(Invisible) Care and Bodies for Others. A Case Study of Women from Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

Women's bodies are built for others. In the midst of the patriarchal system, feminized bodies were relegated to the private sphere, destined for care work, domestic work, reproduction, nutrition, and so on. These tasks support the capitalist gear and are supposed to be done "out of love." This work shows the results of a territorial investigation with 60 women from the city of Córdoba, Argentina, who are between 20 and 60 years old. The purpose was to ask those women about the care work they perform, focusing on experiences in relation to caring, as well as to map the consequences of those tasks on their bodies. Methodologically, qualitative techniques such as participant observation, focused interviews, feminist cartography, and autoethnography were used. These allowed to address the experiences and subjectivities, as well as the social representations that those who carry out care tasks have. Among the results, one can see that women's bodies continue to exist for other people; however, it is also possible to register marks of resistance and transgressions to the roles that the sex-gender system has traditionally imposed on them.