ABSTRACT
Scholarship on care and care ethics, mostly but certainly not only from feminist philosophers, has had a formidable influence on the fields encompassed by and linked with bioethics – medical and nursing ethics, in addition to public and global health ethics. Care ethics, as a field of inquiry, has illuminated activities and capacities previously underrecognized, and expanded the scope of moral responsibilities for health professionals, administrators and policymakers whose sphere of influence includes health operating at all levels – bedside, institutional, public and global – public and for-profit. Care ethics has also generated calls for substantially greater investment in care and carers, whether their focus is on human or other forms of life with whom we dwell. This chapter offers an overview of its evolution and contributions, in addition to an examination of ethical issues confronting carers, paid and unpaid.
