by Selma James and Nina Lopez

THIS year Mothers’ Day follows just a week after International Women’s Day, so for once we can celebrate them close together. They belong together. Not only are the overwhelmingly majority of women in the world mothers (three quarters of Britain’s women are), but even those who are not often care for relatives or friends, or fight for justice for loved ones. Protecting them from injustice is an integral part of caring.

Today the Global Women’s Strike (GWS) and Women of Colour within GWS are launching an international petition for a living wage for mothers and other carers, at an event called Honour Mothers, Honour All Carers.

Many women will be remembered, starting with Eleanor Rathbone — the feminist MP who fought for decades for all mothers to be paid Family Allowance and won her fight in 1948.

Rathbone was determined that mothers should get “a share of the national income” and believed that the work they do is not only “more important, but so much more skilled, varied and interesting than nine out of ten of the jobs done by working women, or for that matter by working men, that only crass bad management on the part of society has made it seem more distasteful than tending a loom or punching a tram ticket.”

Society’s managers are as crassly against the carer now as they were then. Forty years after the present women’s movement began, women still do two thirds of the world’s work, including growing most of the world’s food. We remain the primary carers everywhere for children and for sick, disabled and elderly people, in the home and outside, in peace as in war.

But the global market — rather than life, health, wellbeing, or survival of the planet which sustains us all — determines policies and budget priorities. So while the rich get richer, the arms trade fuels wars across the globe and foreign billionaires buy up London, austerity takes away universal child benefit and Income Support — especially for single mothers — lowers and cuts benefits, and drives families to homelessness and food banks.

Caring is demanding work but the skills it requires are undervalued even in the job market — domestic work, homecare, childcare and even nursing are low-paid. And while those of us who are immigrants are scapegoated by politicians, especially in the run-up to a general election, we do some of the lowest-paid caring jobs and keep the NHS going.

On March 2 we joined catering staff, residential home carers and other Unison members who were demanding that Camden Council ensures they are paid a living wage. One of them described having to walk two miles to and from work, and how she and her son could only afford a sweet potato for dinner that night.

London boroughs are overseeing Dickensian poverty. Camden is the worst borough for malnutrition, with reported cases increasing almost nine-fold over the past five years, and has one of the highest rates of child poverty. Fifty-six per cent of its children live in low-income families.

Valuing caring work would change women’s power and public attitudes: it would help close the income gap between women and men, and draw more men into caring.

While various political programmes support a living wage, mothers and other family carers are left out. Our international petition demands that every worker be paid a living wage, including mothers and other carers, and that national and international budgets redirect financial support and resources to this work.

The petition will be launched in a number of countries from Peru to Tanzania, Ireland, India and the US.

Many in Britain have endorsed it, including Food For All, the Scottish Kinship Carers, solicitor Gareth Pierce, John McDonnell MP and Carole Duggan (aunt of Mark Duggan) who has been campaigning for justice for her family — an aspect of caring which many mothers, sisters, wives and aunties know well.

The response on Kentish Town Road where we have been petitioning has been tremendous. Women and men are keen to sign and keen to talk about their lives of caring despite tightening budgets and lack of support.

The rise of women in Parliament, in the professions and in boardrooms has not resulted in more support for carers. Female MPs have not used their personal experiences to fight for resources for women and defend the welfare state.

There is no Eleanor Rathbone in today’s Parliament. But there is a growing movement of carers outside.

Join us at the Crossroads Women’s Centre today from 2-5pm. Speak about who you want to honour and bring a photo of her if you can. In addition to Rathbone we will be honouring campaigners, activists, thinkers and carers including Pauline Campbell, Maureen Church, Lilly Connolly, Jayaben Desai, Um Fadi, Sylvia Pankhurst, Winifred Scott Blackman, Ida B Wells and Jenny Westphalen Marx.
A raffle will draw on prizes donated by local shops, from a free haircut to a book voucher or a meal for two.

The venue is at 25 Wolsey Mews, Kentish Town, London NW5 2DX. Tel: (020) 7482 2496.