Care Justice: Reframing Public Policy, Elevating Care Work

This book develops a care justice framework to critique and disrupt current policies and reframe a policy blueprint for elevating a just organization of care for unpaid family caregivers and underpaid home care workers assisting older adults. In doing so, Hooyman invites readers to envision a society that fully values the essential work of care.The book is distinctive in its analysis of the interrelationships among both types of care laborers, who often face structural constraints on their decision to care and whose work is devalued and marginalized. Their care work affects every member of society, but it is generally invisible to others, and its economic value is rarely recognized by policymakers. How care work is organized and unrewarded typically has the most financial, physical, and emotional costs for women, people of color, and immigrants across the life course. Inequities for care workers by race, immigrant status, class, and sexual orientation are rooted in systemic racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia. In this book, policy priorities and change strategies are reframed to attain the six core components of a care justice framework, which include fundamental structural changes to elevate care work, ensure meaningful choice to care, and reduce systemic inequities faced by care workers. This framework is informed by feminism, Black feminism, intersectionality, and care theory. By conceptualizing care justice, the author aims to stimulate new discourse and action related to the care of older adults – the most important work in society – and make the seemingly unattainable attainable.This timely book will be salient to anyone committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and with an interest in policy, gerontology, disability studies, ethnic studies, feminist studies, social justice, social work, and social welfare.

About the Author

Nancy R. Hooyman is the Hooyman Professor of Gerontology and Dean Emeritus in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. Her scholar- ship explores gerontological and women’s issues, including multigenerational policy and practice, gender inequities in family caregiving, feminist gerontology, loss and grief, and gerontological curricular change. She is co-author of the influential textbooks Living Through Loss: Interventions Across the Life Span (2nd edition, 2021); Social Gerontology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (10th edition, 2017); Aging Matters: An Introduction to Social Gerontology (2014); Feminist Perspectives on Family Care: Policies for Gender Justice (1995); and Taking Care of Aging Family Members: A Practical Guide (1993). She is a member of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work Education, the Council on Social Work Education, and the Gerontological Society of America.