Challenges in the Professionalization of Care: An Analysis from the Perspective of Southern Spain

As ILO points out, the care of persons has turned into an important source of employment in most of the modernized countries. However, given the lack of visibility and recognition of care work, both in the political sphere and in the home environment, questions regarding its possible monetization and the existing barriers to its professionalization are being brought up.

The physical, emotional and moral aspects that care holds have a lot to do with these difficulties. Based on the investigation conducted by the authors in Andalusia within the project “Geographies of care work. The implications of its privatization on employment creation” financed by RDI National Plan, this paper aims to delve into the challenges that care work professionalization presents to gender equality.

Considerations regarding the results of the analysis of the qualitative research carried on,  that had as starting point the interviews conducted with paid carers and relatives, will be presented, arguing that both the impact of the economic crisis set off from 2007 onwards and the implementation of the Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent Persons Law (2006) have questioned one of the pillars that sustain the Law in its origin, i.e. the proposal to professionalize and turn care work into a decent job.