The social organization of care refers to the institutions, norms, and practices that govern the distribution of caring responsibilities and access to caring resources in unequal ways (Glenn Reference Glenn2000; Reference Glenn2012). There is compelling evidence that everywhere women still do the bulk of unpaid care work and that this restricts their opportunities to participate in economic and political life. These inequalities further spill over into the wider economy as many care occupations are poorly paid and predominantly filled by racialized and immigrant women, as well as women from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. Feminist scholarship demonstrates that care is not only an issue in its own right. It also lies at the heart of many other political phenomena from the development of welfare states (Ciccia and Sainsbury Reference Ciccia and Sainsbury2018; Gordon Reference Gordon1991; Koven and Michel Reference Koven and Michel2013), to democratic backsliding and the rise of far-right parties (Briggs Reference Briggs2018; Farris and Rottenberg Reference Farris and Rottenberg2017; Meguid et al. Reference Meguid, Coffé, Weeks and Kittilson2025), to the politics of race, immigration, and same-sex families (Ayoub and Stoeckl Reference Ayoub and Stoeckl2024; Ferree Reference Ferree2021; Hancock Reference Hancock2004). Therefore, the social organization of care is a root cause of gender and intersecting inequalities.

Transforming the social organization of care is central to much feminist theorizing, policymaking, and activism. However, feminists do not have a singular vision of care and have instead coined many different concepts and theories to analyze care injustices as well as to identify political strategies for transforming the social organization of care in more equal ways. Some of these strategies have included: demanding investment in a universal care infrastructure, transforming working lives to recognize the universal reach of care needs, measuring and monetizing care work to make it visible and valued, revaluing and redistributing care by increasing men’s participation in unpaid labor, making an economic case for care and moving it to the public sphere, creating care commons to eliminate the division between paid and unpaid activities, envisioning a care movement that encompasses both care workers and those in receipt of care, and expanding care to incorporate global care drains and care for the planet. Many of these proposals appear in feminist manifestos and policy blueprints (Addati Reference Addati2021; Arruzza, Bhattacharya, and Fraser Reference Arruzza, Bhattacharya and Fraser2019; Chatzidakis et al. Reference Chatzidakis, Hakim, Litter and Rottenberg2020; Elson Reference Elson2017; Folbre Reference Folbre2008; Gornick and Meyers Reference Gornick and Meyers2009; Greenswag Reference Greenswag2019; Hamington Reference Hamington2024; James Reference James2021; Kotiswaran Reference Kotiswaran2021; Nadasen Reference Nadasen2021; Nedelsky and Malleson Reference Nedelsky and Malleson2023; Segal Reference Segal2023; Stone Reference Stone2000), but their adoption by policymakers has remained at best limited.

The renewed political focus on care in the post-pandemic world, however, has prompted policy innovations across scales and regions (Boris and Fish Reference Boris and Fish2014; Cranford and Marco Navarro Reference Cranford and Navarro2025; Daly Reference Daly2023; Kussy et al. Reference Kussy, Palomera and Silver2023; Mahon Reference Mahon2024; Villegas Plá Reference Villegas Plá2025). While these innovations are often inspired by feminist ideas such as the care economy, care commons, caring rights, and social reproduction, there are still few signs that the revolution needed to establish more caring societies is underway. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the poor state of care infrastructures and resources across the globe, care work continues to be undervalued, made invisible, and transferred onto the shoulders of those who lack economic, political, and social power. In the current context marked by a renewed political focus on care, as well as significant policy innovation in some countries and regions but not in others, it is crucial to interrogate feminist understandings of care to clarify why this remains the case.

This Critical Perspectives section addresses this question by critically examining feminist visions of care justice and the politics of care. It adopts a notion of care justice inspired by Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s (Reference Glenn2000, Reference Glenn2012) vision of a caring society. In this Critical Perspective section, a caring society is defined as one: where those who cannot care for themselves can trust that they will be cared for; where people can make autonomous choices about whether to become caregivers; where those who provide care are supported, rewarded, and recognized; and where the rights, resources and responsibilities of care are distributed equally among members of society regardless of gender, race, class, age, and ability. Therefore, a caring society would not only be gender just but also lead to the eradication of class, racial, and ableist prejudices in care provisioning and access.

By taking these principles as their point of reference, the essays in this special section aim to advance the vision of a caring society and set the foundations for future research in this field. From this viewpoint, they appraise feminist scholarship on care and reflect on the ways that the politics of care has unfolded across different contexts and care actors, including family caregivers, professional care workers, and migrant domestic workers. Together, they address three important questions: What are the faultlines in feminist visions of care justice, and how do they reflect inequalities beyond gender? What role does the state play in an emancipatory politics of care? Which policy innovations and political strategies move us closer to an ideal of a caring society?

