technological development, and religious or secular orientation. But they are cultures where caring and caregiving are given greater social and economic value because they orient more to the partnership than domination model.2

I want to emphasize that the difference between these two models is not that one has hierarchies and the other does not. As I will elaborate later, in the partnership model, instead of hierarchies of domination backed up by fear and force, there are hierarchies of actualization where leadership and management are nurturing and facilitating rather than controlling and autocratic. I also want to emphasize that the difference is not that the partnership model is cooperative and the domination model is not. People regularly cooperate in the cultures that orient to the domination model, for example, to commit acts of terrorism, invade other nations, and scapegoat socially disempowered groups.

The centrality of “women’s issues” to these two models stems from the fact that the cultural construction of the primary human relations – between the female and male halves of humanity and between them and their sons and daughters – is foundational to different ways of structuring all relations. The domination model requires the ranking of one half of humanity over the other half, as demonstrated by the push to get women back into their “traditional” place in a “traditional” top-down family by modern dictatorships, whether secular or religious. This has been a rallying cry in Hitler’s Germany, Khomeini’s Iran, the Taliban of Afghanistan, and other authoritarian regimes and would-be regimes. One reason is that when the most fundamental difference in our species – the difference between men and women – is equated with inferiority or superiority and with controlling or being controlled, this provides a model that children learn early on for seeing all rankings of domination as normal and natural. Another reason is that imposing and maintaining rigid rankings – men over women, men over men, race over race, religion over religion, and so forth – requires that stereotypically feminine “soft” values and behaviors, such as caring and nonviolence, be devalued and, along with women, excluded from social governance.

Over the last centuries, there has been movement toward the partnership model. Many social movements have challenged entrenched traditions of domination, from the “divinely ordained” right of kings to rule their “subjects” to the “divinely ordained” right of men to rule the women and children in the “castles” of their homes. The abolitionist, civil rights, women’s rights, peace, anti-colonial, children’s rights, and environmental movements have all challenged traditions of domination ultimately backed up by fear and force. These movements have been met with enormous resistance. They have also been interrupted by periodic regressions, in part because the foundational relations between men and women and parents and children have not been central in progressive political agendas. But there have, nonetheless, been important gains, as evidenced by the immense difference between the European Middle Ages and Western society today.

There have also been movements challenging traditions of economic domination. But the communist “dictatorship of the proletariat” proved to be another form of the domination model. And attempts at capitalist reform have at best been only partially successful.

What is needed is a new economic paradigm that incorporates the best aspects of capitalism, socialism, and anarchism (in the sense of decentralized cooperatives), but goes much further, supporting and rewarding caring and ethical human relations, as well as consciousness of, and respect for, our natural habitat. I call this more caring economics a partnership rather than dominator economics.

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. This will require economic inventions that give visibility and value to caring and caregiving.

The shift to the postindustrial economy will require a fundamental reexamination of what is or is not productive work. This opens a window of opportunity to develop new economic inventions: rules, models, measurements, and policies that recognize that caring for children and our environment is the most foundationally productive work, whether it is done by women or men.

Economic inventions are like any other human invention. They are created by people who want to achieve certain goals. Everything involved in 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 that serve 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.

We already have a few economic inventions that give monetary value to caring and caregiving. In the United States, parental leave for both mothers and fathers, as well as flexible work options, are becoming more prevalent. In the Nordic nations, as well as in France, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, and other industrialized democracies, there is paid parental leave. All these enlightened developments are partnership economic inventions.

Some of the most interesting economic inventions are emerging on the community level. In Japan, there is a caregiving exchange program between Tokyo and Kyoto. If someone takes care of an elderly person in a retirement or nursing home in one of these cities, that caregiver’s parents in the other city can obtain similar services. In other words, economic credit for caring is transferred from one community to another. Local communities that offer free public transportation and other public services to volunteers have invented still another way to give caring work visibility and economic value.

The following social and political trends all reflect growing recognition of the value of caring and caregiving for social and environmental health:

 

STEPS TOWARD PARTNERSHIP ECONOMICS

Effectively dealing with our mounting global problems calls for a complex of interrelated changes in economic measurements, institutions, and rules. This will take time. What follows are ten examples of changes we can begin to work on right away:

Economic Inventions that Recognize the Value of Caring and Caregiving Work

The costs of not effectively addressing the challenges and opportunities of this time of rapid technological, social, and environmental change are enormous. An example are the huge government and social costs associated with child abuse and neglect, and their frequent corollary, juvenile and, later, adult crime. Unless we creatively intervene, these costs will exponentially increase due to population growth, the economic and social dislocations stemming from globalization, and the gradual phasing out of much that was in agrarian and industrial economies considered productive work. Similarly, the costs of failing to develop economic instruments that recognize the value of environmental housekeeping will continue to rise exponentially unless we change the rules of the economic game.

