Part-Time for All A Care Manifesto

An innovative view of how everyone doing part-time work and part-time caregiving would promote flourishing families, free time, equality, and the true value of care. The way that Western countries approach work and care for others is fundamentally dysfunctional. The amount of time spent at work places unsustainable stress on families, particularly in the face of rising inequality, while those who perform care are underpaid and their labor undervalued. In Part-Time for All, Jennifer Nedelsky and Tom Malleson propose a plan to radically restructure both work and care. As such, they offer a solution to four pressing problems: the inequality of caregivers; family stress from competing demands of work and care; chronic time scarcity; and policymakers who are ignorant about the care that life requires--the care/policy divide. Nedelsky and Malleson argue that no capable adult should do paid work for more than 30 hours per week, so that they can contribute substantial amounts of time to unpaid care for family, friends, or other "communities of care." While the authors focus primarily on human-to-human care, they also include care for the earth as a vital part of this shift. All of the elements of Nedelsky and Malleson's proposal already exist piecemeal in various countries. What is needed is to integrate the key reforms and scale them up. The result is an actionable plan to motivate widespread take-up of part-time work and part-time care. Highlighting how these new norms can create synergies of institutional transformation while fostering a cultural shift in the value of care and work, this "care manifesto" identifies the deep changes that are needed and lays out a feasible path forward.

Jennifer Nedelsky is a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. She was previously Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice, Sydney, Australia. She is also the author of Law's Relations (Oxford, 2011). Tom Malleson is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Justice & Peace Studies at King's University College at Western University. Their work focuses on real utopias, egalitarianism, feminism, and radical democracy. They are Coordinator of the Real Utopias Project. Their recent books include After Occupy: Economic Democracy for the 21st Century and Against Inequality: The Practical and Ethical Case for Abolishing the Superrich. They are also a longtime social justice activist and organizer.