Paper: Performing
Care or Gender? A Feminist Critique of Motherhood
Abstract
Within
the discipline of care ethics, care is perceived as a virtue, expressed in acts
of compassion towards the needy. Theorists Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings,
known for their contribution to care ethics, further suggested that compassion
is a feminine virtue, thereby branding caring/care-giving as a feminine task. Theorist
Joan Toronto has criticised Gilligan and Noddings for essentializing women.
This paper aims to extend Toronto’s notion of care ethics to review women’s
position as caregivers in the society, arguing that motherhood or women’s task
of caring for a child is an act of "gender
performativity" that reinstates women’s position as docile, domesticated
being. The paper uses the theory of “gender performativity” to examine how laws
designed to empower women function as perpetrators of gender stereotypes instead. The Paper further argues
that the 2013 Company’s Act which provides reservation for women in companies
is necessitated by the fact that women are still viewed as caregivers and not
capable managers, and is a by-product of the essentialist
association between women and care-giving. In this inter-disciplinary study, case
studies and mass media reports are used to support the claim that laws based on
care ethics perpetuate gender stereotypes, by essentializing women as
mothers/caregivers.
Rashmi
Vadavi, Assistant Professor at Christ
University, Bangalore, is a qualified chartered accountant and lawyer, and worked
as a chartered accountant at Ferrero India Private Limited, Pune and Embassy
Property Development Private Limited, Bangalore. Her interests lie at the cross
section between law and management, particularly, the business and commercial
laws which the corporates need to consider and abide by while building their
business and marketing their products or services. She is keen on investigating
the implications of the business and commercial laws on the society.
