care feminism

The feminist dream of the 80s was that women could have it all — a career and a family at the same time.  While women were still stumbling around trying to make themselves as much like men as possible in the workplace, we had the rise of the girlboss, the entrepreneurial young woman who created a business or a start-up and rose to the heights of success rapidly. It was thought that having a woman as boss would create a working environment that was more sympathetic to women generally but that turned out not to be true.  Girlbosses could be as uncaring and rigid in their approach as men.  Their success was what mattered, not the comfort of their staff.  The girlboss as a stereotype was pretty narrow and, in the very name, had an inbuilt patronising attitude to women.  Originally girlboss had the glow of optimism about it but it has turned sour in a decade and is now a smear word.

So now we have care feminism which says that both men and women should achieve a work-life balance and not abandon their families for the sake of their job. Care giving should not be stereotyped as women’s work but shared by all. The care feminist wants a better world for everyone.