The thesis analyzed the patriarchal care device and the production mechanisms of female caregivers.

In addition to intensifying the domestic and care struggles around the strikes on March 8, we were increasingly talking about care, and I saw the need to rethink the concept. Because I observed, on the one hand, that we are not as clear as what we are talking about when we talk about care, and on the other hand, because there has been a kind of hypertrophy, in which almost everything is work of care. María Luz Esteban relates this hypertrophy to the sentimentalization of feminist discourse and was concerned about the essentialist and biologicist discourses that have gained strength in the field of care tasks.

He has used two theoretical frameworks.

On the one hand, materialistic feminism, and especially [Christine] Delphy, [Colette] Guillaumin, [Monique] Wittig or Jule Goikoetxea, and on the other hand, the contribution of Michel Foucault, who stands in post-structuralist philosophy, especially the notion of biopower. They are very powerful theoretical frameworks to fight against essentializations, precisely because they study the production of bodies, material production, which is generated through structured mechanisms and structured production relationships.

Wittig said that women constitute a social class.

Defining women as a social class implies leaving aside all biologicist explanations and not thinking that women existed before or outside the subalternization, but that subalternization is what makes us women. On the other hand, from materialistic feminism, in terms of the definition of the concept of home and care, we emphasize that domestic and care tasks are not a task or a concrete content. If any task is performed in patriarchal and family production relationships, we call it home work and care; if not, no. A clear example of this is the kitchen. The same role that free women or domestic workers play in precarious working conditions, cooking, cooking, when a private chef does in a house we don't call home work and care. Although cooking entails satisfying a daily and basic need, as is done outside the patriarchal and colonialist production relationships, we do not include surveillance in the notion of work.

It is one of the keys to the thesis.

The characteristics or contents of the tasks never explain the patriarchal production relationship, that is, the characteristics of the task do not explain why they are not paid or accounted for (measured and distributed). Women are unpaid because we do them, and unpaid work makes us women. Heteropatriarchal thinking makes us think that domestic and care tasks have some characteristic - affectivity, that are done in the family, that are basic, etc. -, so they have a direct link with being unpaid and not counted. Through this framework we turn our backs on this idea and, on the other hand, we see the material and economic character of the patriarchy, in which there are production relationships and whose objective is, of course, to create women, to dominate them and, therefore, to take advantage of the work of women.

In the 18th century, it placed the birth of patriarchal surveillance devices.

Using Foucault's work has served me to analyze the production of female caregivers in European modernity, and thus to be able to highlight the profound historical character of domestic and care work. Care tasks are not natural entities, they have not existed in all contexts, they are not practices that are outside the mechanisms of power itself, as it is understood when it is naturalized in these patriarchal discourses.

That is, it has been cooked since the human being is human, but not always in the same way.

That's it. In this sense, we often define care tasks as a practice to meet daily needs and as a way to manage interdependence, and I believe that it has great potential to underline this concept that we are interdependent and also to make visible all tasks that have become invisible. But if we define it, the truth is that all forms of life somehow manage daily needs and interdependence, including bacteria and plants, and if we want to look at the relations and specific productive mechanisms, in a context in which naturalization is very strong, we need concepts that highlight that productive and historical character. And the notions of biopower and Foucault's power device allow us to deeply analyze historical production.

What changed in European Modernity in relation to care?

Family, maternity and women's work were related to romantic love, for example. This was one of the transformations that occurred in the New Age, among many others, that nowadays we have completely corporeal and naturalized. With these processes, domestic and care work is born as a differentiated space, that is, as a patriarchal device of power. Along with this, the construction of female caregivers was essential, that is, the creation and naturalization of subjects who sacrifice and work for those they love. The philosophical and political frameworks of biopower and materialist feminism highlight that biopolitical production takes shape, transforms and creates emotions and desires, and that this cannot be modified individually, on demand. It's very important to detect this microphysics of power. In fact, through the liberal and rational notion of subjects, we have been made to internalize this idea in which, when we have emotions, we cannot individually and arbitrarily transform those we do not control – care in relation to work, motherhood and family –, we consider them natural. For example, mothers' concern and affection towards children. The natural is understood as an essence – we cannot control it – and what is produced as the opposite, and depending on it, you can transform everything that has generated oppression through a process of awareness. And that is certainly not the case. We must transform this dichotomy and manifest these biological discourses.

