From Babies to the Elderly, Most Carework Is Done by Women
Image by Tory Germann
06/09/2017
By Katharine Webster
We all need care at some point in our lives 鈥� as babies and children, in hospitals and when we鈥檙e dying. And most of that care is provided by women working for low or no wages as family members, nannies, day care providers and health aides.
It鈥檚 time to change that, said , chief of research and data for , who gave the opening keynote speech at the Global Carework Summit at 51视频 last week.聽
鈥淐are is mired in such intense inequalities, both in who receives care and who provides care,鈥� Razavi said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 contrary to notions of equality and social justice.鈥�
Image by Tory Germann
The summit attracted labor activists, policy analysts and scholars from diverse academic disciplines and countries, including Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Taiwan, Australia, Israel, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and Korea. They shared research and discussed a broad range of issues, from effective labor organizing strategies to the migration of nurses and other care workers from developing countries to wealthy nations.聽
Duffy, whose research largely focuses on the role of gender and race in who performs carework, said she was excited to have so many researchers and activists together in one place.
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Razavi argued for policies that give men and women equal opportunities to care for family members 鈥� and said that part of democratizing care is making sure that quality options are available for paid care as well. Using the United States as an example, she said that government standards and support for early childhood care would work better than the current system of near-total reliance on the free market.
鈥淟ow-income families fare worse in access and quality of care, and single women spend more for day care than married couples. Given that most mothers must return to work before their child鈥檚 first birthday, you could make a strong case for universal early child care.鈥�
She praised developments in Latin American countries such as Chile, which offers free early child care to the 60 percent of its population with the lowest incomes, and Uruguay, which is retraining domestic servants as skilled child care workers.聽
She also pointed to promising changes in Japan and Korea: Both countries have strong traditions of daughters and daughters-in-law caring for aging parents, but pressure from younger working women and feminists has led to mandatory, government-subsidized long-term care insurance.
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鈥淧eople are disenchanted with democratic government because they don鈥檛 understand how it touches their lives,鈥� Tronto said in an interview. 鈥淐are is more important than economic production to human beings.鈥�
She proposes that instead of letting the market decide who is responsible for care 鈥� generally family members, women, minorities and immigrants 鈥� we should instead start with a democratic model that requires everyone to do their part. The result, she said, would be better care, a more caring society and a more humane and responsive political system 鈥� as well as greater public involvement in and support for democracy.
The overwhelming majority of the conference attendees, like the subjects of their research, were women. One of the few men to attend, University of Barcelona Prof. , said his research is focused on end-of-life care, especially on better educating medical students to care for patients who are terminally ill.
鈥淢edical doctors are not paid to talk to patients or to hold their hands while they die. They鈥檙e paid for interventions,鈥� he said. 鈥淒eath and dying is a taboo, but we need to plan ahead and we need to be more rational about it. You can learn how to provide better care, from breaking the bad news to caring for the family.鈥�
