Care ethics emerged from feminist philosophy in the 1980s as a challenge to the dominant moral theories — Kantian deontology and utilitarianism — that prioritise abstract universal principles over particular relationships and context. Carol Gilligan argued that these theories reflected a specifically masculine moral voice; women's moral reasoning, she observed, tended to centre care, relationships, and contextual attentiveness rather than rules and impartiality. Care ethics takes seriously what mainstream moral philosophy had largely ignored: that humans are fundamentally dependent beings who spend significant parts of their lives either giving or receiving care. A political philosophy built on the fiction of fully autonomous rational agents systematically undervalues and renders invisible the care work — disproportionately performed by women — that makes all other activity possible.

💡 Did you know? The total economic value of unpaid care work — childcare, eldercare, domestic labour — has been estimated at between 10% and 39% of GDP depending on the country and method used. It is the largest sector of the economy that official statistics do not count.