Today on Sojourner Truth, we focus on the intersection between caregiving and poverty. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the U.S. government has been distributing checks to people in order to stop the economy from collapsing. However, it still refuses to consider providing an income for family caregivers, whose work is generally depended on and has increased as a result of the pandemic. Family unwaged caregivers " most of whom are women, including mothers and grandmothers, and the most impoverished women on welfare " provide care for relatives, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. Amid this crisis, they are expected to pick up the slack without any acknowledgement of the value or resources for their work.
The International Labor Office has estimated that women do two-thirds of the world's work for five percent of the income. And according to a report released by Oxfam in January 2020, women around the world perform 12.5 billion hours of unpaid labor every day. Overall, the work of unwaged caregivers has been estimated to contribute at least $11 trillion to the global economy, according to a Human Development Report. Meanwhile, across the United States, over two million women are jailed every year, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.
At least 80 percent of the women who go to jail annually are mothers, including nearly 150,000 women who are pregnant when they are admitted. Many of these women are poor and have been forced into drug abuse and criminal activity because of their unjust circumstances. As a result, oftentimes their children are forced into foster care and adoption, where they also face criminalization and abuse. Because of systemic poverty, caregivers, mothers and children are not only unvalued, but they are also forcibly separated and criminalized.
Today, we bring you audio from a recent Truth Commission webinar entitled, Poverty in All its Forms is Violence: Caregivers Victimized by Poverty Speak Out! During today's program, you will hear from a multi-racial panel of mothers and other caregivers sharing their experiences of living in poverty. These include mothers who have had their children removed by child welfare not because of abuse, but because their families are impoverished or because their mothers were victims of domestic violence.
Furthermore, you will hear insight as to how all of this is connected to poverty and systemic racism, the war economy, destruction of the environment and the violence and oppression of the market-focused economy. Lastly, our speakers discuss how they have come together with others to fight back in defense of other caregivers. The event was convened by the National Welfare Rights Union, an organization of, by, and for the poor in the United States and beyond.
