Building a Caring Economy

Contributor(s): Madeleine Bunting, Professor Diane Elson, Professor Lynne Segal | The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has made us aware of an acute crisis of care that lies at the heart of global inequalities. Care has long been marginalised and neglected as a central part of our economy. It’s a crisis not just of care workers but moves from the intimate domain of our households to global planetary care itself. What is this crisis of care, how should we think about care, and what can be done to make care more central to what we value? How do we build back our global economy by putting care – care of people and care of the environment - at its centre? These crucial questions will be addressed through a discussion of three major recent interventions: The Labours of Love, The Care Manifesto and Creating a Caring Economy.

You can order the books, Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care and The Care Manifesto (UK delivery only) from our official LSE Events independent book shop, Pages of Hackney.

You can access a copy of the report by the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy and Women's Budget Group at Creating a Caring Economy.

Meet our speakers and chair

Madeleine Bunting is an award winning freelance writer and former Guardian columnist and associate editor. Her recent books include Love of Country and Island Song.

Diane Elson is a feminist economist who has published widely on gender equality and economic policy. She was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2016. She was Chair of the Commission on a Gender Equal Economy.

Lynne Segal (@lynne_segal) is Anniversary Professor of Psychology & Gender Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her many books include Beyond the Fragments (1980), What is to be done about the family? (1983), Why Feminism? Gender, Psychology, Politics (1999), Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men (2007), Straight Sex (1994), Making Trouble (2007) and Out of Time (2013).

Alpa Shah (@alpashah001) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE and leads the International Inequalities Institute research theme on Global Economies of Care. Her most recent book is the award winning ‘Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas’.

More about this event

This event will have live captioning and BSL interpreters.

The International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) at LSE brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead cutting-edge research focused on understanding why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.

This event forms part of LSE’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series of debates about the direction the world could and should be taking after the crisis.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSECOVID19