Labour, Love, and Obligation

A Feminist Philosophical Inquiry into Care Work

Abstract

The article demonstrates that unpaid domestic tasks, coupled with emotional work, operate as an essential yet neglected social infrastructure that sustains societal operations. This article investigates the intersection of love and work with a sense of obligation using a French feminist framework to show how these elements form a cycle of endless care obligations for women. Feminist moral philosophy demonstrates how ethical duties towards women frequently hide within familial love, yet simultaneously eliminate their independence. The vital work of emotional labour operates as a patriarchal instrument for controlling women through their enforced submission to traditional roles. The article makes an attempt to examine how economic models mistake care for marketable goods while overlooking their human relationships and emotional significance. The article advocates that there is a dire need for a cultural transformation recognising care as a shared societal duty because current love discourses maintain gendered inequalities. This article advances an ethical mechanism to distribute care more equitably between genders and social strata while advancing feminist educational theory through systemic change models.