UP Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Porto, Via Panorâmica Edgar Cardoso s / n, Porto
R&D building of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Porto, R. Interior da Faculdade de Direito 223, Porto
This conference aims to rescue the debate that has been taking place on the "care crisis" at the national and international level due to pandemic situation.
The pandemic situation has bluntly exposed the "care crisis" at the national and international level. However, for several decades, the combination of demographic, political and social dynamics has been transforming care provision and expanding the market for domestic and care services, maintaining and in some cases intensifying inequalities - including sexual division of labour, outsourcing, racialization, and the informal character of these segments of the labour market - and cleavages that run through international circuits and mobilities between the global South and North.
The growing recognition of the centrality of care (ILO, 2018) and the growing public debate on the functioning of infrastructures and modes of organizing care (Hirata, 2021) has been concomitant with greater attention to the forms of unpaid work, on which the reproduction of society and capital depends, and the rediscovery of the Theory of Social Reproduction in the field of social sciences (Bhattacharya, 2017).
This conference aims to rescue the debate that has been taking place on these questions, to which different areas of knowledge have contributed, from economics to history, from law to sociology, from social psychology to anthropology or cultural studies, seeking to contribute to the deepening of the field of "care studies" in Portugal, by merging knowledge, experiences and national and international projects.
4 - 6 March 2022
Porto, Portugal
and online
Sociology Institute – University of Porto; transform! europe
Carlos Manuel Gonçalves, Conceição Nogueira, Helena Hirata, Inês Barbosa, Inês Brasão, João Teixeira Lopes, José Soeiro, Manuel Abrantes, Nuno Dias, Sofia Cruz, Tânia Leão, Teresa Cunha, Tithi Bhattacharya.
Inês Barbosa, José Soeiro, Sofia Cruz, Tânia Leão.
Venue: R&D Building (Rua dos Bragas)
João Teixeira Lopes (IS-UP), Marga Ferré (transform! europe), and Sofia Cruz (member of the Organising Committee)
Tithi Bhattacharya, Professor and Director of the Department of Global Studies at Purdue University, with work focusing on the relations between colonialism, class, and gender. With Cinzia Arruzza, was one of the main organisers of the International Women's March in the United States. Editor of Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Opression, published by Pluto Press in 2017 and author, with Cinzia Arruzza and Nancy Fraser of Feminism for the 99%, published in 2019 in several languages.
Moderation: Tânia Leão
Lunch
Venue: R&D Building (Rua dos Bragas)
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Presentation:
Albertina Jordão, (ILO-Lisbon)
"Care work, both paid and unpaid, is of vital importance for the future of decent work. Population growth, ageing societies, family transformations, the secondaryisation of women in labor markets, and the gaps in social policies, require governments, employers, trade unions and citizens to take urgent action to organize care work. If they are not addressed properly, current deficits in the provision of care services and their quality will create a serious and unsustainable global crisis and further increase inequalities between men and women at work."
Venue: R&D Building (Rua dos Bragas)
Speaker:
Presentation and moderation:
Speaker:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Theatre and Politics Laboratory/ Porto
Venue: Geraldes da Silva Gallery
Moderation:
Speakers:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Lunch
Organisation:
Moderation:
Speakers:
Galeria Geraldes, Porto
Curators:
Produced by:
Thanks for the material provided:
It is said that at the first national congress of the Domestic Service Union, in 1979, among many others, a domestic worker took the floor saying: “let's put an end to the term “mulher a dias”, it reminds us of the past. I am a hundred percent female, but I am a domestic worker.” If being a maid was as good a profession as any, would anyone be able to raise a daughter to put her to that work? – it was wondered. They were full-time workers, every day. The manifesto would be addressed to the Government, but also to themselves. They would be more aware, see to judge, judge to act. Thousands of women wanted to create a union to reconvert their profession and emancipate it from the exploitation patterns in which it had been carried out until then. And to this day.
In this exhibition, we seek to reconstruct the history of a mobilization that, between the period before April 25th and until 1991, brought more than 6000 unionized domestic service workers to the front line. Oscillating between an almost slave condition and supposed confidants, the existence of these workers seemed to depend on their employers. But even in individual and atomized jobs, they organized themselves into delegations and neighborhood committees, to agitate and encourage the claim, act with hands and head, teach hoe to read and write, multiplying practices of care and guarantee conditions for work and collective self-organization.
Revisiting today the experience of the Domestic Service Union and the domestic service workers' cooperative, in their successes and in their failures, in their victories and in their defeats, also brings us a flavor of struggle, utopia and achievement. And encouragement for the challenges and difficulties of a feminist future of organizing housework and care.