Women and Work: The Numbers Are In

From the world of research on women in the workplace, two new interesting sets of data you may want to take note of.

The first comes from the U.S. Department of Labor, which just released 2009 earnings numbers [pdf] for men and women in the US. According to their report, women under 35 are, for the first time, earning more than 90% of what their male peers earn for full-time, salaried work.

That's great news -- and the hope is that this points towards a future where full parity is actually visible on the horizon. But troubling signs remain, including that women over age 35 continue to find themselves earning just 75% of what their male colleagues take home. That number has barely budged in decades, and it doesn't take too much effort to figure out why. As the New York Times suggested:

Women who are older are probably more likely to have dropped out of the labor force at some point to have children, and years spent away from the job reduce an employee’s potential pay. Plus, perhaps age 35 is around the time when employers start seriously looking at workers for potential promotion to higher-paying jobs, like management positions.

In other words, women over 35 continue to pay the price both for our country's lack of quality affordable childcare (which is generally why women feel the need to "drop out" of the workforce in the first place) and for the persistent sexism that keeps most women out of executive and managerial positions.

Will the creep towards parity among younger workers be enough to overcome both of those realities? Nobody yet seems sure. But another set of data, from the Center for American Progress, offers a few other hopeful signs about American attitudes on women and work.

This new study found "strong majorities of men and women agreeing that the rise of women in the workforce is a positive development for society -- a belief that crossed partisan, ideological, racial and ethnic, and even generational lines." Notably, it found particular support for the "rising status of women in the workplace" among the Latino population.

Among other trends, the poll suggests that Latinos are among the strongest proponents of new policies that improve work-life balance, are more progressive than other groups on the issue of women and politics, and are much more likely to say that it is important to them that their daughters have access to interesting careers.

In some ways this isn't too surprising. As our recent poll [pdf] with the Center for Community Change found, Latinas have been particularly hard hit by the global recession, with two-thirds saying their personal situation has been affected by the country’s economic situation and more than half reporting that they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past year. With that much economic insecurity hitting their communities, Latinos are likely looking for new solutions, wherever they may come from. And women are the most underutilized resource this country has to offer.

If we have any luck, folks in all communities will follow the lead of our Latino brothers and sisters and support policies that make it easier for women to enter, remain part of and lead in the workplace -- not to mention get paid fairly for the work they're doing. Forty plus years into the second wave of feminism, it seems like it's about time.

Arizona SB1070 Hits Court: Grantee Legal Momentum Joins Fight

As the restrictions on freedom created by Arizona's SB1070 immigration law become clear, including the potential effects on "women and familes subject to domestic abuse," we see signs of hope in the actions of our grantee partners. Legal Momentum is just one organization out of hundreds that is stepping up and speaking out for the rights of women and children in immigrant and undocumented communities. They have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit filed in Arizona federal court by the ACLU and others that argues SB1070 "undermines federal civil rights protections for women and their families" who are subject to violence and sexual abuse.

Over the years the federal government has codified laws that protect immigrants and families from arrest and deportation when they seek to report violence or attempt to access programs or services that are necessary for survival, including shelter, emergency medical services, and victim assistance.

The lawsuit argues that SB1070 is a direct infringement on these federally protected rights. Under SB1070 women and families who seek federally protected support services and programs will be in constant fear of the random search by law enforcement that could lead to incarceration or even deportation. Furthermore, the law no longer ensures protection to victims of violence and abuse, but instead punishes victims, producing an environment where fear of persecution accompanies any attempt to report a crime. According to the Legal Momentum, "In their pursuit of detaining undocumented immigrants, Arizona law enforcement is even allowed to stake out rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, locations even federal law enforcement are strongly cautioned against operating in."

Luckily for these women and all of us, advocates like Legal Momentum are going to court to ensure that women, children, families, immigrants and undocumented people retain the rights they have been granted over years of legal precedent and federal law.

On July 6th the New York Times reported that the Justice Department has initiated legal proceedings against SB1070.

No-Cost Contraceptives a Possibility Under New Health Insurance Rules

Each year, 3 million unplanned pregnancies occur in the United States. Though there are any number of complicated reasons why women find themselves facing parenthood unexpectedly, one of them is quite simple: the cost of contraception.

With the roll out of new health-care mandates in the fall, however, an opportunity may arise to finally take the cost burden out of the picture for many women. The overhaul will force new insurers to provide a number of preventive care services to women at no cost -- and according to a recent Washington Post article, activists for reproductive justice are working to ensure that contraception becomes one of the no-cost services every insured woman qualifies for.

The article, which quotes spokespeople from the National Partnership for Women and Families and the National Women's Law Center -- both Ms. Foundation grantees -- notes that even the $20 -$50 co-payments currently required by many health plans that do cover contraception can often prove too much for young and low-income women. The goal, then, would be to remove cost barriers from access to birth control on the consumer side (as is done with "well-baby" visits for infants and young children, for example), which also protects the bottom lines of insurers and employers -- by helping prevent pregnancies that cost thousands of dollars to cover, versus the relative pennies contraceptives cost.

