This on-line multi-disciplinary conference aims to foster dialogue about the connection between public health crises and the gendered caregiving obligations of women and girls in the context of low and lower middle-income countries. The lack of well-developed and adequately funded social protection systems, including national health systems, has profound implications. When national health systems are fragmented and under-funded, *and* the bulk of health care resources are channeled towards certain diseases only, poorer populations are unable to get health care for a variety of other illnesses. That has gendered implications because the responsibility of tending to unwell persons who cannot afford medical care usually falls on the shoulders of their female relatives. Those women and girls from low-income households have to perform their ‘normal’ familial carework*, *work outside the home for pay, *and* take care of those unwell family members.
This multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine the public health and ethico-political significance of fragmented and under-resourced national health systems on the gendered familial care work responsibilities of women and girls from low-income households. A central theme of the conference will be the need of state actors and non-state actors (within nations and internationally) to support and bring about structural, systemic changes that will improve the lives of women and girls from low-income households.
The larger goal of the conference is to foster conversation between researchers, practitioners, and activists from a variety of contexts and fields who are concerned about those issues…more