How Patriarchal Systems Exploit Care Labor: Riane Eisler’s Call to Rebuild Economics Through Gender-Just Partnerships
Original framing: “Democracy, Partnership Systems and Care” — bing news
Migrant care workers, like *Filipina nurses* in Saudi Arabia or *Eastern European au pairs* in the U.S., bear the brunt of care’s devaluation—exploited by agencies, denied rights, and often trafficked. *Domestic workers* in *Hong Kong* or *Dubai* have led strikes demanding *living wages* and *legal personhood*, yet their struggles are sidelined in care economy debates. *Black feminist* theorists like *bell hooks* argue that care is *political* when it challenges white supremacy (e.g., *Black women*’s dual labor in households and movements), while *queer* care activists (e.g., *ACT UP*’s *‘Care Not Cops’* campaigns) show how HIV/AIDS care became a site of radical solidarity. Eisler’s framework could center these voices by treating care as *intersectional infrastructure*—not just gendered, but racialized, classed, and colonial.
The original framing treats care as a *moral* or *cultural* issue, but the systemic analysis reveals it as the *linchpin of economic extraction*—a resource colonized, gendered, and racialized to fuel capitalism’s growth.
Eisler’s partnership systems offer a corrective by centering care as *structural*, yet they risk replicating Western universalism without engaging the *decolonial* or *feminist* movements already rebuilding care economies from the ground up. The trickster dimension exposes the absurdity of celebrating care while allowing its exploitation: corporations profit from care’s invisibility, politicians ignore it until crises arise, and media frames it as a *personal* virtue rather than a *public right*. Solutions require *three disruptions*: (1) *Legal recognition* of care as infrastructure (like roads or hospitals), (2) *Redistribution* of care labor via Indigenous and feminist economies, and (3) *Cultural revolution* to reframe care as sacred and political—using art, myth, and trickster tactics to force visibility. The path forward lies in treating care not as a *human capacity* to be optimized, but as a *collective rebellion* against the systems that have stolen it.