Over 80 different groups and individuals from Austria, Switzerland and Germany belong to the association – work is done on various fields of social reproduction such as domestic work, assistance, health, sexuality, care, housing or education. The common denominator here is the creation of, as the network writes on its website,
“new model(s) of care relationships and a care economy that does not focus on profit maximization but on people’s needs, and that does not distribute care work and care resources according to racial, gender, or class structuring. ”
The association emerged in 2012 from a meeting of the Feminist Institute Hamburg on feminism and critique of political economy. In March 2014, in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Care Revolution Action Conference was organized as the “Reproduction Working Group”. The three-day conference ended with the founding of the Care Revolution network and the adoption of a resolution (“Before the Care Revolution comes the Care Resolution”).
In it, the activists write about the concept of care work, among other things:
” Care work: the invisible side of the capitalist economy
There is a lack of time and appreciation for caring for ourselves and others. Where care work is performed as gainful employment, it is under cost pressure and subject to capitalist profit logic. (…) The largest part of care work continues to be unpaid – remains socially invisible. Because of the lack of public care, care work is shifted back into the households. (…) Who cares for whom, how well someone can care for themselves and others, and who receives how much pay and recognition for care work done – all this is organized along relations of domination: For example, due to patriarchal relations, paid and unpaid care work is still more likely to be assigned to women*(1), and supposedly comes ‘naturally’ to them. As a result, professional competencies are devalued, and what has been done is disregarded as a matter of course. ”
Short texts on various perspectives on the complex topic of “care” can be found here, as well as mobilization material and news on the work of the network.