This article proposes taking an uncommon route to understanding gender and inequality, based on functions organized around kinship and residency. In this sense, family and home are components of the function of "care" currently considered to be a valuable resource that is either tangible or intangible; in an environment that conciliates the productive and reproductive realm, at a time when family care is seen as a social problem and an object of public policy. Analyzing the relationship between gender and care allows linking not only the role of the family, State and market, but also including family oriented positions as well as a "defamilizing" regiment, while also including in this dynamic other civil society, educational and legal institutions as well as belief systems.
care; gender; citizenship; family policies