The Gender of Care: Repertoires of Emotion Regulation and the Moral Foundations of Micro-solidarity

Abstract

A key aspect in the reproduction of gender inequalities is the cultural regulation of emotions. This article aims to analyse the conventions in care practices that regulate emotional exchange and how these emotional frames produce gender. Using in-depth interviews with men and women caregivers, the production of differentiating gender structures in the emotional work of care has been analysed based on two pillars. On the one hand, we examine the moral organization of care from the place or social position from which the individual speaks (emotional topography), and on the other, we analyse the discursive frames of care which articulate the performance of gender (care as a conquest, as a debt or as an expression of moral quality).