We have the capacity to act, but…

Yes, there is the possibility to influence, totally agree, and increasingly collectively, more force is generated to transform. Because the key is to generate collective and structural changes. In any case, it is not something that will be changed at will, through a decision, but through the struggle and relational incarnations.

In your thesis you have differentiated patriarchal power relations and capitalist power relations.

With the development of capitalism and industrialization, in the 18th century, capitalist relations of production are created and expanded. They are characterized by paid work. Those who do not own the means of production or cannot live without selling their workforce will live their exploitation in capitalist relations of production. Through different mechanisms, capitalist production relations will be masculinized. On the other hand, capitalist relations of production and patriarchal relations of production will be distinguished. Although related, all white men will remain in capitalist relations of production, outside the relations of production based on appropriation, while racialized bodies and women will be in those relations of production.

How do the two production relationships differ?

Capitalist production relations will be related to paid work (value production) and the measure, to accounting, to the determination of schedules and also to the specialization of tasks in some way. Women will be assigned the function of managing life and creating productive individuals, which will be done depending on patriarchal production relationships. In this case, women will be implanted in unpaid work, which will be organized especially in families, and which will be characterized by what is called the relationship of appropriation: the body as a whole will be taken and expropriated. Women will be required to be permanently to the needs of men and others, without schedules, without counting, without compensation.
We can understand that men will have to sell their workforce to survive and that women will have to give the body away in its entirety. The total expropriation of the body also implies, of course, the expropriation of the workforce. There is also a privilege that every man will receive, even if he is poor, even if he belongs to the working class: a woman at his mercy will have a server.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, feminisms have responded to patriarchal devices. How have they been reconfigured?

The achievements of the feminist struggles of the late twentieth century have been very diverse, but we see that both the patriarchal production relationships and the production mechanisms of the female caregivers remain in force. Women continue to do most of the unpaid work. On the other hand, their presence in paid work has increased, but the feminized sectors are the most precarious, and the paid work of home and care is especially precarious and subalternized. It's no coincidence. An increasingly identified practice with women and domestic work and unpaid care is going to be increasingly subalternized, although remunerated. Furthermore, neoliberal privatizations increase women's unpaid work and worsen working conditions. There is nothing to say about the rationalization of domestic work and paid care that has taken place in recent decades, because subalternization and precarization are very serious. Among other things, the Aliens Act permits this situation. These transformations should be understood as a reconfiguration of the domestic and care device.

You've also identified reorganizations in maternity.

Today, we can decide whether to be a mother or not, but the different patriarchal mechanisms, discourses and meanings that generate this desire for motherhood remain in force. This possibility of being a mother or not has become a way of strengthening and depoliticizing the rhetoric of individual responsibility: as you yourself have decided, you now have every responsibility to carry out that normative motherhood. This approach does not show that motherhood should be developed through a patriarchal organization. Of course, we need the ability to decide, but if this decision-making capacity develops without public structures and without reversing patriarchal production relations, it becomes the notion of neoliberal decision. Another trap. In addition, it should be taken into account that in the last decades, motherhood has become increasingly intensive and rigid. In other words, the time and work to be devoted to every child has increased. Faced with this, we can decide, as some of us decide, not to be a mother and understand that she is not a mother as a political and resilient position in our context.

It's been a year since the November 30, 2023 strike.

In recent years since the feminist movement, we have managed to make the issue central and politicize domestic and care work. Among the different challenges, I would like to highlight the challenge of continuing to create and expand strategies and concepts to fight these essentialist and biologicist discourses. To this end, it is very important to refine and broaden the updated materialist definition of surveillance work. On the other hand, I believe it is essential to create a public and feminist system of Basque care and to create mechanisms that oblige men to take care of and do unpaid work. And in this regard, addressing the situation of women in paid work, and especially of migrants and racialized, is an inescapable challenge or task: Repealing the Aliens Act, ending the special regime of domestic work; overturning that racist and colonialist organization in general and, of course, creating an alternative. Finally, strike is an important tool for fighting at home and in care, and we have rethought and are thinking about other strategies for fighting, since not all women can strike. We therefore need diverse tools and strategies.