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I have a few thoughts.
1/10 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/us/coronavirus-women-essential-workers.html?smid=tw-share
1/10 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/us/coronavirus-women-essential-workers.html?smid=tw-share
First, it's important for people to know:
"From the cashier to the emergency room nurse to the drugstore pharmacist to the home health aide taking the bus to check on her older client, the soldier on the front lines of the current national emergency is most likely a woman."
"From the cashier to the emergency room nurse to the drugstore pharmacist to the home health aide taking the bus to check on her older client, the soldier on the front lines of the current national emergency is most likely a woman."
It's even more important for people to know:
"1 in 3 jobs held by women has been designated as essential"
"1 in 3 jobs held by women has been designated as essential"
This needs to be shouted from every rooftop, quarantined or not:
"Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else."
"Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else."
As well as this:
"Of the 5.8 million people working health care jobs that pay less than $30,000 a year, half are nonwhite and 83 percent are women."
"Of the 5.8 million people working health care jobs that pay less than $30,000 a year, half are nonwhite and 83 percent are women."
We also gotta talk about this a minute: "In normal times, men are a majority of the overall work force." How "work force" in "normal times" is limited to "paying" jobs, despite women in "paying" jobs also doing the vast majority unpaid labor there is. Unpaid bc it's women's work.
Labor historian Winant says it without quite saying it:
"It is a type of work that does not produce an object that can be traded or sold, he said; it is simply work that has to be done. 'There is a whole system in place to make us not think of this as critical infrastructure.'”
"It is a type of work that does not produce an object that can be traded or sold, he said; it is simply work that has to be done. 'There is a whole system in place to make us not think of this as critical infrastructure.'”
It is not simply an overload of the system that's left healthcare workers without PPE or health insurance or a living wage. The system Winant is talking about is not just capitalism, although that's also important. It's not even just patriarchy, even though that's also at play.
Not seeing "women's work" as "work" is a key reason "care work" is undervalued and underpaid. COVID is making it painfully clear--or should be--how much this country lives & breathes white supremacy.
What this article, significant as it is, stops short of saying, is that the reason women are "essential workers" is because the system, the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist system, sees women, and especially women of color, as expendable. /end
P.S. I have to also say I'm curious about the bylines. Not making judgments. Just genuinely curious. How does the authored compared to contributed factor break down here? In an article about women's undervalued labor, it maybe seems useful to know. Again, just curiosity.
