CNJ: We will be honouring mothers, as care-givers, on International Women’s Day
04 March, 2021
• ON March 8 International Women’s Day, despite the pandemic, women are involved in many life-changing struggles around the world.
In Haiti, Myanmar and Thailand millions risk their lives protesting the dictatorships. In India millions are protesting laws which would put all farmland in the hands of multinationals, including Monsanto and its genetic modifiers of crops.
Women are either feeding the thousands of striking farmers camping around New Delhi or themselves part of the protests.
They are also demanding pay equity for farm work and the financial recognition of the value of women’s and children’s work on family farms. (A fact sheet and strike video on this can be seen on globalwomenstrike.net).
In Peru domestic workers won new laws framed by the International Labour Organisation recognising their workers’ rights.
Our sisters in the US are urging the passage of President Joe Biden’s child tax credit (a kind of child benefit) of about $3,000 per year, so that half the children in need will be lifted out of poverty.
Women are demanding the payment be put in the hands of mothers (or other primary care-givers). Children need it, mothers have earned it.
Our work is, of course, worth far more than this. Try dialling your hours of child or elder care into the Office for National Statistics unwaged work calculator at ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc376/index.html.
On International Women’s Day we will be honouring mothers, the first care-givers everywhere.
The coronavirus has shone a light on the care work that women are always doing. We are paid nothing for that work in the family and very little as care workers – even when we risk our lives in this pandemic. We demand a “care income” for that work.
We will be spreading the word of the struggles we women are involved in, and the work that we do all around the world in the home, on the land, in industry. We’ve earned the right to be paid a living wage for all of it – in cash, in land, in services.
ANNA THOMPSON
Global Women’s Strike
Crossroads Women’s Centre