Love and Politics:Women Politicians and the Ethics of Care. By Fiona MacKay. London: Continuum, 2001. 242p. $90.95 cloth, 28.95 paper

Abstract

These two books represent an evolution in the ethic of care literature by taking up the challenge of how to combine care and politics. Fiona MacKay argues that women's full inclusion into democratic politics requires the use of a political ethic of care to reshape the nature of representative institutions, at a variety of levels of governance, from local to transnational. Nel Noddings argues that the care ethic practiced in ideal homes should be taken into the state to redirect public policy. In developing the arguments, both stress women's experiences of caring for others and both counterpose care and justice. Their theoretical discussions of the ethic of care cover familiar ground, with Noddings's maternalist version and MacKay's nonmaternalist formulation. Where both books depart from the literature is in their uncritical embrace of the state as a policymaking engine or as the site for representative institutions. While Noddings uses the ethic of care to argue for a series of compassionate public policies, ranging from housing for the homeless to education in caring, her analysis does not engage with feminist discussions of care and the welfare state. The appeal of Starting at Home is that Noddings places the raising of caring human beings at the center of a policy agenda. Love and Politics is much more compelling for political scientists, because MacKay offers a political analysis of how moments of democratization, such as Scotland's devolution process, could advance a redefining of politics in a more woman-friendly, caring direction. The juxtaposition of the two books suggests that the success of Noddings's humanistic vision rests on a complicated political project: the creation of a family and woman-friendly practice of democratic politics shaped by women's equal political agency and a political ethic of care.