Isabel Hernandez Pepe is a PhD candidate in Transnational Governance at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Her work explores how feminist foreign policy plays out in practice, and why progressive ideas often collide with power hierarchies and institutional routines. With a transnational background between Europe and Latin America, Isabel engages closely with policymakers, diplomats, and feminist activists, and cares about connecting research, policy, and real political struggles. She holds a B.A. in Global and Latin American Studies (summa cum laude) and an M.A. in International Public Affairs (cum laude).
In the European Union (EU) context, in recent years, ‘care economy’ has become a buzzword, not least thanks to the efforts of social democratic actors. With the adoption of the European Care Strategy in 2022, the EU consolidated its role as a particularly powerful actor in social protection of care work.
With this policy study, the authors seek to bring the discussion of care and policy back from its limited, limiting demarcation as a ‘care economy’ to its origins in feminist thought.
The authors briefly discuss feminist scholarship on the ethics of care, introduce the concept of a ‘care society’ and contrast it with the concept of a ‘care economy’.
The academics propose a guiding framework for analysing a policy from a care perspective. This framework can be applied to a policy in any policy domain and at any policy level.
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Political Mentor: Idoia Mendía, S&D Member of the European Parliament