In simple economic terms, creating an economic system that recognizes the value of caring and caregiving will save billions of dollars. In human terms, the benefits will be much greater. Economic inventions that recognize and reward the most socially essential work will give us the foundations on which a more sustainable, equitable, and humane socioeconomic system can rest.

We need a market economy that adequately values the caring professions in which women are largely concentrated. A key example here is work in childcare centers. There is also the work of counselors, nursery school, kindergarten, and primary school teachers, and others dealing with both children and their parents.

We also need a battery of economic inventions that recognize the value of the socially needed work of caring and caregiving in the nonmarket economy. An example are programs to assure that women and men train and prepare themselves to effectively care for children. This training, drawing from what we today know about the kind of childcare that supports or inhibits healthy development, is essential, if only in light of the scientific evidence of the critical importance of the early years in the production of the human capital essential for today's economy. We can also institute pensions (an economic invention that recognizes and rewards socially valued work) for these activities. In conjunction with strong family planning programs, such economic inventions will not promote childbirth. On the contrary, studies show that parenting classes as well as sex education that includes family planning information reduce teenage pregnancies. Nor have Nordic experiences with childcare allowances led to high birthrates. They have actually promoted lower birthrates.

Most importantly, more caring Nordic social policies brought greater economic prosperity. Measures such as universal healthcare and childcare allowances helped produce the higher quality human capital that transformed Nordic nations such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway from poor, famine-ridden countries to prosperous, creative economies. (See Hilkka Pietila, “Nordic Welfare Society –A Strategy to Eradicate Poverty and Build Up Equality: Finland as a Case Study,” Journal Cooperation South, Number two, 2/2001, pages 79-96). Indeed, not only do Nordic nations always rank on the top of the U.N Human Development Reports but Finland ranked second only to the much wealthier United States in the 2002 World Competitiveness ratings.3

Another example of policies that give visibility and value to caregiving are changes in educational systems. As I wrote in Tomorrow's Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century, early training in the caring arts needs to be a central focus of schooling. This serves multiple purposes — from helping to prevent teen delinquency and pregnancy to promoting teamwork, mutual support, and equity. Our educational system must change to ensure that we have the quality of human capital needed for the postindustrial economy. Giving visibility and value to caring for self, others, and Mother Earth in education is important for a more equitable economic system worldwide: one where caring and caregiving are integral to all economic institutions and the female half of humanity no longer suffers from systemic economic discrimination.

New Economic Measurements

A key element in the move toward partnership economics is a more accurate system of economic bookkeeping. We need economic measurements that include in assessment of economic productivity the value of caring and caregiving as well as the costs of not valuing this work.

What we label productive work is today in large part determined by measures such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which do not include the unpaid work primarily performed by women in the “informal” economy, be it in their homes, or in their communities as volunteers. This omission has been vigorously critiqued, for example, in Marilyn Waring's groundbreaking book If Women Counted and in the Center for Partnership Studies' publication Women, Men, and The Global Quality of Life.

There is some movement today toward substituting Quality of Life Measures for just GDP One reason is that GDP fails to reflect how the mass of people live in a country, only showing whether it is rich or poor without data on distribution. Another reason is that GDP fails to reflect environmental costs.

But the new economic measures will not be adequate unless they include gender specific data and reflect the invisible economic contributions of women. Gender-inclusive Quality of Life Measures, proposed in If Women Counted and in Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, are needed to make the socially and economically essential "women's work" of caring for children, the sick, and the elderly as well as maintaining a clean and healthy family environment visible in systems of national and international accounting. Such changes in accounting will in turn encourage development of new rules of the game that recognize the value of activities that create high quality human capital and promote environmental health versus environmental pollution, despoliation, and destruction, which irrationally, along with the costs of repairing this damage, are still included on the plus side of economic measures today.

Property Laws, Customs, and Practices

Laws that deprive members of a society from the right to own property are today recognized as violations of human rights. Nonetheless, international human rights agencies have given practically no attention to the fact that in large world regions (for example, much of Africa and Southern Asia) women are by law and/or custom deprived of the right to own property (See for example, Bina Agarwal's A Field of One's Own and the journal Women's International Network News).

This discrimination is sometimes justified on the grounds that men economically provide for women. While this may be the ideal, it is often not the reality.(See .Judith Bruce and Cynthia B. Lloyd, “Finding the Ties that Bind: Beyond Headship and Household,” in Lawrence Haddad, John Hoddinott, and Harold Alderman, editors, Intrahousehold Resources Allocation in Developing Countries: Methods, Models, and Policy, Baltimore: International Food Policy Research Institute and Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

Discriminatory laws and customs reflect the devaluation of women's enormous economic contributions. They ignore not only the stereotypically "feminine" work of caring for children, the sick, and the elderly, but the subsistence farming, hauling firewood and water, and other activities essential to keep families alive that women traditionally perform in many parts of the world.

