On International Women’s Day, Reflecting on the Status of Women at Home, by Julie Kay

The Ms. Foundation for Women is celebrating Women’s History Month with a blog carnival featuring the voices and profiles of women across the country. This Month of Action is generously supported by our friends in Seattle.

Julie Kay, Senior Strategist, Advocacy and Policy, Ms. Foundation for Women

In comparison to the adversity faced by women worldwide, women in the U.S. might think, “What do we have to complain about?”

The truth is that, after decades of progress in advancing women’s rights, we still have miles to go in our own country. This International Women’s Day offers an opportunity to reflect on the status of women at home and commit to making the U.S. a leader in advancing all women’s rights.

As the Ms. Foundation for Women’s new report, “More to Do: The Road to Equality for Women in the United States,” concludes, we are at a critical time for women in the U.S. today:

• Our economy marginalizes women and consistently relegates women of color to the lowest-paying jobs.
• Quality, flexible and affordable child care is inaccessible to working families, particularly those headed by women.
• Control over women’s bodies is legislated by people who, as we saw throughout the debate over “Obamacare,” prioritize political posturing over women’s health.
• Gender-based violence remains a prevalent and complex problem in the U.S., despite important inroads such as the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. 

On International Women’s Day, let’s set high goals for the U.S. and challenge ourselves to make this a place in which a woman may obtain justice and equality regardless of her race, socioeconomic status, age or immigration status. The U.S. should be a beacon of rights, rather than a place that offers privilege to some while turning a blind eye to others’ inequality.

Today is a chance for us all to celebrate our victories on behalf of women in the U.S. but also to commit to deepening these rights and expanding them to all women. We need to repeal barriers to living-wage jobs and enable quality child care, abolish disparities in women’s health care by increasing enrollment and coverage through the Affordable Care Act, and working to end violence against women and sexual abuse of children.

International Women’s Day reminds us of the importance of striving toward a world in which all women are able to obtain their full human rights.

Ms. Foundation Grantee Speaks Out on Failure of TANF Extension

We've written a number of times on this blog about the importance of TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) and the critical need for the Senate to pass an extension to the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund, which allocated federal funds to create temporary jobs during the economic crisis. We're sad to report that last week, the Senate failed to pass the measure, falling just three votes short of the 60 needed to extend these benefits.

Read more »

Take Action: Join Jobs with Justice to End Unemployment Crisis

Ms. Foundation grantee Jobs with Justice is calling on the government to end the national crisis of joblessness: On Wednesday, September 15, they're holding a Jobs Emergency National Day of Action with events in 30 cities nationwide, demanding that members of Congress (and their corporate backers) explain how they plan to fill the jobs gap and "put America back to work."

With more than 15 million Americans currently unemployed, it's time to declare a "state of emergency" on our national jobs situation, says Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a national network of labor, community, student and faith organizations working to build a broader global movement for economic and social justice. As part of the day of action, JwJ is demanding:

• Full and Fair Employment. Congress must recognize the jobs emergency and pass legislation like the Local Jobs for America Act; extend the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families emergency fund jobs subsidies program; extend unemployment insurance; heed President Obama’s call to renew the countries’ infrastructure and create a national infrastructure bank; and pass other bills that will create jobs, protect public services, and help get our economy going again.
  
• Financial Sector Accountability. Wall Street must pay their fair share for the crisis they created. A tax on financial speculation could raise $200-$500 billion every year.

Join Jobs with Justice and their allies as they stand up for a recovery that puts everyday Americans back to work. Find an action taking place in a city near you, and read Sarita Gupta's recent commentary on the jobless crisis, which ran on Common Dreams.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Rappaport

Economy Worsens for Single Mothers, Women of Color

New numbers on the economy are proving that when times get hard, women are hit hardest.

The Obama Administration is busy touting that overall unemployment held steady in July, at 9.5% (or 14.6 million Americans). [The New York Times's Bob Herbert reports that even these numbers vastly understate the proportions of the crisis.]  But that number masks some troubling facts about who's continuing to lose jobs, even as others gain them. The ones losing out, in this case, happen to be women -- particularly single mothers and women of color.

On their Womenstake blog, Ms. Foundation grantee the National Women's Law Center reports:

Unemployment for women who head families shot up to 13.4 percent in July from 12.1 percent in June. This marks the highest unemployment rate for this particularly vulnerable group since the recession began in December 2007 and the highest rate in over 25 years.
Unemployment among African-American women jumped from 11.8 percent in June to 12.9 percent in July. The situation was similar for Hispanic women, whose unemployment rate increased by 1.1 percentage points to 12.1 percent in July, marking this group's highest unemployment rate since 1986.

