Informal Care: Public Care Policies Versus the Privatisation of Family Labour

The March 2020 implementation of the Informal Caregiver Statute in Portugal at the onset of the pandemic revives the need to debate the condition of women in caregiver roles, as well as the role of care and domestic work in capitalist societies. Thinking through the feminist lens on primitive accumulation that affects semi-peripheral societies like Portugal helps us to understand ambiguous positions regarding public policies. These policies are still proposed as guarantees for women to perform jobs with minimum security, jobs that actually allow for privatising a responsibility of the State. In this article, we mean to contextualise and problematise the Informal Caregiver Statute through a discussion about capitalism, patriarchy, the sexual division of labour and the demise of the welfare state.