By Kelly Sheard, WOMEN'S WAY Chief Strategy Officer

The Our Right to Care Conference, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania and Crossroads Women’s Center, focused on caregivers by highlighting the issues surrounding family caregivers and people who depend on their care. Expert panelists approached the care economy from a variety of angles but reminded us that care is an issue that binds us all together. One estimate suggests that over 93 million people provide or receive care, whether formally or informally, paid or unpaid. Though care directly impacts all of society, care work itself is severely undervalued and collective negligence and underinvestment have led to a care crisis.

While there is an abundance of examples of economic penalties related to the care economy, the conference helped to deepen our understanding of how these penalties and others are shaping an experience of incalculable loss of human potential. Read on to learn of some key takeaways from the Our Right to Care Conference from our Chief Strategic Officer, Kelly Sheard.

Feminist social activist and icon Selma James opened the Our Right to Care Conference by talking about her historic 1972 campaign related to wages for housework, reflecting that economics shapes what women decide and what women are forced to decide. James praised Johnnie Tillmon as an important figure in the movement to pay wages for housework, and explicitly named racism as a key reason why more people don’t know Tillmon’s work or praise her significance. James also reminded us about the importance of economic self-sufficiency for women, urging for a reality in which women are “not dependent on any human being when we work so hard to care for every human being.”

Moving on, our first panel included experts with lived experience about caregiving and the care industry. Panelists from Welfare Warriors talked about the emotional trauma of the child welfare system, explaining in detail about the terror they experienced because of family separation, as well as the stigma and judgment from stewards of that system. Another panelist, Tree Muldrow, talked about the transition she experienced going from someone who was a caregiver to someone who required care. Her sense of identity shifted drastically, and she had to learn and practice trust to allow strangers to take care of her. This panel helped to highlight nuance in the lived experience of care, detailing shifts in sense of identity, self-worth, and belongingness.

In another panel, Activist and Historian Premilla Nadasen reminded us that care is complicated and contradictory — not everyone is cared for and not everyone has equal access to care. She nudged us to consider a political context for our conception of care, urging us to consider racial capitalism and settler colonialism as important forces that shape our experience of care. Nadasen provided an example about the lack of care in federal politics, naming the genocide in Palestine as evidence that in a conflict featuring labor exploitation and profit extraction, the US government cannot claim an ethic of care. More locally, she highlighted a crisis of care but noted that not everyone was going without — the private market can benefit from the care crisis through financially lucrative opportunities such as contracts, services, and products. She referenced guaranteed income as a policy that could restore autonomy and control to folks struggling in the care economy.

Later, Dorothy Roberts, law professor, author, and sociologist, reminded us that care is always timely, local, and global. Roberts asserted that income, respect and material resources — all chiefly concerns related to care — are more urgent today than ever. She picked up on threads from Nadasen’s comments, sounding the alarm that relying on market solutions to meet care needs means a dangerous reliance on privately owned institutions that are primarily interested in maximizing revenue. As the cost remains wildly out of reach for most, what does care look like when you cannot afford it? Roberts urged us to resist against care she framed as “market-supplied services for the socially privileged” while terror and punishment awaits the “socially underprivileged” — naming the foster care system, prisons, and detention centers as examples.

The Our Right to Care Conference was a rich experience in deepening understanding about care as a practice and care politics in economic, social, and cultural domains. As an organization, WOMEN’S WAY looks forward to exploring ways to support care workers and impacting the experience of care through our Gender Economic Equity Program, where intentional general operating funding, cohort-based learning, and a community of practice will lay the groundwork for transformative change.

Read the blog post on Medium here.