BY JOSEPHINE KALIPENI | March is Women’s History Month, a time when we honor “sheroes,” those who have dedicated their lives to gender equality. There’s a group of women whose labor, though unrecognized, is invaluable and on which so much of our lives depend. These women work tirelessly—often in the service of the same women who’ll be valorized this month—and receive little recognition, let alone adequate pay for their services. These women are our caregivers.
The workforce lost millions of caregivers in The Great Resignation, when working women were forced to choose between their jobs and their caregiving responsibilities during the height of the pandemic. What resulted was a mass exodus of women from the workforce, who had no caregiving options with schools and daycares closed. These were women without paid leave, who had to figure out whether they were putting their jobs at risk by asking for unpaid leave to care for their loved ones or heal—leave they couldn’t afford to take in the first place. These were the women who had to sacrifice their careers to care for others.
Caregiving, which can mean caring for children, seniors, people with disabilities and so much more, is often considered women’s work. Because of that, those in caregiving fields, from preschool instructors to nursing home employees, are underpaid, undervalued, and overlooked. The average hourly wage for a caregiver is less than $14. Often society doesn’t think of caregiving as work at all, especially when it’s done for a family member—although caring for a relative often means accruing additional expenses. Instead, caregiving is thought of as an innate, natural behavior that women need to express and it is ignored how depleting, disruptive and difficult the work is.
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