Care Revolution | Sharing care work fairly - or overcoming the care crisis?
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Sharing care work fairly - or overcoming the care crisis?

Aktuelles – 11. June 2021 – Debate, Debate
Article in the Perspectives series by Elfriede Harth (Care Revolution Rhein-Main)(Spiegelt aus dem Blog 'beziehungsweise - weiterdenken ': https://www.bzw-weiterdenken.de/impressum/ ) [caption id="attachment_4693" align="alignleft" width="341"] Illustration: Elfriede Harth[/caption] With the support of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Youth and Women, 14 associations founded an alliance during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic with the aim of "closing the care gap between women and men". On 28 May 2021 - during the third wave of the pandemic - the alliance issued a press release entitled: "Corona crisis: We need a new beginning for more gender equality!" The International Day of Action for Women's Health, 28 May, is taken as an opportunity to complain that the pandemic has particularly endangered or attacked women's health. The exacerbation of the double and triple burden on women due to the coronavirus crisis is seen as the reason for this. Even before the pandemic, women were already suffering from double and triple burdens. This is because women, as is also expected of men and is the rule for them, must first and foremost work to earn a living and ensure their financial security in old age. In addition to this existential necessity, women are often also responsible for running the household, i.e. a second work shift, and, in the case of motherhood, for looking after children, which leads to a third work shift. Instead of children - and sometimes in addition to children - it can also be the sick and those in need of care who (have to) be cared for at home. Only a minority of women with high incomes can delegate this second and third shift. If women are married or in a partnership, the second and third shifts are sometimes shared between the two partners, but still rarely in equal shares. Men are generally more willing to put more time into the paid work shift than women. If the double or triple burden becomes too heavy for women, they are more likely than men to decide to reduce their first shift in favour of the second and third or even give it up completely. This leads to financial losses, as only the first work shift, namely the gainful employment shift, is remunerated. The other two activities are largely seen as a purely private matter. Everyone has to earn money to pay the rent and buy bread. But isn't everyone free to decide for or against "having children" or caring for relatives? The answer is: unfortunately not! If not by custom and morality, the intergenerational contract is clearly enshrined in our legislation. Parents - and first and foremost the person who gives birth to a child - bear full responsibility for their child (Art. 6 GG, Art. 27 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). But the responsibility of adult children towards their elderly parents is also precisely regulated by law (§ 1601 ff BGB). It is therefore only a logical conclusion that women's rights organisations are now calling on politicians to create framework conditions that relieve the burden on women, now that the health of many women has been endangered or impaired due to an acute increase in the double or triple burden in our (neoliberal) society. However, the demands now being made by the alliance "Sharing care work fairly" on the International Women's Health Action Day are simply disappointing. What is diagnosed as a problem in people's private lives is to be solved privately by those affected and at their expense. Men should take on a "fair share" of the (unpaid) second and third shifts so that women can devote themselves to the first shift with less stress. So that they can experience "professional fulfilment". The prize question that arises is: How should politicians get men to take on these activities that stand in the way of their own professional fulfilment? (Interim question: Why do people start families and why do people have children if everything associated with it is a burden and apparently offers no terrain for personal fulfilment? If, on the other hand, it only hinders professional fulfilment?) So what are the concrete proposals of the alliance? Firstly: a tax reform, namely the abolition of married couple splitting. This is intended to prevent married women from foregoing a possible "professional development" in gainful employment and to enable them to legitimately refuse to invest time in the other two shifts, which are considered problematic. However: Marriage splitting does not apply to unmarried women. And such a reform is also irrelevant for people and households who do not pay income tax due to poverty (Hartz IV recipients, for example). After all, they don't receive child benefit, parental allowance or - should it be introduced - probably no carer's allowance either. These people, even if they perform unpaid socially necessary activities such as caring for children or people in need of care, are regarded as social parasites who live at the expense of those in employment. Secondly, men, regardless of their earned income, should reduce their working hours (and thus their income) so that they have more time for unpaid care work. So should men do exactly what women are strongly advised not to do? Namely work part-time, even though this is bound to lead to poverty in old age? Especially as part-time work is more likely to be possible in less well-paid jobs. Where the man is supposed to come from with whom single parents are supposed to share the various forms of work also remains a mystery.
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