How can we resolve this apparent conundrum that care work is valuable, important and increasingly in demand yet is too often is rewarded with low wages and associated with poor working conditions and long hours?
Immigration
How Europe is Failing Women and Girls on the Migration Route
Oumo, from sub-Saharan Africa, was forced to trade sex twice for a fake passport and passage to Turkey on her way to Greece. Noor, a pregnant mother of two, was freezing and in severe pain as she waited for a train near the Serbian-Croatian border, unknowingly sitting just meters away from medical services. The journey […]
Women and the Refugee Crisis: An Update from Lebanon
Reprinted with permission from Global Fund for Women “The situation in the [Shatila refugee] camp is just absolutely terrible. We have a lot of problems—health problems, environmental problems, security problems…The woman is the one suffering the most, and the children.” — Nada Al Ajouz With the past month’s deadly attacks in Paris, Beirut and Baghdad, […]
For Undocumented Women Seeking Reproductive Healthcare, Policing and Politics Create a Maze of Barriers
Reprinted with permission from Bitch In September 2015, an undocumented woman arrived at a healthcare clinic outside of Houston for a routine follow-up exam. Blanca Borrego handed a false driver’s license to the receptionist at the Memorial Hermann women’s clinic upon check-in and waited to be called into the examination room with her two daughters […]
The Syrian Refugee Struggle No One’s Talking About
Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story about how migrants rushing to cross Europe, though resourceful and adaptable, are facing a new threat they can’t evade: winter. But there is another thing that the girls and women among the migrants cannot avoid, and that is their monthly menstruation. Few among us would grab extra underwear and sanitary pads […]
Meet the Women Supplying Refugees with Menstrual Products
Imagine being uprooted from your community and having to flee for your life with just a few of your belongings. Imagine that, on top of having to navigate such hardship, you’re also menstruating. Where would you access pads, tampons, liners? It’s not exactly something that those managing refugees camps would think to prioritize when already attempting to provide […]
Strawberry Fields (Not) Forever: An Immigrant Daughter’s Story
Eunice Gonzalez-Sierra had a very typical May this past year. She walked across the graduation stage at UCLA and accepted her undergraduate degree in Chicana/o Studies with a double minor in Labor and Workplace Studies and Gender Studies. Then she scheduled a graduation photo shoot with her family afterwards and, like many grads, posted the photos to […]
Why 100 Women Just Marched 100 Miles
On Tuesday, 100 women from various backgrounds, faiths and nationalities completed their 100-mile walk to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Their pilgrimage, which began last Tuesday at an immigrant detention center in York, Pennsylvania, was organized by a coalition of groups to send a clear message: Our […]
Stand With Nan-Hui: Stop the Deportation of a Domestic Violence Survivor
Nan-Hui Jo, the undocumented single mother of a six-year-old daughter, is currently behind bars at the Yolo County jail in Northern California. She has been separated from her daughter, Vitz Da, for seven months and is facing deportation and prison time. Her crime: fleeing the U.S. with her daughter in 2009 to escape her physically […]