“Community Care Work”, Social Policies and the Desprofessionalization of Care Work

The paper deals with  “community care work” aiming at combating violence in the favelas that places women as carers for youths considered to be “in a situation of risk” in Rio de Janeiro. The “community care work” is a political construction in line with the new model of social policies that emerge in the 1990’s named as post-Washington Consensus. The paper explores how the social policy design to foster community participation and responsibility in caring for the young people promotes traditional gender norms and the de-professionalization of care work. It argues that “community care work” escapes the dichotomous concepts of paid work in the public sphere and unpaid work done in the private space or the opposition between the commodification of care and unpaid domestic care. The research suggests the need to expand the concept of care work to include other form of expression that goes beyond these dualities.