BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor. This letter is in regard to the support of frontline care work during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Send your letter to [email protected]
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In 2020 we saw an outpouring of support, understanding, and appreciation for one another, largely as a result of the challenges, struggles, and inequities that were highlighted and worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
People across the country have rallied around care providers working on the frontlines of the pandemic; in healthcare, emergency services, shelters, domestic violence services, mental health, education, and other sectors supporting our physical, mental, and emotional human needs. It could be argued that there has been no other time in recent history that has shown just how paramount and foundational care work is to our society and economy.
Indeed, care work is highly valued when we are faced with a crisis. It is that which sustains our lives, well-being, and social systems, and it is women who are doing the heavy lifting.
At home, women are responsible for a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work, approximately three times more than men globally. In the workforce, women fulfill over 90 per cent of nursing, personal support worker, and child care jobs, and make up the majority of the frontline education, social services, and cleaning sectors.
Many of these frontline positions are part-time, precarious, and/or low-wage, with women who are racialized, immigrants, migrants, and undocumented fulfilling the lowest paying and most precarious jobs, also making them among the highest-risk for contracting COVID-19.
It is clear that care work plays an essential role in our economy and is deeply valued in our society. So why have we historically prioritized material and economic production over the social and generational production from care work? Feminist economists have been problematizing and challenging this reality for decades. Structural conditions and normative assumptions about caregiving have led to women fulfilling a disproportionate amount of the paid and unpaid care work our society requires, further perpetuating gender, racial, and economic inequalities.
Where do we go from here? As we implement solutions for COVID-19 recovery, we have an opportunity to better align policy with the values that have been so clearly illuminated during the pandemic.
This is one reason the Bradford Women’s+ Group joined the Just Recovery Simcoe coalition. We want to see decision makers commit to the principles of investing in people, community, and nature for a just, equitable, and sustainable future. In the context of care work, this means investing in social infrastructure, transforming the care economy, and ensuring that our care workers are valued far beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
Arlene Hearn and Jennifer Lloyd, Bradford Women’s+ Group
Bradford
