What Is The Value Of Care?
This is a powerful question raised by social scientist, attorney, and author, Riane Eisler who has dedicated decades of research, writing and advocacy to bringing fundamental change to our economic perspective.
The insights that Riane shares in her TEDx Talk (embedded below) become obvious to us as soon as we hear them, for example, why do we count the business of war in our gross domestic product (GDP), but not the unpaid care of children? Which of these activities develops human capacity and human capital? What are the outcomes of each activity?
Through her work, Riane has initiated a conversation with each one of us, between each one of us – a Caring Economy Conversation. Within its context we explore ideas like,
How do we measure the $$$ value of care work and caring? Can we measure it? Should we measure it?
Why Care?
On a global scale, we face seemingly intractable problems –
- climate change,
- misdirection of money toward violent programs,
- poverty,
- political corruption,
- lopsided wealth distribution
– and achieving a lasting solution to any one of these may appear to be beyond our reach.
This is where the Caring Economy Campaign comes in.
We are not accustomed to seeing economy and caring in the same sentence. Nor have we been taught to think of economics from the perspective of caring for people or nature.
Riane Eisler
This is a new, yet entirely familiar, story for our culture. We all have experienced caring in our lives and it is clear that it brings great value. Bringing this story of caring into the mainstream of economics and politics opens our eyes to the very tangible, measurable payoff of valuing this crucial foundation of life.
Our expectation, number one, is to change the thinking, change the conversation about what is going to be economically productive.
Riane Eisler
The Caring Economy Campaign benefits every individual in our society – when we measure our success by how well we care for one another and our world, people flourish. Join the CEC today and become a powerful part of the conversation.