Three themes emerge from these essays. First, care remains a vexing political concept that occupies an uncomfortable position within feminism due to its presumed association with “traditional” families (Lewis Reference Lewis2022), mothering (Robinson Reference Robinson, Engster and Hamington2015), whiteness (Davis Reference Davis1981; Lake Reference Lake2023; Nadasen Reference Nadasen2021), and ableism (Morris Reference Morris1996; Williams Reference Williams2001). As Ciccia and Daly (Reference Ciccia and Daly2026) show in their essay analyzing five prominent research traditions on care and social reproduction, this view is rooted in the common focus of early feminist analyses on women’s domestic labor. While several research traditions have since expanded their focus to commodified care and global inequalities, hierarchies of race, class, and nation remain contested, and the field still struggles to encompass the full spectrum of inequalities that characterize the social organization of care. Their essay also shows that issues around the relational nature of care, the role of the state, and the end-goal of an emancipatory politics of care remain divisive.

The contribution by Marx Ferree (Reference Myra Marx2026) critically examines feminist conceptions of the family. She raises questions about understanding care only as unpaid labor and the family as an ahistorical patriarchal construct. While these ideas have been useful in thinking about gender equality, she reminds us that care is also deeply emotional and political. Her essay invites us to expand our ideas about care justice by understanding families as sites of “chosen intimacies,” not limited by conventional ideas of heteronormative, monogamous, or autonomous family structures. She emphasizes that care has emotional and political dimensions that are essential to human flourishing and to cultivating wider solidarities across lines of difference that challenge national boundaries, gender binaries, and racial exclusions.

The second theme concerns the ambiguous role of the state as an arena for transformative politics of care. The contributions by Piscopo (Reference Piscopo2026) and Dahl (Reference Dahl2026) analyze political and policy developments in Latin America and Northern Europe. In these regions, care has figured prominently on the agendas of feminist movements and has been the object of sustained regulation by the state. Despite these commonalities, the two regions show marked differences. The Nordic model is often held up as a reference point for gender equal care policies. However, Dahl’s (Reference Dahl2026) contribution shows that the Nordic caring state has become increasingly uncaring. The Nordic model, built on the idea of care as a social right and on the dual earner-dual carer model, is increasingly unable to produce good outcomes for either care workers or those in need of care. Her contribution highlights the limitations of strategies that focus solely on professionalizing and moving care work to the public sphere, particularly when they are not accompanied by broader transformations in the organization of working time and the right to provide care.

Latin American countries, in contrast, are often considered latecomers in care policy development because of the limited role of the state, the centrality of the family, and the stratified nature of welfare systems (Arza Reference Arza2025; Blofield and Franzoni Reference Blofield and Franzoni2015). Nonetheless, the essay by Piscopo (Reference Piscopo2026) demonstrates that recent developments have put the region at the forefront of policy innovations. Feminist mobilizations across the regional, national, and local levels have successfully introduced a new policy paradigm inspired by feminist ideas about the care economy. She shows that this shift has led to a surge of transformative policies for unpaid carers, including mandates to factor unpaid care work in national accounts and the creation of national care systems instituting universal rights to give and receive care, alongside the principle of co-responsibility between state, market, society, and men and women. These developments exist alongside the introduction of laws improving labor and social protection for domestic and care workers in several countries.

The final theme concerns the importance of constructing coalitions of care that span both ends of caregiving and care receiving (Ciccia Reference Ciccia, Ranci and Rostgaard2025; Cranford Reference Cranford2020; Folbre Reference Folbre2006; Stone Reference Stone2000). The vision of a caring society cannot be broken down into separate pieces: its principles are inextricably tied and reinforce each other. Accordingly, political strategies that work on two or more of those principles hold greater promise to advance its vision. The essay by Tungohan (Reference Tungohan2026) focuses on the activism of migrant care workers, constructing coalitions of care with family employers and disabled people. By working together in non-hierarchical ways, they advance a transformative agenda that ties the value of care work and the working conditions of migrant care workers to the quality of care provisions and the right to receive care. Such coalitions are not only instrumental to policy innovations, but they are also sites of mutual acknowledgment and for collectively imagining a caring society.

Taken together, the essays in this Critical Perspectives section document the richness of feminist scholarship on care and highlight some of the tensions that have animated the field. In setting an agenda for future research, they make clear that care is more than a labor or a women’s issue; rather, it is a key organizing principle of society and a central political domain. The vision of a caring society offers an important tool for imagining a transformative politics that connects the problems and political struggles of all those disadvantaged by the current organization of care, including unpaid caregivers, professional carers, migrant domestic workers, and care recipients. This perspective pushes the field toward greater consideration of the potential lines of conflict and forms of solidarity among different groups of women and fosters a more intersectional understanding of care justice and the politics of care.