By Lucy Kennedy

There may come a time – particularly if you are a woman or femme – when you will be called upon to care for someone. All the experience that you have of being a person, keeping yourself alive and well, will suddenly be mobilised.

You might become a medic, an educator, a domestic server – but maybe you’ll be something less formal. You might simply be a friend, a parent or a lover. You may begin to clean, feed, and emotionally support someone else. It may happen whether you consciously choose to or not and it may happen without warning. It may be heart wrenching, exhausting, rewarding, joyous – perhaps even all of these things at once.

Care is a critical aspect of human life. It encompasses every age group, every type of personal relationship, every culture and community among human beings. It is the quiet and unrelenting work that has allowed us to survive. And it is vital to remember that those who we care for are equally deserving of our respect and time. 

Needing care in any capacity is something all of us will experience in our lifetime. Both the person doing the caring and the person receiving care are deserving of our time and consideration. It seems strange, almost funny then, how we care for one another and the gendered politics of care. How easily we toss aside the interests of those who care for a living and how nonchalantly our government denies the more basic needs of those who receive care shows a sharp disregard for the people who do these things, people who have historically been women.

Only recently have I come to realise that emotional labour and the physical aspects of my caring have become deeply intertwined with my gendered experience. I grew up in a house of mostly women, and I grew up where adults required care. In my early teens, my father became ill. He underwent hospitalisations and rapid changes to his physical abilities. By that point, my grandma was in deep stages of dementia, having already required nearly round-the-clock care for years.

I and my sister did help here and there, but the brute force of the work involved in keeping so many people alive – financially, physically, emotionally, fell on my mum. She would wake up, go to her paid job where she cared for children, come home at lunch to care for my dad and grandma, and then come home at night to help feed us all and care some more. She looked after other people for twenty years.

Other women would come as well. Nurses and care assistants, our neighbours who would sometimes come around and help. My overwhelming memories are of women who were understandably tired and had little energy for themselves after pouring themselves into those who needed them. They put their time into providing for others and were unrecognised by the world around them.

Care is painfully under-rewarded and under-recognised. It is work that requires vast amounts of skill and energy. It is no secret that care has been thought of as women’s work for centuries. You can open practically any gender studies book and see that we have had this level of understanding for decades. We preach gender equality and justice and yet so many skilled roles, which require years of patience and training, are downtrodden. I can think of several historically female-dominated professions which are rewarded with long hours and low pay compared to roles requiring similar levels of training.

Two years ago, many of us clapped for the NHS. It is in recent memory. I remember admiration for the NHS being a badge of national, patriotic honours – rainbow drawings being stuck to windows for passers-by to see. I remember members of the royal family standing outside their palaces, smiling and clapping while cameras flashed. Nurses in particular were heralded as modern heroes. They epitomised the image of duty and empathy.

How shameful to think that we clapped on while watching nurses’ workloads become hazardously pressurised and painfully underpaid in real terms – not just during covid but for more than a decade of austerity politics. How disgraceful that we kept home workers unaware of the massive shortcoming of government policy and demanded many of them work in casualised, unguaranteed hours or conditions. We want to be looked after when we need it. We want a health care system that values dignity.

As I get older, I feel pangs of guilt for not having done enough while my dad and grandma were ill. I should have cooked more, cleaned more, maybe contributed financially. I stand by the idea that it was (and still is) my responsibility to support my family. But in truth, what was even more necessary at that point in my life were more skilled, supported, talented adults who took on caring roles and were fairly compensated for their time and who deserved to be respected and recognised for their efforts. There is nothing wrong with needing care. There is nothing wrong with caring. There is, however, a profound, maddening failure by our society, which continues to disregard both of these parties.

Going forward, I need to make a point of supporting others who are caring for those in the community around me and those who need care. I need to notice who is in need of support and encouragement. I should become somebody who takes on a portion of caring and reaches out when I need it myself. More than that, though, I need political traction from others in recognising, rewarding and sharing caring occupations. Members of groups less associated with caring historically have an equal duty in advocating and implementing that role. The time has come to demand an equitable and dignified approach to care and health investment, and I am determined to advocate for it during my own working life. That much I owe to the women who cared for my family and me.