Since this devaluation of women and “women’s work” translates into the devaluation of anything labeled “soft” or feminine, changing discriminatory laws, customs, and practices – by companies and nations – is a prerequisite for a more caring and equitable business and economic system.

Supporting women's groups working for changes in laws (and thus norms and customs) is an important way of supporting economic inventions that recognize the value of caring and caregiving work. An international campaign to support this effort by progressive nongovernmental organizations, including national and international women's, children's, and human rights organizations, as well as academic institutions, would greatly accelerate this process. That the empowerment of women is key to economic development, to a sustainable global population, and to a less violent society has been shown by many studies. The challenge is to collectively transform policies to implement these findings into action.

More Balanced Policy-Making

To change economic policies in ways that recognize the value of work stereotypically considered women's work, women need to play a greater role in the formulation of both government and business policies. It is significant that nations that have moved toward social policies that give higher value to caregiving have a larger representation of women in policy-making positions. In Finland, for example, at this writing both the President and Prime Minister are women. It is also significant that women such as Bina Agarwal, Nirmala Banerjee, Barbara Bergmann, Barbara Brandt, Marianne Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Hazel Henderson, Devaki Jain, Julie Nelson, V. S. Peterson, Hilkka Pietila, Gita Sen, Vandana Sheva, Holly Sklar, Myra Strober, Marilyn Waring, and many others including this author, have been strong voices for new economic rules of the game.

This is not to say men also have not played an important part; for example, Paul Hawken, Takashi Kiuchi, David Korten, Manfred Max-Neef, Robert Reich, Karl-Henrick Robert, and Amartya Sen have been leaders in calling for environmentally responsible and equitable government policies. They recognize that these policies are essential if we are to develop, and implement, the new economic rules appropriate for partnership economics; for example, new ways of doing business and new criteria for corporate charters that require social and environmental accountability of corporations worldwide.

However, unless women have an equal say in economic and political decision-making bodies and meetings, the focus will not be on the core component of partnership economics that recognizes the value of the stereotypical women's work of caring and caretaking. As illustrated by the Nordic world, only as women rise in status through entry into positions of social governance do stereotypically feminine qualities such as caring and nonviolence also attain social governance — as men no longer feel that embracing these is an “unmanly” loss of status.

Gender-Specific Economic and Cultural Research

Matters connected with the roles and relations of the two halves of humanity – women and men – are still generally relegated to the intellectual ghetto of women’s, men’s, and gender studies. Yet without gendered analyses it is impossible to see socioeconomic patterns that underlie many contemporary problems.

A statistical study I conducted together with the social psychologist David Loye and the sociologist Kari Norgaard under the auspices of the Center for Partnership Studies compared measures of the status of women with quality of life measures.4 Based on statistics collected by international agencies from 89 nations, it showed that the status of women can be a better predictor of general quality of life than GDP. While economic development tends to go along with movement toward gender equality, societies with the same GDP can have great variations in gender relations – which in turn correlate strongly with a higher or lower general quality of life.5

For example, Kuwait and France had almost the same levels of per capita gross domestic product or GDP. But the infant mortality rates in France and Kuwait were very different. France orients more to the partnership model. It is a democracy rather than a monarchy, and the status of women is higher than in Kuwait. The French infant mortality rate was 8 infants per 1,000 live births, whereas in Kuwait it was 19 infants per 1,000 live births – more than double the rate of France.6 The GDP of Finland and Singapore were also almost identical. But the maternal mortality rate in Singapore, in which the status of women was much lower than in Finland and civil rights in general were also lower, was more than double that of Finland, a democratic society where, as in other Nordic nations, women have made strong gains.7

This study, reported in Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, shows that economics cannot be understood, or effectively changed, without attention to other core cultural components – and that a central cultural component is the construction of the roles and relations of the female and male halves of humanity. Another study, drawing from measures of beliefs and values rather than from statistical measures of quality of life, came to the same conclusions.

The 2000 World Values Survey, based on data from 65 societies representing 80 percent of the world’s population, looked at whether there is a relationship between economic development, democratization, and a higher status of women. As Ronald Inglehart, Pippa Norris, and Christian Wetzel wrote in “Gender Equality and Democracy,” the 2000 World Values Survey showed that there is a relationship between economic development and gender equity. They also wrote that “the relationship between support for gender equality in politics, and the society’s level of political rights and civil liberties” is “remarkably strong.”8 In addition, gender equality is linked with a rising sense of subjective well-being, and other aspects of what Inglehart et al. call postmodern “self-expression” rather than traditional “survival” values. By contrast, those societies that still emphasize “survival” values – which include a sense of scarcity, traditional attitudes that rigidly limit women’s life options, intolerance toward outgroups, and low interpersonal trust – fall on the lower end of the civil liberties, political rights, and democracy scale. 9

“In advanced industrial societies,” Inglehart et al. write, “authority patterns seem to be shifting from the traditional hierarchical style toward a more collegial style that parallels the differences between stereotypically ‘male’ and ‘female’ styles of social interaction.” In these leadership styles, they note, supportiveness and cooperation rather than domination and competition are paramount. They further note that these leadership styles are more effective in postindustrial societies, observing that “the cultural changes associated with changing gender roles and the ‘feminization’ of leadership styles are closely linked with the spread of democratic institutions.”10

These kinds of studies illustrate the value of gender-specific research. Promoting and supporting this research in the academy is an important step in the exploration and development of new economic paradigms.

New Economic Paradigms in Business and Economics Schools and Classes

Economic theory still focuses on conventional categories such as capitalism and socialism, and until recent years ignored the life-support systems of nature. The life-supporting activities relegated to women are still ignored, even though these are essential economic activities.

The underlying reason for these limited perspectives is that the curriculum of most business and economics schools is still heavily based on assumptions we inherited from earlier times that oriented more closely to the domination model – times when relations, including economic relations, conformed to rigid top-down rankings. Just as current economic theory holds that pure self-interest leads to the greater good for all through the “invisible hand of the market,”11 thereby implicitly justifying ruthless business practices and uncaring economic policies, huge gaps between haves and have-nots, poverty, hunger, and violence are often presented as the result of “evolutionary imperatives” or “human nature.”

Passing on of these assumptions through the canon constricts, distorts, and suppresses consciousness of other alternatives. And, whether it is for personal change or for economic change, an essential ingredient for change is the belief that there are alternatives and an understanding of what these are.

Some early socialists, such as Charles Fourier, saw the connection between the status of women and the character of a society. But their writings are not part of the canon. To the limited extent that feminist research and theory have penetrated the academy, they are still generally relegated to the intellectual ghetto of women’s studies. Hence most scholars, do not bother reading these works, which they consider irrelevant to “serious” scientific inquiries.

Although early childhood relations are recognized as formative by psychologists, the connection between these foundational relations and a society’s political and economic system is also still generally ignored. One reason is that the early care of children has been seen as “women’s work.” So it too has been split off from the category of serious social rather than merely personal issues. And because these primary human relations are still viewed as secondary to more “important” issues, little attention has been paid to the social and economic importance of caregiving work.

Even for those who want to include the primary human relations in studies of social and economic problems, there has been no integrative conceptual framework such as the domination and partnership models. So we find strange dichotomies, such as the splitting off of women’s rights and children’s rights from the mainstream of human rights theory – even though women and children are the majority of humans.12 We find economics curricula that fail to include studies about the correlation between the status of women and people’s economic welfare, such as the ones discussed above.

More promising is that the leadership and organizational development literature is beginning to recognize the greater efficiency of what I call partnership organizations. But even here, there is little on how these more efficient management and organizational styles are part of a larger cultural shift that in turn is connected with changes in gender roles and relations.

We hear a great deal today about redefining leadership and management. We are told that the more effective leaders and managers are not cops or controllers, but rather facilitate, inspire and elicit from others their highest productivity and creativity. This, of course, is a more stereotypically feminine leadership and management style. It has begun to emerge because of the rising status of women, and thus of qualities and behaviors associated with femininity, such as nurturance and empathy.13

We are also told that we need to move from top-down “command” structures to flatter organizations. But every organization needs lines of responsibility. As noted earlier, the difference between the partnership and domination models is not that the domination model is hierarchical and the partnership model is hierarchy-free. The difference is the distinction between hierarchies of domination and hierarchies of actualization.

Hierarchies of actualization are characteristic of partnership-oriented organizations, where the culture values and rewards relations based on mutual benefit, respect, caring, and accountability rather than relations where there must be winners and losers. These actualization hierarchies are more flexible, allowing many people to be leaders in different contexts. They empower rather than disempower workers. They make for more effectiveness through open lines of communication rather than just one-way orders from above, utilizing everyone’s knowledge and input and promoting relational practices that result in greater organizational capacity. In hierarchies of domination, accountability and respect flow only from the bottom up. In hierarchies of actualization, they flow both ways.

Hierarchies of domination are imposed and maintained by fear. They are held in place by the kind of power that is idealized as “masculine” in cultures that orient primarily to the domination model – the power to dominate. In contrast, hierarchies of actualization are not based on power over, but on power to – creative power, the power to help and to nurture that is stereotypically considered feminine– as well as power with – the collective power to accomplish goals together, as in teamwork.