Notably, 62 percent of the jobs lost in July were lost by women. (There's that pesky "mancession" for you again.)

Though government officials are likely to avoid discussing these facts, the people withing these communities have long known how precariously placed they are. As our Community Voices on the Economy Poll found in June, two-thirds of Latinas say that their personal situation has been affected by the country’s economic situation, and more than half report that they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past year. Meanwhile, 55% of African-American women report that they've been worried about the economy for five years or more.

If only the people actually running the economy had been worried for that long.

Economic Crisis Hits Transgender Community Hard

Though it is true that each of us has been affected in some way by the Great Recession, it is also increasingly evident that some groups are feeling greater pains than others thanks to this economic crisis.

One group hit hard by the surge in US unemployment is the transgender community. Though rarely highlighted in media reports that parse the uneven employment rates across class and education level, transgender people are "twice as likely to be unemployed as other Americans, and face even higher rates of unemployment if they are people of color" -- making them especially vulnerable as the job markets remain weak.

But as an article on Women's eNews points out, it's not just the lack of jobs that poses problems for the transgender community. Dealing with government agencies also brings special challenges: because state and federal agencies remain inconsistent in determining how and whether an individual is allowed to change his or her sex identification on official paperwork, many transgendered people find themselves caught in a proverbial "no man's land" when it's time to file for unemployment. Their Social Security card might list them as one gender, while their driver's license might list them as another. In many cases that leads to an uncomfortable outing while applying for state aid; in other cases it can cause outing with potential employers -- and sometimes cost individuals their jobs entirely.

Among the outstanding organizations leading the fight to address the inequalities faced by the transgender community is the Audre Lorde Project. Their Welfare Justice Campaign, which "sought to address the rampant transphobia, discrimination, and harassment that Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people in New York City face when seeking to access welfare/public assistance" is one example of how activist organizations are now winning battles to secure the rights of transgender individuals.

Another is Ms. Foundation grantee Southerners on New Ground (SONG). This Atlanta-based organization works with the LGBTQ community in the southern region to build the power of marginalized groups and organize across lines of race, class, culture, gender and sexuality through its unique organizing school model.

These are organizations that are doing things right for the LGBTQ community, and they have great lessons to teach about the power of grassroots organizing. If little else comes out of this economic crisis, perhaps it will at least help us learn that the vulnerabilities of diverse communities are unique and nuanced -- and require, at best, the input of the people experiencing the problem to develop viable solutions. That's the kind of change we can believe in.

Fixing the Jobs Crisis Demands More Than $100 Billion

Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change explores why a plan for job creation must be larger than $100 billion. In the Huffington Post he writes:

It's not enough when you have the worst unemployment crisis in 70 years with nearly 16 million unemployed Americans and another 9.3 million underemployed. It's not enough when according to economic forecasts the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent through 2011. It's not enough when 8 million jobs have been completely removed from payrolls since the start of the recession, nearly a million more than previously estimated.

Read the full article, When is $100 Billion Not Enough?.

Women of Color Policy Network Releases Study on Race, Gender, and the Recession: Job Creation and Employment

Our colleague, C. Nicole Mason, executive director of the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has authored a sobering report, the first in a four-part series on the impact of the economic crisis and recession on women of color, their families and their communities.

The series focuses on effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the first report focuses on job creation and employment. It finds of the nearly 4 million jobs created or saved through the Act, only 917,675 will go to African-Americans and Latinos. An additional 1.7 million jobs would have to be created and go directly to Blacks and Latinos to cut the unemployment rate in those communities to Administration's projected national rate of 6.5 percent by 2010.

The study also finds:

• Of the jobs created or saved, African-American and Latino women will receive an estimated 420,991 and African-American and Latino men will receive 496,684


• African-Americans and Latinos are under-represented in the industries targeted through the Reinvestment Act. Black and Latino men comprise 5.1 percent and 8.4 percent of those working in targeted industries. Black and Latino women make up 5.9 percent and 5.6 of those working in targeted industries


• Of the targeted industries and occupations identified as green, African-Americans and Latinos comprise less than 25 percent of those employed


• Although women will receive nearly half of the jobs that will be created through the Act, they are under-represented in higher-wage occupations and in targeted industries


• White women will receive an estimated 1,377,879 jobs through the Reinvestment act; a figure nearly 70 percent higher than for African-American and Latino women combined

C. Nicole Mason says, "During this time of great economic need and distress, it is important to consider the most vulnerable in our society. To ensure that everyone recovers successfully, the Administration will need to dedicate significant and additional resources to communities hit hardest and to those with the least safety nets."

Download the full report [pdf].
Download an executive summary [pdf].

Update
See also: Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules