Carers have a right to not be impoverished, overworked and exploited

Around the world caring work is overwhelmingly carried out by women.

Why is it still not given the recognition and respect it deserves, asks NINA LOPEZ


IN 1946, Liverpool Suffragette and independent MP Eleanor Rathbone won universal family allowance — later called child benefit — after decades of campaigning.

She was outraged at mothers’ dependence and poverty: “Nothing can justify the subordination of one group of producers — the mothers — to the rest, and their deprivation of all share of their own in the wealth of a community which depends on them for its very existence.”

The lack of recognition for women’s caring work has not changed. And the view that any job is better than caring is more entrenched than ever.

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