Including material on these kinds of connections in the curricula of business and economics classes not only offers young people new perspectives on economics and business; it can inspire them to take leadership in creating a more caring economic and business system.

Graduates of economics and business schools are the leaders of tomorrow. Movement toward an economics of caring requires that young people have the opportunity to envision and help create the economic inventions that will facilitate the shift to more efficient and at the same time more equitable and sustainable business practices and economic rules, measurements, and policies.

Expanding the economic vocabulary to include and legitimize caring

Just as traditional economic measures fail to give real value to the essential work of caregiving, the traditional economic vocabulary does not include terms such as caring, caregiving, empathy, and compassion. The absence of these terms reflects the assumption that “soft” feelings and behaviors – that is, feelings and behaviors stereotypically associated with women and “the feminine” – are impediments rather than aids to economic productivity and business success.

Today, we have empirical evidence that the opposite is actually the case. Books such as Positive Organizational Scholarship14 and Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation Reports from the Field15 bring attention to studies that, to borrow the words of Jane Dutton, show that when people feel cared for they become fully alive – with all this implies for business productivity and a more prosperous economy. For example, Dutton, Jacoba Lillius, and Jason Kanov at the University of Michigan show that compassion creates relational resources that promote trust, felt connection, and positive emotions – all of which lead to streams of action of great benefit to organizations. They also note that compassion in organizations generates such resources not only in those directly involved but in third-party organizational members who witness or are made aware of these compassionate interactions.16 Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee note that empathic listening and caring behaviors make for more effective leadership, and David Cooperrider, Ronald Fry, Frank Barrett, Jane Seling, Suresh Srivastva, and Diana Whitney have demonstrated that appreciative dialogues build enduring collaboration that transforms organizational cultures in positive directions.17 Candice Clark, also confirms that positive psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues experimentally show: that when people feel good – which they do when they feel cared for – they are more productive, innovative, and better negotiators.18

These kinds of studies are becoming widely known among scholars. Yet they are still not part of the mainstream of economic and business writings. Therefore, the benefits to economic productivity and business effectiveness flowing from recognizing and rewarding caring, compassion, empathy, and caregiving are not generally known, and these terms are not yet integrated into organizational language, policies, and practices.

Language changes with changing values. In the Middle Ages the operant terms were fealty, loyalty, and obedience. After the Enlightenment, new terms such as freedom, equality, and democracy began to assume central importance. The shift toward this new vocabulary was a major factor in the historical shift from feudal serfdoms and despotic monarchies to more democratic and egalitarian social and economic structures.

Today, further expansions of the normative political and economic vocabulary are needed. Some of this is already happening, as in the increasing use of terms such as compassion and caring in the political vocabulary. Even though these expressions are sometimes used to mask very different agendas, their use reflects important shifts in normative ideals. And because of studies such as the ones noted above, terms such as caring, empathy, compassion, and caregiving are also slowly making their way into the economic and business vocabulary . CEOs of successful corporations are also beginning to talk of caring as foundational to business success and corporate responsibility in the 21st century.

But this process could be greatly accelerated if business school curriculum developers, textbook authors, researchers, instructors, and others writing and speaking in the economic and business domain integrate caring, compassion, and empathy into mainstream conversations about effective business and economic policies and practices. Even seemingly small steps, such as encouraging masters and doctoral theses on these topics, can make a difference.

Designing projects that focus on these matters could also be of great help. Models for this can already be found in some universities, such as the successful Case Western Business School Appreciative Inquiry Project and their plans for a major focus on Business as Center for World Benefit.

Demonstrating benefits to business and government leaders

Altering the terms of discourse paves the way for an economics of partnership. The next step is showing business and government leaders that giving real value to caring and caregiving is essential for more effective business operations and economic development in a global economy where good relational practices are foundational to success.

There are many entry points for this conversation. An example is the emerging concept of customer care. Today, customer relations is driving the agenda of business more and more. One reason is that many businesses and brands that are essentially the same are proliferating and this competitive environment makes it important to show that a company delivers more value because it provides not only a better product but better service. If a company demonstrates that it really cares about its customers, it can build customer loyalty.

But for a company to really practice caring, it also has to care for its employees and the larger community and world. It has to model caring, not just put out PR about it. As noted earlier, caring for employees, customers, and the larger community and world is good for business.

Companies that really care for their employees do better. Liveable wages, good health insurance and pension plans, profit sharing, and a caring and mutually respectful workplace climate are incentives to employees to stay and to do good work. Companies that offer childcare and in others ways help employees balance life and work, have less stressed and more productive employees as well as more loyal ones.

