GENDER AND CARE: SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ANSWERS TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET ECONOMY IN EUROPE

Abstract

This article examines from a care approach the social and institutional responses to the development of the market economy in the European context. Studying this long period -which Polanyi called the double movement- is relevant because it constitutes the historical process by which the interests of the market, the logic of profits and its social and scientific naturalization come to dominate. Since then, the importance of care work in people’s life, the reproduction of the labour force, and the provision of welfare and social insurance have been ignored. Until very recently, historical analyses have focused on the emergence of the Welfare State, regardless of how the state’s answers interacted or modeled with other spheres of welfare provision, especially the family through women’s unpaid work. The article focuses on the European experience and the period analyzed comprehends the disintegration of communal and assistance care with the Old Regime Crisis, the development of charity and associations as solutions to the inhibition of the Liberal State in the 19th century -solutions that were limited and insufficient, leading to the state assumption of the care and assistance functions, embryo of the development of later Welfare States after World War II.