NF

That’s a very good question. It’s unclear who exactly coined the phrase “global care chains,” but many people give the credit to an American sociologist named Arlie Hochschild. She wrote a much-cited article (“Love and Gold”), which suggests that love is the new gold, the new “natural resource” that the Global North is extracting from the Global South. Just as precious metals were extracted in earlier times, so care is extracted now, as privileged northern women assume demanding jobs, working sixty to seventy hours a week to climb the corporate ladder or make partner at prestigious law firms.

To do that, they need to offload their domestic and care responsibilities onto others. Male partners don’t step in, and public services are being cut — so where to turn? The answer: immigrant women, often racialized, who come from halfway around the world, leaving their own families in the care of other, poorer women, who must rely in turn on others who are poorer still. Ergo, a network of global care chains by analogy with global commodity chains. But, of course, this is no solution. Instead of overcoming the care deficit, it simply displaces it onto less privileged women further down the chain. It’s like musical chairs — when the music stops, someone must be left without a seat. In effect, the liberation of privileged metropolitan women is built on the extraction of “gold” from the periphery.

Where, you ask, does this leave the idea of global sisterhood? My own view is that this is not the best way to think about feminist politics. I prefer to say that we have a number of different, competing feminisms, with different, competing views of gender equality, of the sources of sexism, and of what must be changed and how. These views differ sharply in their class and racial/ethnic/national orientation. Seen this way, feminism is not a global sisterhood but a political-ideological battleground. And that’s a good thing — we do need to struggle over these matters.

You ask whether all women share the same interests. Certainly not, if we assume that people define their interests relative to current structures and institutions. In that case, the interests of migrant care workers conflict directly with those of the privileged women who hire them to work long hours at low pay and without labor rights. On the other hand, we needn’t take current understandings of interests as sacrosanct. In crisis periods, many people radicalize and begin to understand their interests differently. Attracted to projects for social transformation, they redefine them in a new light. Possibly, some women in the professional-managerial class who are now attracted to neoliberal forms of feminism will “convert,” so to speak, to the feminism of the 99 percent. But that will only happen if our movement becomes large, strong, and convincing in its claim to offer a better life for everyone.

What does this mean with respect to the crisis of care? Feminists for the 99 percent aim to transform the entire relation between “production” and “reproduction.” We say that no one should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to have a meaningful life. Everyone should have a much shorter working week and a lot more time for family life, political participation, and other enjoyments. No one should be caught in zero-sum games that force us to take away from one fundamental life activity what we give to another. Everyone should have access to ample, generous support for care work — from states, friends, neighbors, and civil society associations. Men should be every bit as responsible and engaged as women in these activities. Only this approach can truly solve the present crisis of care and make life better for everyone.