For a start, we need to recognize (as some feminist economists like Folbre have done) that the question of eldercare is essentially a gender question. Although increasingly commodified, most care work is still done by women and as unpaid labor that does not entitle them to any remuneration and pension. Thus, paradoxically, the more women care for others, the less care they can receive in return, because they devote less time to waged labor than men and many social insurance plans are calculated on the years of waged work done. Paid caregivers too are affected by the devaluation of reproductive work, forming an ‘underclass’ that still must fight to be socially recognized as workers. In sum, because of the devaluation of reproductive work, practically everywhere women face old age with fewer resources than men, measured in terms of family support, monetary incomes and available assets. Thus, in the United States, where pensions and Social Security are calculated on years of employment, women are the largest group of elderly poor and the largest number of residents of low-income nursing homes, the lagers of our time, precisely because they spend so much of their lives outside of the waged workforce in activities not recognized as work.
— Silvia Federici | On Elder Care Work & the Limits of Marxism (2009)
