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The first International Conference on care, equality and diversity aimed to highlight the value of care as the foundation of a new social agreement. This second convention, aims to maintain the same objectives, adding new elements to offer specific and particular proposals in the legislative, economic and political fields, to improve the value of caring in Society.

Two years later, the second edition of this Congress, which was originally to be held in May 2020, was intended to maintain the two priorities noted in the first by adding new elements aimed at offering more concrete proposals about the value of care to shape a better and fairer society that cares for equality and addresses the functional diversity in its different manifestations. An unexpected event, the pandemic caused by covid-19, forced us to postpone the holding of the congress to November, after a long period of confinement that made us even more aware of our vulnerable condition. We now want to project an analysis of care in three fundamental axes: Law, Economics and Public Policies, which must in turn be inspired by the philosophy of culture and the ethics of care. If care has been a central aspect in our lives although its importance has not been properly valued, now in the midst of the socio-economic crisis it becomes a crucial aspect, essential to be addressed by all areas of knowledge, especially by Law.

Constitutional Law has already begun to place care as an inspiring principle of a new constituent pact that is based on solidarity and that places the person, at the centre of life. Care is considered a central theme of the Feminist Economy that must be projected in political science and social work as well as in the sciences of education or pedagogy that have the function of teaching to transmit new knowledge. Law must focus on a regulatory framework that protects people, especially at the vital moments of greatest vulnerability.

Throughout our existence, we all need to be physically and emotionally taken care of and also need the time invested by others in doing so. That time has been the time of women. Caring means looking after people, and this is what women have been doing for centuries. The generations of women who have traditionally taken care of children, the elderly, sick and other dependent people are no longer willing to carry on providing that role in an exclusive manner: neither being care-givers exclusively nor being the only ones who take care of others, this is why it is vital to universalise the ethics of care. The covid-19 crisis has made the inequality between women and men in care relevant, causing a much deeper gap. Hence, the need for a right to care, which is already being put forward in the work carried out on constitutional reform.  

With the aim of going further into the topic, redefining the concept and facing all the possible legal problems that may arise from the construction of this new legal element, we would like to continue working as well as counting on the contributions of other experts, which after all is the aim of the Conference. 

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The Conference will distribute the experts’ contributions in four working sessions during two days in November, 3 and 4, 2020.

The first session will be dedicated to pinpoint the problem of care as the inspiring principle for the development of a new ethics of care, and its manifestation as a new right to be recognised by our constitutional framework. The second one will also seek to introduce a legal framework design in order to develop a right to care studying several legal systems.

The third session will focus on Economy, specially from the standpoint of the Feminist Economy. The forth one will introduce several models of public policies regarding different types of care, –both informal care and care carried out by public institutions-.

In the last session, papers submitted by Conference participants will be presented; there will also be a recollection of contributions and conclusions will be drawn.