The Ethics of Self‐Care

Risk, Responsibility, and Reproduction in Chile

Bibliographic Data

ID7472040
AuthorsMartina Yopo Díaz (0000-0002-5886-8211, Escuela de Sociología Universidad Diego Portales Santiago Chile, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume58
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntipode (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.13011
OpenAlexW4389109832
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited29

The meanings of self‐care are complex, ranging from radical political warfare to structural biopolitical governmentality. This paper explores lived tensions of self‐care by analysing women's experiences negotiating pregnancy in Santiago de Chile. Drawing on 40 life story interviews, the findings show that although sexual education, contraception, and abortion remain constrained and structured according to class inequalities, women are expected to care for themselves by managing the risk of pregnancy and assuming responsibility for their reproductive outcomes. I argue that politics of reproduction in Santiago de Chile are shaped by a neoliberal ethics of self‐care that outlines women as autonomous, rational, and self‐regulating agents while neglecting structural constraints that affect whether and when to have children. This neoliberal ethics of self‐care reinforces the overburdening of the self, the feminisation of reproduction, the privatisation of care, and the institutionalisation of carelessness, undermining the subversive and emancipatory potential involved in caring for oneself

Abortion · Environmental ethics · Ethics of care · Governmentality · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Pregnancy · Reproduction · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Reproductive Health and Contraception

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