The Work That Makes All Other Work Possible
“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t force people to have babies and then once they have them not allow them to heal or care for them”.
Taking care of children, disabled folks, the elderly, and the home is work that makes all other work possible, but it doesn’t always get the respect it deserves, whether it’s done by an employee or a family member.
Some facts:
In the United States, women perform an average of 4.5 hours of unpaid work per day compared to men’s 2.8
If American women earned minimum wage for the unpaid work they do in the home, we would have earned $1.5 trillion last year
Domestic workers are a majority women and disproportionately women of color. They are also three times as likely to be living in poverty as other workers
In this episode, I talk to Ai-jen Poo, who believes that we should make care policies like family leave, child care, child tax credits— less as extensions of the social safety net and more as infrastructure, as investments in the future of the economy.
Ai-jen Poo is a MacArthur Genius grant winner and author of the book “The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.” She co-founded and leads The National Domestic Workers Alliance, is the director of Caring Across Generations, and co-founder of Supermajority. Ai-jen is the nation’s leading advocate for fundamentally changing the way our society supports caregiving.
Topics covered:
What would it look like to start paying for unpaid labor
If domestic labor should count towards GDP
How to think about care policies like an investment in infrastructure
Supporting the 2.2 million domestic workers across the United States
What happened with the Build Back Better Act
How the dynamics of race, class, and gender inform domestic worker relationships
Listen