INEQUALITY AT WORK? CARING UNDERESTIMATION, MEN’S LACK OF CO-RESPONSIBILITY, HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL SEGREGATION

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between four phenomena that, according to feminist theory, can be considered a product of the inequality of women and men: the value of care, the deficit of co-responsibility of men, and the horizontal and vertical segregation of the workers. It is argued that only inequality explains why the differences between women and men become an opportunity to discriminate against women, supported by the contributions of Catharine Mackinnon, Celia Amorós and Maggy Barrère. The study uses gender as a category of legal analysis, despite the fact that it is no longer a univocal concept in the Spanish legal system, when it was just beginning to be outlined. It is stated that the public/private division is the one that continues to best explain the social, economic, political and legal undervaluation of care, despite the contributions that have proposed its constitutionalization, at least those from constitutional feminist literature. Examples are also provided that show that the co-responsible exercise of care work is still in its infancy, especially if collective bargaining in Spain is observed. The examination of the most recent laws on anti-discrimination allows us to maintain that they have not had any impact on the parification and publicization of care, nor on the increase in the co-responsibility of men in them.