Envisioning a Kinder, Gentler World: On Recognition and Renumeration for Care Workers

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the status of those who take care of persons with disabilities, and persons with disabilities, are inextricably linked. That is, devaluing the status of one necessarily devalues that of the other. Persons with disabilities and those who help care for them must form an alliance to advance their common interests. This alliance can gain insight and inspiration from feminist thought insofar as caretaking is literally linked to problems of the representation of caretaking as "women's work,' and more philosophically, by borrowing from the toolbox of feminist social, political, and economic analyses.