Joan Tronto
Caring is not a private matter for women: it is a basic human activity, and a political one.
Life
Joan Tronto is an American political scientist, born in 1952. She argues that care is not a private matter reserved for women but a central human activity, and that how it is distributed and recognised is a political question. She describes care in phases (caring about, taking care of, care-giving, care-receiving) and draws from it a critique of the boundaries between morality and politics.
Main works
Argues for an ethic of care as a political argument and challenges the separation of morality from politics.
Argues that a democracy must organise and share fairly the care that people give one another.
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceEthics starts from caring relations and responsibility for others' needs, not from abstract duties or outcomes.
Tronto, Moral Boundaries (1993)
Humans are neither good nor bad by nature: they are vulnerable and interdependent, and need care throughout life.
Tronto, Caring Democracy (2013)
She puts shared responsibility for care at the centre of democracy, rather than the independent individual.
Tronto, Caring Democracy (2013)