The studies and books described in the preceding section on “Expanding the economic vocabulary to include and legitimize caring” offer solid evidence of the business benefits of creating a more caring organizational environment. My 2002 book, The Power of Partnership, also gives examples of how more partnership-oriented business policies translate into success, including better customer relations. Some companies have even incorporated caring into their management training programs, giving visibility and value to it – for example, the highly successful kitchen and bath cabinets manufacturer American Woodmark.

These companies find that a business culture that gives visibility and value to caring works better in the long run. Their executives also model caring in their behaviors, showing real concern for employee welfare or sick family members, which in turn encourage compassion and helpfulness in others in the company, again contributing to the organization’s collective capacity.
Since caring and empathy are not typically part of male socialization, company programs teaching active listening skills and other ways of cultivating our human capacity for identifying and feeling with another can be particularly useful for many men. These skills then transfer into better relations across the board – internally as well as externally.

All these are steps toward business cultures where caring is recognized as basic to increased competence and collaboration. A next step can be to invite enlightened and successful businesses managers to support specific economic inventions that will provide incentives for caring behaviors and policies across the board.

For example, tax codes could be changed to give tax credits to companies that operate in environmentally and socially responsible ways. Companies that provide paid parental leave can also be supported by public policy through matching local, state, and federal grants. Companies that provide employees with childcare and/or parenting classes can be assisted in the same way.

These are all sound investments in a high quality future workforce and a healthier more secure world. The issue is simply one of fiscal priorities, of what is or is not really valued.

That these priorities can be changed is dramatically illustrated by what happened in Ontario, Canada when government leaders were shown the benefits of investing in caring for children. Based on extensive cost/benefit analyses showing the economic and social benefits of supporting good caregiving during a child's early years – from before birth to age six – the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program was launched in 1998 by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC). The program offers all families with new babies information on parenting and child development and delivers extra help and support, including home visits, to families who can benefit from it.19

This extensive program to give more visibility and value to caregiving was launched by a fiscally conservative government, under Premier Mike Harris, who committed $44 million in annual funding to the program, $27 million for hospitals to provide new mothers with the option of 60 hours of care after childbirth, and $17 million for the "Healthy Babies" home visit program. Premier Harris also approved funding for additional neonatal intensive care beds, as well as to encourages more communication among community services, to help make it easier for all families with young children to get the services they want and need.20

In 2003, a preliminary assessment of the program found that almost all families in Ontario with very young children had some contact with Healthy Babies, Healthy Children, regardless of culture or location. It found that, on average, families requiring home visits received a 1.2-hour home visit every 18 days and that community agencies reported that since Healthy Babies, Healthy Children began, there were fewer gaps and less overlap in services, as well as more interagency communication and coordination in referrals and services.21 The services they recommended were: parenting services and programs (32 per cent of all referrals), breastfeeding, nutrition, prenatal and infant health services (24 per cent), medical services and child development programs (eight per cent), social, economic and related family supports (five per cent), and "other" services (30 per cent).

When researchers compared families who received Healthy Babies Healthy Children home visiting with similar families who did not receive home visiting, they found better child and family health among home visiting families. Specifically, their 2003 report found that among home visiting families children scored higher on most infant development measures, including self-help, gross motor skills, fine motor skills and language development – all important indicators of a higher level of human capital development, not to speak of prospects for a brighter future for the children receiving the better care supported by the program .22

The Canadian program is not alone in recognizing the importance of government investment in caring and caregiving. The French creche programs and the Nordic caregiving programs – which include parenting education in schools – are notable examples that also provide models for forward-thinking leaders.23

The socially responsible and the spirituality and business movements

The socially responsible and the spirituality and business movement are important new cultural movements. They too can provide leadership in changing economic rules and government policies to support the movement toward an economics of partnership.

Organizations such as Businesses for Social Responsibility, the World Business Academy, and the Social Venture Network are already working on changing rules for businesses by developing and proposing new charters for corporations, social responsibility assessment measures, and other means for moving toward what is sometimes called the triple bottom line.

Conferences and seminars on spirituality in the workplace have focused on imbuing work with more spirituality and meaning, and on changing business practices and policies to support more sustainable and equitable ways of doing business. In this sense, spirituality is not something out of this world but very much of this world.

Both these movements can contribute to the larger project of changing economic and business rules to give visibility and value to caring and caregiving. They attract not only leaders and managers of progressive businesses; they also attract progressive business consultants. These business consultants can, on a one-to-one basis as well as through trainings and workshops, introduce a larger vision and plan into their consulting services. They too can start with what is at the core of successful business: caring about and for customers. They can show the advantages of more caring policies internally as well as externally. From there, they can move to the need for designing systems that invite and support greater caring, and to the need to give more visibility and value to caring and caregiving.

