Yet, perhaps ironically, it is exactly the significant and growing body of feminist scholarship on caring work (e.g., Daly 2001) that can and should move us to reconsider the possibility of authentic, mutually respectful relations among unequals. Consider the relationship between a caregiver and a child, or a nurse and a critically ill patient. We hope that such relations can be healthy, nurturing, and mutually respectful. Yet they are not relations of contract, hierarchy, or equality. At any moment there is a substantial inequality of power and resources between a mature adult caregiver and an immature child or between an educated and equipped nurse and a patient who is helpless and perhaps unconscious. Decision making in these situations is not democratic: a caregiver does not allow a small child an equal voice in deciding when to cross the street, nor does the nurse discuss medication with a comatose patient. Such people do not come together as “peers”. Feminist highlighting of human dependencies and differences in abilitie so long excluded from social theory because care was consigned to the realm of women and nature should inspire us to new thinking about possible types of relationships, not only within families and nonprofits but within businesses and other large organizations as well. In organizations and societies characterized by immense webs of complex interdependencies among people with different levels of skill and authority, inequality may be endemic. But is it possible that disrespect need not be?