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Care-Based Policies to Confront COVID-19

As COVID-19 ravages communities across the United States and throughout the globe, this crisis has made it clear just how deeply connected we all are, and how much we need policies that protect people’s health and well-being.

This is also a moment of opportunity to advance feminist, progressive policy rooted in care. This vision puts the health of people and the planet over profit, steers us towards a just transition to sustainable economies, and embraces connection and cooperation as we rebuild and reimagine our futures.

A progressive, feminist policy response to the pandemic must be rooted in an ethic of care. Here's what that looks like.

Revalue care work in our economy. Prioritize and resource the care work often done by women and girls. Provide universal healthcare, child care and paid sick and family leave, and stop pressuring other countries to cut social spending. Provide protections for domestic violence survivors. Increase funding for women's groups in the US and globally that provide services like hotlines, online counseling and safe housing for survivors.

Pass a Feminist Green New Deal. Fund a transition to a care economy and a regenerative food system. Create green jobs, including jobs for women and frontline communities. Apply a gender analysis to all climate policy.  Ensure global justice through aid and debt cancellation. Cancel the debt of Global South states. Reject neoliberal responses, like conditional IMF loans. Ramp up humanitarian aid and funding, especially for grassroots women-led organizations.

Advance a coordinated global response. Resume and increase funding to the World Health Organization. Cooperate with the global community and engage with multilateral channels, including to ensure global access to a vaccine.   Lift economic sanctions. Unconditionally lift economic sanctions that impede access to humanitarian aid, medicine and medical equipment. Increase aid to sanctioned communities.

Promote peace and reject militarized responses to the crisis. Reject efforts to increase the military budget or expand policing. Divest from the Pentagon and invest in health care and humanitarian aid.   Protect immigrants, refugees and people in detention. Secure the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, including access to health care and stimulus relief. End ICE raids and deportations. Release people in jail, prison and detention.

Protect reproductive rights. Oppose attempts to exploit the pandemic to restrict abortion access. Preserve reproductive health and rights in stimulus packages. Repeal the global gag rule.   Ensure disability justice. Center disability justice and the leadership of people with disabilities. Ensure health information is accessible, provide adequate protective equipment and guarantee social protection.

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Read our full brief: Care-based Policy Recommendations for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more about MADRE’s Feminist Policy Jumpstart here.

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