Alliance for a Caring Economy

In working for change, it is important to network with others who have similar goals. The shift to more partnership-oriented economic and business models and practices can be accelerated by forming alliances. For example, an Alliance for a Caring Economy could bring together leaders from academia, government, business, and civil society. It can also work with business and economics schools, professors, and graduate students to:

In addition, focus groups can bring together small groups of leaders from a variety of backgrounds, including government officials, businesspeople, faculty and graduate students form business and economics schools, sociologists, anthropologists, homemakers, teachers, childcare workers, health professionals, and representatives of civil society such as children’s, women’s, environmental, and minority political action groups, to brainstorm and network. Members of these groups can then form their own focus groups as centers in their communities for disseminating information and education. This can be followed by a conference drawing from work in progress by innovative thinkers and real-life experiences with partnership economic inventions in diverse settings.

A network to develop the foundations for a caring partnership economics is being formed with representatives from the government, business, civil society, and academic sectors, including faculty and graduate students at the Case Western Management School, the University of Michigan, and Stanford. For information, please contact the Center for Partnership Studies

CONCLUSION

Transformative change is needed to more effectively address the economic, environmental, and social challenges of our time. A prerequisite for transformative change is shifting the focus of economic discourse from conventional categories such as capitalism vs. socialism to what new economic models and rules of the game are needed to move forward.

There are unrecognized assumptions that stand in the way of a more equitable and productive economic system – one that no longer creates and maintains huge gaps between haves and have-nots, chronic warfare and other forms of institutionalized violence, environmental despoliation, and other problems that threaten our future.

One such assumption is the systematic devaluation of the caring and caregiving work still stereotypically associated with femininity rather than masculinity. This devaluation has always had extremely adverse effects. But it is particularly dysfunctional in the postindustrial world where economic success hinges on high quality human capital.

The technological shift to a 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 in both the market and nonmarket sectors of the economy, whether done by women or men.

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 the construction of 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, as well as to the more caring economic and social policies needed to move toward a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world.


 

This paper is based on Riane Eisler's work in progress on Partnership Economics. See also Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life (Center for Partnership Studies, 1995), The Power of Partnership (New World Library, 2000), and The Chalice and the Blade (Harper & Row,1987).

Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life is available from:

Center for Partnership Studies
P.O. Box 51936,Pacific Grove, California 93950, U.S.A.
Phone: (831) 626-1004 FAX: (831) 626-3734
center@partnrshipway.org
www.partnershipway.org


Notes

1 Scandals such as those of Enron and World Com are only the most publicized of uncaring practices, as the type of accounting revealed by these companies’ bankruptcies has been routinely used and blessed by major accounting firms. There are many other routine practices, such as the immense pay to corporate CEOs even when companies do not show profits for their shareholders and workers’ wages lag behind. Despite the economic downturn, average CEO pay reported in Business Week's last survey was $7.4 million, a rise of 442 percent since 1980, to 241 times the pay of the average worker. As Holly Sklar, coauthor of Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us (www.raisethefloor.org), notes, it would take 241 years for an average worker paid $30,722 to make that amount. Average worker pay has inched up just 1.6 percent from an inflation-adjusted $30,244 in 1980. If CEO pay had grown at the average worker pace since 1980, it would be $1,386,065. If average worker pay had grown at the CEO pace, it would be $164,018.

2 For descriptions of these models and the research identifying them, see Eisler, 1987, 1995, 2000, 2002.

3 The World Competitiveness Ratings

4 Riane Eisler, David Loye, and Kari Norgaard, Women, Men, and The Global Quality of Life (Pacific Grove, CA: Center for Partnership Studies, 1995). The nine measures we used to assess the degree of gender equity were: the number of literate females for every 100 literate males; female life expectancy as a percentage of male life expectancy; the number of women for every 100 men in parliaments and other governing bodies; the number of females in secondary education for every 100 males; maternal mortality; contraceptive prevalence; access to abortion; and based on measures used by the Population Crisis Committee (now Population Action International), social equality for women and economic equality for women. The thirteen measures used to assess quality of life, were: overall life expectancy; human rights ratings; access to health care; access to clean water; literacy; infant mortality; number of refugees fleeing the country; the percentage of daily caloric requirements consumed; Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of wealth; the percentage of GNP distributed to the poorest 40 percent of households; the ratio of GDP going to the wealthiest versus the poorest 20 percent of the population; and as measures of environmental sensitivity, the percentage of forest habitat remaining, and compliance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. When we explored the relation between the gender equity and quality of life variables with descriptive, correlational, factor, and multiple regression analyses, we found a strong systemic correlation between these two measures. These findings were consistent with our hypothesis that increased equity for women is central to a higher quality of life for a country as a whole, and that gender inequity contracts the opportunities and capabilities, not only of women, but of the entire population. The link between gender equity and quality of life was confirmed at a very high level of statistical significance for correlational analysis. 61 correlations at the .001 level with 18 additional correlations at the .05 level were found, for a total of 79 significant correlations in the predicted direction. This link was further confirmed by factor analysis. High factor loadings for gender equity and quality of life variables accounted for 87.8 percent of the variance. Regression analysis, also yielded significant results. An R-square of .84, with statistical significance at the .0001 level, provided support for the hypothesis that gender equity is a strong indicator of the quality of life.

