The Tribune

SUNDAY, October 29, was the first International Day of Care, declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations. This is to acknowledge the need for investment in the care economy and the development of systems that value care work and reduce the burden of care work which is disproportionately undertaken by women and girls. In its communication on International Day of Care, the United Nations mentioned its “view to recognising, reducing, valuing, and redistributing unpaid care and domestic work and support.” It did not mention, however, compensation for care which is a large gap.

It is quite incongruent to have a day dedicated to recognizing care work and, in particular, unpaid care work, without any mention of the need to not only redistribute it, but compensate it. It is possible that the thinking is that we need to redistribute care work so that it is better balanced and does not burden anyone that there would be no need for compensation, but it is important to acknowledge that we are a long way off from a situation where care work is redistributed and does not disproportionately impact people in situations of vulnerability.

People try to “logic” their way out of accepting an appropriate share of care work. They decide that someone else should do it because they do not have a job or, these days, because they work from home anyway, so they’re “right there.” People may also use gender stereotypes to assign work to other people. They may say that women and girls are “better” at caring for others, though we ought to know by now that women and girls are socialized in a particular way and given a set of responsibilities, and this is not synonymous with being “better” at anything.

In the global care workforce of 381 million people, there are 249 million women. Women do 76.2 percent of unpaid care work which is more than three times the amount that men do.

Care work as women’s work is an idea that has been normalized all over the world. Care work is often discussed and regarded as a part of a particular role, assigned to women in this part of the world, rather than work. A mother staying home from her paid job to take care of a sick child is understood as a mother being mother. It is not understood as work. A mother planning, hosting, and cleaning up after a birthday party is seen as motherhood. It is not seen as work. A daughter moving her mother into her home and taking care of her alone every night and weekend is seen as being a woman and daughter. It is not seen as work.

These exercises of motherhood, daughterhood, and womanhood are unpaid because they are performed by people with relationships that come with those expectations, especially now that governments have significantly reduced investment in social protection, but if they were performed by someone else who is paid, they are more readily considered work. Not only is it work, but many people regard it as undesirable work. It is the kind of work very few people want to do, yet it is often unpaid or underpaid.

Care work and domestic work are often discussed together because they often intersect. We often see job advertisements that detail the tasks for a housekeeper and somehow include supervising and preparing a meal for children after school. Similarly, job advertisements for babysitters often include tasks such as washing dishes, doing laundry, and cleaning the house, and this goes beyond the tasks associated with childcare. Particularly where domestic and/or care workers are live-ins, the lines are —often intentionally—blurred.

The International Labour Organisation Convention 189 is a Domestic Workers Convention that acknowledges the way the domestic workers increase job opportunities for people with family responsibilities, care of elderly people, children, and people with disabilities, and send remittances to home countries, all of which contribute greatly to the global economy. Convention 189 defines domestic work as “work performed in or for a household or households” and domestic worker as “any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship.”

Article 5 states that members are responsible for ensuring that domestic workers “enjoy effective protection against all forms of abuse, harassment and violence.” The workplace is often a site of violence and harassment, and this spurred the development of Convention 190 on Eliminating Violence and Harassment in the World of Work which The Bahamas ratified in November 2022, but has yet to implement. When the workplace is also the home, the risk of violence and harassment increases, and this can further increase the vulnerability of people who experience oppression including women and migrant workers.

Article 6 calls for domestic workers to have fair employment terms, decent working conditions, and decent living conditions if living in the household where they work.

Remembering a feminist advocate

Audrey Ingram Roberts was a feminist advocate, active in the Caribbean women’s rights movements for decades. She was a part of several networks, regularly engaged with feminist advocates in other countries including Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, and authored and contributed to many policy papers, research papers, and other valuable resources.

Those of us who knew her were inspired by her dedication to the women’s rights movement and admired the ease with which she seamlessly integrated her expertise into the ongoing work of feminists in The Bahamas and across the Caribbean region.

I was fortunate to meet Audrey Roberts through other feminists in The Bahamas. She was kind, open to conversation, and honest in her communication. In the early days of Women’s Wednesdays—a monthly event series by Equality Bahamas which brings women together to discuss issues—I reached out to Audrey about a session on women and the economy. Though we had not spoken for a while, she responded with great excitement and started working on her presentation immediately. We had several exchanges between the invitation and the event. I told her that, at that time, we had a rather small audience that was more accustomed to panel discussion than presentations, and she assured me that she was prepared to speak to any audience of any size. She reminded me that the value of our work was not determined by mere numbers, but was in our commitment, our consistency, the community we were steadily building, and being able to share in ways that did not just inform, but activated people.

Over the past few days, as people across the region learned of her passing, many messages have been shared expressing grief as well as gratitude for her life and the privilege of knowing her. Someone said they were friends from the age of nine. Another person met her only once, at a meeting in Barbados, and noted her encouragement and kindness. It has been beautiful to see the love and sit in the memories that people have shared and will likely continue to share over the coming days.

In recent years, my conversations with Audrey were largely by phone and email. She was enamored by her grandchildren and spoke of them often. She was a trusted friend, a respected mentor, and a deeply loved woman who steadfastly stood for and with other women. She was a source of encouragement, and she will always be an example of clarity of vision and the practice of embodying feminist values, from everyday work and advocacy to home and friendships. May we all be so committed to what we believe in and what we value that we live it as fully as Audrey Ingram Roberts did.