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Original article: ¿Quién cuida mientras hacemos política?

By Damaris Astete Marchant

In recent years, feminism has raised a critical question that reshapes our understanding of the economy, cities, and democracy: Who sustains life while everything else unfolds?

Authors such as Cristina Carrasco, Nancy Fraser, Corina Rodríguez, Silvia Federici, and Ana Falú have highlighted that no society can function without the everyday labor of care.

Tasks like cooking, raising children, offering emotional support, organizing households, and caring for sick individuals are not peripheral duties. They are the essential work that enables everything else to exist. Despite their importance, this labor remains largely invisible, unpaid, and predominantly performed by women.

For years, we have debated how capitalism relies on this silent labor. Yet, perhaps it’s time to pose the same question within our social organizations, political parties, labor unions, municipalities, governments, parliaments, and movements.

Who provides care while we are engaged in politics?

This question is discomforting because it forces us to confront one of the most ingrained concepts in political culture: perpetual availability. There remains a widely held image of the «ideal leader,» the «dedicated worker,» or the «good authority.» This is the person who is always ready to reply to a message, attend last-minute meetings, travel the next day, cover extensive territories, participate on weekends, and rearrange schedules to accommodate urgent demands.

For a long time, this readiness was viewed as a sign of commitment. However, we seldom ask who can genuinely maintain such a pace, as absolute availability doesn’t exist in isolation.

It generally relies on someone who is sustaining everyday life: the person who cares for children, supports the elderly, manages meals, faces health challenges, provides emotional stability for the family, or simply enables another to dedicate all their time to work or politics.

When we examine politics from this perspective, we realize many of its rules are still based on a deeply masculine model of time organization. This isn’t to say men don’t provide care but rather that historically, politics was constructed on the assumption that someone else would handle those responsibilities.

This assumption persists even in spaces that identify as feminist or transformative and is not necessarily expressed in discriminatory rhetoric. It manifests in how work is organized and evaluated, if evaluations exist at all. Meetings may be scheduled without considering caregiving responsibilities, lengthy events occur on weekends, and there is an expectation of being available at all times.

This creates a hierarchy that values those who are always available over those who are not.

In a system where commitment is often measured by the quantity of hours one is present, many women are familiar with this tension. Thousands of social, union, student, and community leaders; councilors, advisors, public officials; workers and activists juggle two, if not three, jobs: paid work, political work, and caregiving, often with minimal support networks.

Statistics illustrate that this discussion is far from an individual perception. The II National Survey on Time Use (ENUT 2023) conducted by the National Institute of Statistics in Chile revealed that women spend, on average, 2 hours and 5 minutes more per day than men on unpaid work.

When they also participate in the labor market, their total workload exceeds 10.5 hours daily and continues to be significantly greater than that of men.

If this unequal distribution of caregiving spans all of society, it is difficult to believe it does not also permeate political parties, unions, social organizations, municipalities, governments, or parliaments. Politics does not occur apart from life; it happens within it.

Years ago, CISCSA—a Latin American feminist organization focused on the relationship between cities, territory, and care—argued that placing care at the center means reorganizing social life around what makes it possible.

This isn’t about crafting policies just «for women»; it’s about understanding that caregiving is a collective responsibility and a prerequisite for fully exercising citizenship. This challenge also calls for introspection within our political organizations.

It is not enough to declare ourselves feminists. It’s insufficient to promote more women into institutional, territorial, or popular representation. We need to reevaluate how we organize our structures, distribute responsibilities, plan time, set schedules, compensate work, establish objective evaluation mechanisms, and understand political commitment.

Perhaps we must also stop measuring commitment solely by continuous availability and start valuing other equally vital skills for democratic building: active listening, community work, territorial coordination, trust-building, conflict resolution, and sustaining collective processes over time.

If we seek genuine democracy and feminism in politics, caregiving cannot remain a peripheral conversation. It should become a fundamental criterion for designing our institutions, teams, and methods of participation.

Democracy is bolstered not just when more women enter decision-making spaces, but when we transform the conditions that allow them to stay, lead, and contribute fully without having to constantly choose between caregiving, working, or engaging in politics.

Ultimately, centering care is not a sectoral agenda or a private matter. It’s a different way of understanding power, leadership, and democracy. And perhaps this is one of the most profound transformations still ahead of us, in all our spaces of participation and with those we engage with.

(*) Damaris Astete Marchant is a Social Worker, Territorial Manager, Diploma Holder in Territory Construction for Well-Being and Cooperative Housing. She is the First Secretary of the Directive Board of the Frente Amplio and Spokesperson for Ukamau RR.II.

La entrada Who Takes Care While We Engage in Politics? Analyzing the Overlooked Role of Care Work se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.