This chapter relates gender diversity to existing work on the practices and meanings of care, intimacy and citizenship. What follows is a selective discussion of this body of literature; it is impossible here to address this extensive field in its entirety. For example, the chapter does not include feminist work during the 1970s that focused upon the role of women within the family, theorising the capitalist and/or patriarchal family as an agent of women's oppression (Wilson, 1977; McIntosh, 1978). Although this work relates to the arena of care in its analysis of women's role within the family, its broader premise of theorising the family from a Marxist–feminist perspective is beyond the scope of this book. Likewise, the chapter does not examine recent studies into changing family practices, which have illustrated shifting gender roles and suggested an increased fluidity of identities within contemporary family life (Irwin, 1999; Morgan, 1999; Smart and Neale, 1999). Rather, the aim here is to explore the ways in which recent work has challenged notions of gender essentialism and/or heteronormative understandings of care, intimacy and citizenship. In particular, the aim of the chapter is to consider how, by moving beyond the restrictions of a binary gender model, this book may contribute to studies that challenge a heteronormative analysis of care, intimacy and citizenship.

Care can be broadly defined as: “the […] day-to-day activities which are so central to the sustaining of family lives and personal relationships – helping, tending, looking out for, thinking about, talking, sharing, and offering a shoulder to cry on” (Williams, 2004: 17). Moreover, I agree with Williams’ understanding of the concept of ‘care’ as practised at both an individual and collective level. Such an understanding of ‘care’ goes beyond a political comprehension of care as it relates to welfare policy, to explore care as a practice of everyday support. In discussing ‘intimacy’ and ‘intimate relationships’, I refer to close, caring, personal relationships that are both sexually (partners and lovers) and nonsexually (friendships) experienced and practised.

The first part of the chapter examines how early feminist work on care challenged the idea that unpaid caring work was a ‘natural’ female role through which the carer demonstrated her love for, and commitment to, her family. Rather, from a feminist perspective, care came to be analysed as an integral feature of women's exploitation (Finch and Groves, 1989; Finch, 1989).