Thread by @amy9979

I keep thinking of the unpaid labours of women.

Today Jason Schilling of the ATA demanded the province fund the contact tracing they demand from schools. Educators (not just teachers) are stretched very thin right now. #ableg #yyc #teachers #educators #nurses #alberta

Spending time on the phone daily, and affirming diligent contact tracing, for the sake of everyone’s health, takes a toll, considering all of their duties in addition. Going online, getting subs, organizing and reorganizing cohorts and busses and seating.

This is all necessary - and I e have to guide the kids through these transitions as safely as possible.
And today - A child died of Covid in Alberta.
I bet a lot of women cared for this child. Teaching is predominately a female profession. So is nursing, and supplemental and

complimentary health and hospital care. Females make up more than half of med school classes. I bet a lot of people had close contact with this child. I bet a lot of people cared for this child in a number of ways - by ensuring their safety, by ensuring their learning, by

attempting to make school engaging, by connecting them with friends and resources, ensuring their health, and their healing, and finally escorting them through every moment of pain until today- their tragic, unnecessary death.
Yes. It’s true.

Empaths tend to go into caring professions. Some of them are women. Some of them are parents or caregivers outside of work.
And these people care. They care about the kids to go on and on, over twenty months, and in my case, twenty years, in a harsh uncaring world.

Reaching out for equal access to services, for snacks when they’ve been forgotten, for mitts, for therapy, for hugs, for laughs, for healing.
And frankly, the province doesn’t care back. If you’re in a caring profession, you’re expected to be on duty

24-7 no matter what gets thrown at you. You’re expected to sacrifice your own right to health and happiness while people literally spit vitriol in your faces. When I worked in a public setting,

I begged to have the respect signs the hospitals were allowed to post when they were run by the crha. The province got rid of those. Still - we weren’t allowed those in schools. We could encourage it, but we couldn’t turn anyone away. And most of the time we didn’t want to.

It was just a way to ask for safe and respectful engagement. There are no security guards at schools willing to drag out an unruly parent, or member of the public. Instead - you just take it.
And then you go home to your own people after work, 2 - 5hours past the last bell, or

the shift because you were coaching or prepping or covering. And you read thag you’re supposed to do more with 24 hours in a day and that you’re supposed to sacrifice more and you’re supposed to allow for self-care and empathy and graciousness and be trauma-informed and caring

and let everyone in and keep the bad stuff out and all the while fearing a pay cut and knowing that your government left money on the table for child care, so you’ve got to figure that out too. And your own health care is going up. And your food costs are going up, too.

And everything costs more and your community isn’t a community anymore. And people tell you that if you really cared you’d do it all for free.

Money is worth more than time to most. It is worth more in the capitalist norms of our times. It is worth more in the

colonial patriarchy that still exists on our norms too. The labours of women - or empaths - or those with uteruses and those without - the female defined qualities are worthless to most people. Even though they take so much time and cost so much money and no one NO ONE

could plan financially, or emotionally, for this 20 month toll on our systems and our individual health.

And still - so many people cared for that kid. And tomorrow they will be a wreck. And I wonder if they will ever heal from their laboursl.