By Matt Lamb
“Care work remains undervalued and underpaid. The monetary value of women’s unpaid care work globally is at least $10.8 trillion annually, three times the size of the world’s tech industry”
Stay-at-home moms, and mothers in general, are victims of “gender inequality” and “gender-based violence” because of their dedication to their children, a far-left United Nations commission claimed.
The 68th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women reportedly focused heavily on “unpaid care work,” according to journalist Kimberly Ells, writing at Mercator.
“I spent a week listening to an endless parade of events focused almost exclusively on ending poverty by eliminating ‘unpaid care work,’” Ells wrote.
“What is ‘unpaid care work,’ you might ask? It is work done in the home without specific monetary payment. Most people would call that kind of work simply being alive,” she wrote. “It could also be called running your own castle.”
The United Nations’ 2023 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals lists “unpaid care work” as something that needs to be addressed.
“But the forces that converged at the United Nations this spring called it an atrocity,” she said. “To be an ‘unpaid care worker’—especially if you’re a woman—was seen as an affront to human decency,” she said. “And because on average women worldwide do more labour in the home than men, people in UN circles call this ‘gender inequality,’ ‘gender injustice,’ and even ‘gender-based violence.’”
Ells reported that the commission members wanted taxpayer-funded daycare, an idea she pointed out has Marxist roots.
While Karl Marx is most famous for being an opponent of capitalism, he was supportive of getting women working and out of the home, as was Friedrich Engels, who continued his advocacy after Marx’s death.
“In The Family, Private Property and State, Engels reiterated Marx’s argument that women could only achieve equality when ‘both possess legally complete equality of rights,’” International Socialism previously wrote.
“‘Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society,’” an article at the communist website stated, quoting Engels.
A 2019 United Nation’s Children’s Fund news release has demanded “universal childcare,” stating, “Universal access to affordable, quality childcare from the end of parental leave until a child’s entry into the first grade of school, including before- and after-care for young children and pre-primary programs [should be provided].”
The United Nations’ entities regularly push the idea that women are victims of “unpaid care work,” backing up Ells’ reporting for Mercator.
“On average, women spend around three times more time on unpaid care and domestic work than men,” a March 7 story at UN News stated. “The gendered disparities in unpaid care work are a profound driver of inequality, restricting women’s and girls’ time and opportunities for education, decent paid work, public life, rest and leisure.”
“Care work remains undervalued and underpaid. The monetary value of women’s unpaid care work globally is at least $10.8 trillion annually, three times the size of the world’s tech industry,” the UN blog claimed.
A November 2023 report suggested “climate change” is linked to this problem.
“The gender gap in power and leadership positions remains entrenched, and, at the current rate of progress, the next generation of women will still spend on average 2.3 more hours per day on unpaid care and domestic work than men,” a September 2023 UN report warned.
Women don’t want to be out of the household full-time
However, while the UN sees women at home taking care of their children and domestic duties as a problem – and daycare as a solution – moms do not.
“Only 32% of mothers prefer full-time work,” the Institute for Family Studies wrote in 2020, summarizing other polls.
Massive government subsidies for family leave and daycare do not appear to change the numbers, according to IFS’ report.
In Ireland, for example, 61% of mothers said they prefer part-time work, while another 12% said they prefer to not work at all.
Only 23% said they want to work full-time. Yet Ireland offers 45 hours per week of subsidized childcare.
Children being raised by a stay-at-home mom has also been linked to better school performance and fewer emotional problems.
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