Opinion Columnist
When Patty Murray joined the Senate in 1993, one of the first bills she worked on was the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid family leave for people who worked at companies with 50 or more employees.
It was pretty modest, especially compared to the family benefits available in most developed countries, but Murray said passing it was a hard fight. In a floor speech at the time, she described a friend of hers, the mother of a 16-year-old who was dying of leukemia, whose job was threatened because she wanted to take time off to be with her son in his final months. Afterward, Murray told me, another senator approached her and said, “We don’t tell personal stories on the floor of the United States Senate.”
COVID-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn t valued newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Opinions | Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn’t valued Kevin Sapere A year of the coronavirus pandemic has spurred a new debate about how we divide housework and child rearing. Stories have frequently emerged of children passing by fathers to demand more from overworked and overwhelmed mothers and women at their breaking point. Now, some are calling for recognition of work in the home from cooking to cleaning to child-care as work and part of the nation’s infrastructure. It is not surprising to see this framing. Since at least the late 19th century, feminists have worked to recognize and compensate the social and economic importance of housework. During the 1970s, the Wages for Housework campaign, a small international movement, argued that the labor done in the home was not just economically important but central to the functioning of capitalism.
Covid-19 has made housework more visible, but it still isn t valued washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.