돌봄의 권력화와 젠더 불평등 - 국가는 돌볼 수 있는가 -

Feminist care ethics has developed around human interdependence, relationality, and responsiveness rather than abstract and universal principles. As these ethical values of care have expanded into political theory, they have evolved into discussions of the caring state, care responsibilities, and care constitutionalism. However, this paper critically examines two potential risks in the process of institutionalizing care values. First is the issue of power dynamics in care. When the state attempts to realize care values, its reliance solely on collective care concepts may overlook the vulnerable human subjects who actually perform care work. This can justify structures that instrumentalize and exploit care providers, reducing care to merely matters of financial distribution and resource allocation, thereby undermining its relational and ethical essence. Second is the deepening of gender inequality. The institutionalization of care may reflect existing gendered care structures, disproportionately shifting care responsibilities to women. In particular, the institutionalization of care centered on motherhood and family not only reproduces traditional gender roles but also reinforces gender stereotypes about women who utilize care systems. While responses such as the legalization of care rights, strengthening democratic participation, and gender-neutral institutional design have been proposed to address these issues, they still face fundamental limitations. Although attempts to define care as legal rights and obligations are meaningful in that they clarify and institutionally guarantee care rights, they fail to adequately encompass the diversity and practical nature of care relationships. Moreover, even when emphasizing citizens’ democratic participation to counter the power dynamics of care, citizen participation alone cannot effectively check powerful representative authority in actual representative democratic systems. Furthermore, even when introducing gender-neutral care institutions, the actual implementation process may instead conceal or reinforce existing gender inequalities. In light of this analysis, the key to institutionalizing care lies not in adjusting power and gender inequality issues after implementation, but in clearly recognizing these problems from the initial stages of institutional design and incorporating them into the analytical framework. Future care institutions should be designed with structures that internalize critical reflection on power and gender inequality, premised on the understanding that care is realized through the practices of vulnerable human subjects.