Dn the private sector as in the public sector, 4.6 million people work daily to make our daily lives, to make them fluid and comfortable. Often to the detriment of theirs (« “Les Invisibles”, a dive into the France of the back office », Working Differently Foundation, March 2022).
These invisibles are at the same time the trades of the link (social link, but also of the relational with the centers of contact and remote service), of the care – in the hospital, in accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people (Ehpad), in nurseries, in particular –, of “economic and social continuity” and of daily life (logistics and trade, removal of household waste, urban cleanliness, etc.).
A form of ethics from the United States, the ethics of “care” [le prendre soin de l’autre], has been trying for forty years to draw our attention to these professions. If it has historically focused on the universe of care in the broad sense, a “care” economy more broadly encompasses these “first necessity” professions, the importance of which we were able to measure during the health crisis and its successive confinements. .
Lack of recognition
If we consult the results of the survey through the prism of this ethics, its teachings unfortunately take on a very dimmed light. Stemming from feminist reflection, the ethic of “care” has always pointed, including for women themselves, to gender and income inequalities: some women have the enjoyment of a time that others women make possible, less privileged women.
In fact, 54% of the “invisibles” are women. They come to greet my daughter in the morning, early, at school, they pick her up at 4:30 p.m. and take care of her until bath time, in short, they work with her all day to teach him how to become a little person within a community. It’s very commonplace, it happens in my life as in yours. This form of ethics has taught us that behind each person there is another person, without whose help the first person would not be autonomous. However, these people are most often women.
This ethic also made us aware of the fact that the “invisible” were sorely lacking in recognition in the primary sense of the term: 50% of so-called invisible households thus receive less than 2,000 euros gross per month. To this is added, if not a contempt, in the sense understood by the German philosopher and sociologist Axel Honneth, at least undeniably a poor self-esteem, when the gaze of the other is not rewarding for the tasks that I realizes every dayThe struggle for recognitionFolio, 2013 and 1992 for the original edition).
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