What Do Mothers and Caregivers Want?
A new international survey asks them
In 2020, a group of activists from the Global Women’s Strike and Care Income Now! got together to talk about the need to survey mothers and other caregivers about what they want. For decades, these activists have been campaigning for the recognition of and compensation for unpaid care work, and more recently, for the expanded Child Tax Credit in the US.
They recognized that policy makers seldom, if ever, ask mothers and caregivers what they need or want and that legislation intended to help them is scarce and often beholding to special interests. For example, the child care provisions in the Build Back Better Bill fund particular child-care systems rather than providing individual families with cash to make their own choices, including caring for their own children.
Unpaid work has value
The activists from the Global Women’s Strike have been successful in gaining recognition for the value of unpaid work. They negotiated language to measure and value unpaid work at two United Nations World Conferences and, as a result, the UN now recommends that both paid and unpaid work be counted in national accounts, like GDP. From Unpaid Work and Policy-Making: Towards Broader Perspective of Work and Employment:
