The alternative is adopting an ethics of care. This is imperative to not only changing the dominant framework for the relationship between the business world and ones personal but is a significant step in the direction for changing the global economy.

It is this conviction of the importance of care in public life that has motivated the emerging research in care and social policy. In particular, this work has focused on ways in which paid labour and care can be combined in societies in order to ensure better and more readily available care for all citizens without placing undue burdens on the carers, especially women. Not surprisingly, however, most of this research relates specifically to developed, northern welfare states.3 I am arguing here, however, that a political ethic of care has a place in the development of social policy in the South, as well as in global social policy; in particular, a political ethic of care can provide a better framework from which to begin thinking about and acting to create better lives for working and caring women in developing countries. Work and Care in the Global Economy A feminist political ethics of care eschews the dominant idea of rights as the key moral concept for achieving social justice, and focuses instead on responsibility. But responsibility is not regarded as some kind of moral imperative that can be morally or legally enforced; rather, it is understood as an always, already existing part of the daily lives of all people. It recognizes that we all have developed relationships that are ‘thick with commitment or expectation’. Indeed, an ethics of responsibility aims to ‘accommodate the richness and diversity of what people have reasons to care about and take responsibility for’ (Walker 1998: 105–6). Translating this moral orientation into a public value and a policy standpoint means recognizing all people as existing within such networks of relationship and responsibility. Work, then, is not regarded as immune from these networks, but immersed within them. Indeed, research on work in the USA has shown that the difficulties employers have in trying to reduce the ‘work–family’ squeeze lie in deeply rooted assumptions about the nature of work and the workplace; in particular, the idea that the business world is a separate place with separate concerns from the private domestic domain, and has no responsibility for it (Harrington 1999: 52–3). These assumptions are widespread; indeed, they permeate both theory and activism related to globalization and workers in the South. The ‘antisweatshop’ movement, as well as other movements to enforce labour standards and workers’ rights, use the ILO’s core standards as a basis for their activist goals. As noted earlier, these standards focus on rights and freedoms associated with labour organization – including freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining – as well as minimum standards with respect to wages and working conditions, and bans on child and forced labour (DeWinter 2003: 142). As I argued earlier, however, these rights are limited, since they retain a narrow focus on work as paid labour, decontextualized from the household, and from the local and global relations of care in which people’s daily lives are immersed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fiona Robinson/Beyond Labour Rights 333 Downloaded by [Simon Fraser University] at 16:10 17 November 2014 Perhaps the first step towards creating global social policy that can improve the lives of women, and indeed all people of the South, is a shift in focus away from rights towards basic needs (Streeten 1981; Moser 1991). Indeed, as Naila Kabeer (2004: 27) argues, we must move away from the narrow preoccupation with labour standards in the globally traded sector to a consideration of working conditions in the wider economy. She argues for greater global redistribution that guarantees access to the basic means of survival; this, in turn, could enable them to engage as citizens in wider struggles for social justice in their society (Kabeer 2004: 28). A care ethics framework reminds us that caring activities and moral orientations are crucial for the provision of basic needs (Sevenhuijsen 2000: 14). A care perspective compels us to recognize the interrelatedness of care and work in the daily lives of many people, including and especially ‘working’ women in the South. Many of these women engage in a variety of kinds of work: paid wage labour in manufacturing; paid and unpaid ‘care’ work in the home or other social institutions, or often in others’ homes; informal sector activities inside and outside of the home; subsistence agriculture and other survival strategies which often fall outside of conventional categories of work. For these women, care and work are not separate; care, while often motivated by love and personal responsibility, is work, and work, traditionally understood, must continually be balanced with responsibilities of care.