5 Ibid.

6...Ibid.

7...United Nations 1990 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Program, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p 130, p 158.

8 Inglehart, Norris, and Welzel, 2002, draft page 11.

9 Ibid, draft page 20. The World Values Survey shows that both gender equality and more democratic institutions are also clustered toward the Secular-Rational Authority end of what they call the Traditional vs. Secular-Rational Authority scale. High on the Secular/Rational Authority end of this scale are Protestant Europe (the Nordic nations, West Germany, and Switzerland) as well as New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, with the United States closer to the bottom third of the scale, although relatively high on the self-expression end of the Survival vs. Self-Expression scale. Most of Africa, the Muslim world, and the Catholic European and Latin American nations are still largely in the survival/traditional mode, which includes both beliefs in gender inequality and more authoritarian institutions.

10 Ibid, 29-30.

11 Actually Adam Smith did not advocate pure self-interest. His argument was that under the right circumstances – which for him were free market dynamics – self-interest would result in the greater good. This thesis has yet to be tested, as a really free market is not possible in the context of dominator-oriented cultures. Many scholars have pointed out that, contrary to general beliefs, Smith advocated a caring capitalism and recognizes the need for government regulations that rein in pure self-interest. See e.g., Charles L Griswold, Jr., “Adam Smith, Conscience of Capitalism,” The Wilson Quarterly 15 (1991): 53-61, pointing out that sympathy is at the core of Smith’s notion of virtue, and Horace L. Fairlamb, “Adam Smith’s Other Hand,” noting that Smith recognized that the exploitation of labor is a problem with capitalism because of the disadvantage of labor in the dynamic of supply and demand.

12 I introduced an integrated model of human rights that no longer splits off the rights of the majority – women and children – from the mainstream of human rights theory and action in writings such as Riane Eisler, “Toward an Integrated Theory of Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly Vol. 9, No. 3, August 1987, pp.287-308 and “Human Rights and Violence: Integrating the Private and Public Spheres,” in The Web of Violence, Lester Kurtz and Jennifer Turpin, eds. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. 1996.

13 See e.g. Riane Eisler, "Women, Men, and Management: Redesigning Our Future." Futures, Vol. 23, No. 1, Jan/Feb 1991.

14 Kim Cameron et al, Positive Organizational Scholarship, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003.

15 Ronald Fry et al, Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation Reports from the Field, Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 2002.

16 Jane Dutton, Jacoba Lillius, and Jason Kanov, “The Transformative Potential of Compassion at Work....

17 Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002; David L.Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” Research in Organizational Change and Development, 1987, Vol.1, pages 129-169; Ronald Fry, Frank Barrett, Jane Seiling, and Diana Whitney, eds. Appreciative Inquiry and Organization Transformation: Reports from the Field. Westport, CT: Quorum, 2001.

18 Alice Isen, Positive Affect, Cognitive Processes and Social Behavior. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 20: 203-253, 1987; Barbara Fredrickson, “Positive Emotions and Upward Spirals in Organizations. In C. Cameron, J. Dutton, and R. Quinn, Positive Organizational Scholarship, San Francisco: Berrett-Kohler. 2003, pages 163-175.

19 Delivered by the province's 37 public health units, Healthy Babies, Healthy Children provides:

For more information on the Ontario program, see http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/program/child/child_mn.html

20 Ontario Hospital Association, OHA Executive Report, Volume: 11 Number: 32.

21 In 2001, Healthy Babies, Healthy Children staff made 31,479 formal referrals for 14,378 families who would benefit most from these services. One-third of all formal referrals were to breastfeeding, nutrition, prenatal and infant health services. Sixteen per cent were to parenting programs and services; 15 per cent were to medical services, child therapy and development programs; 12 per cent were to social, economic and related family supports; and 25 per cent were to "other" services. In addition, program staff made 88,704 informal recommendations, connecting families to supports and services by letting families know what services are available, or directing them to those services.

22 See http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/pub/ministry_reports/healthy_babies_report/hbabies_report.html

 23 In the United States, programs focusing on young children and their parents have also been instituted in a number of states. But because there is still insufficient recognition of the importance of these programs, the essential services they provide are among the first cut when there are budget shortfalls.

*Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life is available from:


The Center for Partnership Studies

P.O. Box 51936
Pacific Grove, CA 93950
USA
Phone 831-626-1004
Fax 831-626-3734
center@partnershipway.org