CARE AND GENDER IDENTITY From working mothers to caring men

Care has appeared as a new dimension of social reality and research field, until not so long ago invisible. Feminist theory has identified the complex social practices it is made of as well as the ethics of responsibility which underpin it, all of it, according to Gilligan, constructed through the long process of women's socialization. When men become involved in care, its female specificity is challenged and new questions on gender identity arise. On the other hand the dichotomous character of gender is discussed by authors like Fausto Esterling or Butler; not just women but also men are problematised. If in the forties of the past century Simone de Beauvoir goes ahead sociological constructivism when she asks how is a woman made, at the beginning of the XXI it makes sense to ask what is a man.