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A Better Way to Work: Pope Francis, the Care Economy, and the Future of Work
A Conversation with Sister Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A. (Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development), Maria Floro (American University), Christine Firer Hinze (Fordham University), and Jennifer Nedelsky (Osgoode Hall Law School at York University)
Co-sponsored by and the .
As Pope Francis reminds us: 鈥淐are is work; work is care鈥濃�攁n insight that illuminates how central care is to and for life itself. From giving birth to raising and educating children to caring for the sick and elderly, the challenge is to broaden the idea of 鈥渉omo economicus鈥� and return it to its fundamental, more expansive meaning.
In the aftermath of the global pandemic, the economic value of care reemerges as what it has always been: a matter of human dignity and justice. Re-prioritizing care requires new mindsets鈥攆rom building a world that is socially and environmentally just, to reevaluating the meaning of decent work in contemporary life, to developing feasible economic and public policies that place care of people and care of environment at the center of life.
June 22, 2021
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM CDT
Zoom Forum
This event was free and open to the public.
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Christine Firer Hinze is Professor of Theological and Social Ethics, Chair of the Department of Theology; emeritus Director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University; and president-elect of the Catholic Theological Society of America. Her teaching and research focus on foundational and applied ethics, especially the dynamics of social transformation, Catholic social thought, and economic and work justice for vulnerable women, families, and communities. Her publications include three books, Comprehending Power in Christian Social Ethics (Oxford, 1995); Glass Ceilings & Dirt Floors: Women, Work, and the Global Economy (Paulist, 2015); and Radical Sufficiency: Work Livelihood, and a U.S. Catholic Economic Agenda (Georgetown, 2021); along with scores of scholarly essays in books and in journals such as Theological Studies, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Association of America, The Journal of Catholic Social Thought, and Studies in Christian Ethics, and Studies: An Irish Theological Quarterly.
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Maria S. Floro is Professor of Economics at American University in Washington DC and co-director of the Graduate Program on Gender Analysis in Economics (PGAE). Her publications include books on Informal Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics, Women's Work in the World Economy, and Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered (co-authored; forthcoming) as well as monographs and journal articles on vulnerability, informal employment, urban food security, time use and well-being, financial crises, urban poverty, households savings, credit and asset ownership. She has collaborated with researchers, women鈥檚 groups and community organizations in Thailand, Philippines, Ecuador and Bolivia in conducting fieldwork on vulnerability, gender and informal employment in urban poor communities. She is currently working on analysis of time use survey data of China, Mongolia and Thailand and serves as technical adviser to the Economic and Social Costs of Violence Against Women Project. |
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Jennifer Nedelsky is Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Prior to this, she was Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Toronto and Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice. Her teaching and scholarship have been concentrated on Feminist Theory, Legal Theory, American Constitutional History and Interpretation, and Comparative Constitutionalism. Her most recent book, Law鈥檚 Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law (2011) won the C.B. Macpherson Prize, awarded by the Canadian Political Science Association. She is currently completing a jointly authored manuscript (with Tom Malleson), A Care Manifesto: (Part) Time for All (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). Once the book is done, Professor Nedelsky [BA (Rochester); MA and PhD (Chicago)] will return to her book manuscript, Judgment in Law and Life, building on Hannah Arendt鈥檚 unfinished theory of judgment. She will also be developing a larger partnership project on restructuring work and care. |
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Sister Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A. (Daughter of Mary Help of Christians): In 2006, Sr. Smerilli earned a PhD in Political Economy from the University La Sapienza (Rome), followed by a PhD in Economics from East Anglia University (Great Britain) in 2014. She is full Professor of Political Economy at the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences Auxilium in Rome. In the last two years, Sr. Smerilli has been appointed by Pope Francis as Councilor of the Vatican City State, Consultor of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, and Coordinator of the Economics Task Force of the Vatican Commission for Covid-19. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed Sr. Smerilli as Under-Secretary for the Faith and Development Sector of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development in March 2021. |
