Hilary Nicholson, founding member, WMW Jamaica
What is one key change you believe needs to happen — whether in the workplace, community, or society — to create real progress for women, and how can you (or have you) contributed to making it happen?
A key change that’s needed is the re-valuing of so-called ‘women’s work’, the care work done in the home — childcare, cooking, washing, cleaning.
This work is what allows society to function: the whole workforce, and all our students, rely on being clothed and fed at home, before heading out to work. But so-called ‘women’s work’ is undervalued and unpaid or under-paid. Men seen it as demeaning, and when this work is done outside the home by hundreds of thousands of domestic workers, cleaners and service workers, it is low paid work. Why? Surely, when we entrust what we value most — our children, our homes — to another person, this work should be highly valued and well paid.
When traditional ‘women’s work’ becomes recognised as skilled work, and fully valued, women will be accorded the respect they deserve — by men, and by society as a whole. What’s more, since society depends so heavily on this care work, there should be state-funded childcare so that women, like men, have equal opportunities to contribute their many other skills to society. Indeed, society needs to benefit from women’s potential in all areas — in the creative, business, financial, political and other areas.
For many years, as part of WMW-Jamaica, I’ve been encouraging women and men to explore these ideas in gender-awareness training across Jamaica. The question of how we value each other is at the root of gender equality or inequality. I’ve run hundreds of workshops on what it means to be ‘woman’ or ‘man’, what kind of interpersonal relations we want, what kind of relations of power work best for us. It’s good to see people getting excited about their new understanding of how gender equality can benefit everyone – girls, boys, women and men.
Meet Hilary Nicholson
A gender equality advocate for over 30 years, Hilary Nicholson has been engaged with various aspects of the WE-Talk Project.
