ABSTRACT
When community care practice relies on informal carers from within the family, women shoulder the main burden and responsibility for providing that care. The argument made by feminists is that caring is essentially a gendered activity and that community care policies rely on this fact but do not acknowledge it. To refer only to ‘carers’, without also specifying the fact that the preponderance of caring is carried out by women, hides the exploitation on which the policy is based and without which it could not succeed. Ungendered references to ‘carers’ suggest that who carries out caring tasks is not important and at the same time underwrites the assumption that women will take up these tasks as a matter of course. This has the effect of perpetuating the general subordination of women in what dominant social conventions consider to be an informal set of chores that carries little or no value in the labour market. This exploitation, it can be argued, extends also to those who carry out care tasks within the public services such as home carers, lower ranking nurses and residential care workers. Because caring carries so little public recognition or standing those that perform it may undervalue their own work and lose self-esteem.
