Judy Walsh

Love, Care and Solidarity: What Is and Is Not Commodifiable

This chapter provides a three-fold taxonomy for analysing other-centred work, distinguishing between work required to maintain primary care relations (love labour), secondary care relations (general care work) and tertiary care relations (solidary work). A central theme of the chapter is that primary care relations are not sustainable over time without love labour; that the realisation of love, as opposed to the declaration of love, requires work.13

Disability Rights in Ireland: Chronicle of a Missed Opportunity

Abstract This article critically examines the Disability Act 2005, which regulates access to public services for disabled people in Ireland. We examine the competing conceptions of disability rights advanced by the government and the disability sector during the debate on the legislation, and offer an interpretation of disability rights as the justiciable right to challenge. The Disability Act 2005 is then evaluated in light of the proposed framework. A number of ways are outlined in which the absence of a justiciable right to challenge fails to safeguard the dignity, empowerment and participation of disabled people. We contend that, despite protestations to the contrary, the Act fails to meet the requirements of a rights‐based approach, thus amounting to a missed opportunity for genuinely advancing the cause of disabled citizens in the Republic of Ireland.

Which Equalities Matter? The Place of Affective Equality in Egalitarian Thinking

There is a deep ambivalence in Western society about caring and loving generally (hooks, 2000). This ambivalence has found expression in the academy. In both liberal and radical egalitarian traditions, love and care have for the most part been treated as private matters, personal affairs, not subjects of sufficient political importance to be mainstreamed in theory or empirical investigations, while the subject of solidarity is given limited research attention. Sociological, economic, legal and political thought has focused on the public sphere, the outer spaces of life, indifferent to the fact that none of these can function without the care institutions of society (Fineman, 2004; Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Tronto, 1993). Within classical economics and sociology in particular there has been a core assumption that the prototypical human being is a self-sufficient rational economic man (sic) (Folbre, 1994; Folbre and Bittman, 2004). There has been little serious account taken of the reality of dependency for all human beings, both in childhood and at times of illness and infirmity (Badgett and Folbre, 1999). That fact generates two very important forms of inequality: inequality in the degree to which people’s needs for love and care are satisfied, and inequality in the work that goes into satisfying them. These are the core of what we call ‘affective inequality’.1

Strategic Issues for the Equality Movement

What organizational forms, what methods of action should egalitarians adopt? In this chapter, we identify some key issues for the equality movement: the problem of coordination, the role of political parties, the tension between radicals and moderates and the interplay of means and ends. We argue for a ‘strategic pluralism’ that recognizes the diversity of the equality movement and makes a virtue out of the range of strategies pursued by different groups and organizations. By setting out in a dispassionate way the pros and cons of various strategies, we hope to convince activists to appreciate and support those who take different approaches to promoting equality.1

Equality, the Legal System and Employment Law

The legal system is an important context for equality because it regulates all other social institutions and is located at the intersection of state and civil society. While law helps to legitimate state authority, it also purports to serve civil society by providing a framework that secures public accountability and facilitates transactions between private parties. This chapter examines the potential role of the legal system in promoting equality of condition, in light of the complex and often contradictory functions it fulfils in society. We begin by reviewing some of the ways that the legal doctrines and institutions of liberal democracies currently serve to resist egalitarian change, going on to set out some ways that they could be reformed. We then examine anti-discrimination law as one of the major areas in which the legal system has been used to promote equality of opportunity, and analyse its shortcomings. This analysis forms the basis for exploring some of the ways that legislation could be used to promote equality of condition in the workplace, drawing on and developing some existing legal instruments.

The Centrality of Equality: Equality and Other Values

The idea of equality has always belonged to the ideals of the left. Nor could anyone deny its relevance in today’s world, given the widespread and savage inequalities illustrated in Chapter 1. What is more controversial is to claim that equality has a special status among progressive ideals and that it should be the defining concept in our thinking about social institutions and how they should be changed. In this chapter we support this claim by briefly discussing the relationship between equality and some other human values. We start with ideas that are sometimes contrasted with equality but in our view are simply part of what egalitarians believe. We then move on to what we call ‘human goods’, namely those things and relationships that generally enhance the value of people’s lives. We argue that far from conflicting with these values, equality demands that their benefits should be justly shared. We go on to discuss the connection between equality and some key political values, namely freedom, solidarity and the protection of the environment. We finish by identifying some genuine conflicts between equality and other values, where we are happy to endorse the egalitarian alternative.

Class, Gender and the Equality Movement

How should we think about promoting egalitarian change? In this chapter, we argue for a social movement model in which change occurs through the loosely coordinated activities of a wide range of groups and organizations committed to egalitarian aims. We suggest that a social movement for equality already exists on a global scale. We examine some of the major structural changes that are occurring in the social class and gender orders of western societies and assess their significance for understanding the politics of change, concluding that a social movement seeking to mobilize opinions and resources for the sake of equality has to include movements that are separate from but interact with class politics. We focus in particular on the women’s movement as an important source of discourses and projects that matter not just to women themselves, but to children and men as well.