Predictably, religious and other conservative groups are opposing the measure, some on the basis that, "Fertility is not a disease to be cured." The final decision about whether contraception will make the grade as a covered service will be based on the recommendations of the Health Resources and Services Administration, which may take up to a year to come to a decision -- but from where we stand it's a no brainer: no woman should find herself facing an unwanted pregnancy because she can't afford birth control. The government has it within its power to make sure this is never the case; asking insurers to provide full coverage for contraception strikes us, quite simply, as the right -- and rational -- thing to do.

Newsweek Crows: Women Will Rule the World

With so much economic talk circling around the myth of the "mancession" -- which casts men (incorrectly) as the primary victims of this recession -- it's rare to find an article that actually looks at where women stand in this world economy, and the contributions they will likely make in driving economic recovery here in the US and across the globe.

Which is why, despite their initial reliance on the same old myths that make men the "real" losers in this recession, we were so pleased to read Jessica Bennett and Jesse Ellison's piece in this week's Newsweek, enticingly titled Women Will Rule the World. The article offers a great deal of exciting evidence that women in the United States and other Western nations have a real shot at achieving economic parity over the coming decades, and offers some useful statistics about the economic power we currently wield. As the authors note:

American women are already the breadwinners or co-breadwinners in two thirds of American households; in the European Union, women filled 75 percent of the 8 million new jobs created since 2000. Even with the pay gap factored into the equation, economists predict that by 2024, the average woman in the U.S. and a number of rich European countries will outearn the average man. And she’ll be spending that money: American women are responsible for 83 percent of all consumer purchases; they hold 89 percent of U.S. bank accounts, 51 percent of all personal wealth, and are worth more than $5 trillion in consumer spending power -- larger than the entire Japanese economy.

Those are big numbers -- numbers worth celebrating and milestones worth committing ourselves to achieving in the coming years. And as the authors point out, there's also good news to be had on the global stage: in the developing world, the number of women attaining higher levels of education and entering the workforce is decidedly on the rise -- a significant fact not least of all because women are known to reinvest the vast majority of their income into community and family, providing one of the few viable pathways to ending global poverty as we know it.

But we're not there yet. For all of the happy news the authors have to share, it is also worth remembering that women remain at an economic disadvantage in just about every country in the world. Women and girls make up 70% of the more than 1 billion people living in poverty globally, and here in the US we still seem incapable of closing the pay gap that keep women earning 76 cents to every man's dollar.

Bennett and Ellison are certainly within bounds to conclude that achieving economic parity for women appears increasingly likely -- but it would be a mistake to assume that we've either reached the plane of inevitability or that these economic opportunities will come to all women in equal measure. Here in the US, factors like race, class, sexuality and disability will continue to play a role in determining economic power; despite this rosy forecast, the work to even the proverbial playing field must continue on.

Learn more about how the Ms. Foundation is working to ensure Economic Justice for women and families throughout the US.

Photo: by Elizabeth Rappaport, Women in Construction, Gulf Coast, Mississippi, December 2008

Cruel and Clueless: Conservatives on Vacation

In case you missed it this weekend, take a moment right now to read Paul Krugman's latest column in the New York Times, which looks at the current situation with joblessness in America, and the cruelty -- and "cluelessness" -- implicit in Congress' unwillingness to extend unemployment benefits for the millions who now are living without paychecks.

As Krugman points out, when it comes to alleviating the dire impact the economic crisis has had on millions of Americans, the conservatives have gotten it dead wrong, espousing beliefs that are both heartless and confused. Leaving town, refusing to pass extended unemployment before vacationing -- whether these moves were the result of cynical political calculations or a consequence of being completely out of touch with the terrible reality that millions of Americans now face, conservatives have clearly lost their moral compass.

Krugman cites some simple truths, which most Americans understand intuitively. First, cutting off benefits to the unemployed may make them increasingly desperate for work -- but they can't take jobs that aren't there (at present, there are five unemployed workers for every one job opening in the US economy).

Moreover, in Krugman's estimation, the amount of money these extensions would add to our national debt amounts to what he calls "penny-pinching" relative to the other issues that that have sunk us so far in the hole (see wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to start).

All of this refusal on the part of conservative lawmakers, as most of us can surmise, has a great deal to do with the fact that there's an election season looming in the near future. And many conservatives may be betting that saying "no" to more spending will cast them as the good guys in voters' eyes. But as our recent Community Voices on the Economy poll with the Center for Community Change makes clear, the majority of Americans aren't really thinking about the deficit. They're thinking about how to put food on the table. Our polling [pdf] shows that Americans are less concerned about the federal budget issues than they are about rising health care costs, the lack of jobs with family-sustaining wages, and the affordability of everyday expenses like food and gas.

In other words, if lawmakers are really interested in pandering to voters, they'd be better served by helping them meet their daily needs rather than cutting them off from the only source of support many have left: government aid.

Continuing unemployment insurance is not only good for the economy, it's the right thing to do in a country that has too often been dominated by the "everyone for themselves" ethos (more than 90% of those polled rejected this mentality as being of value today). Clearing up lawmaker confusion about how to effectively treat a strained economy, as Krugman aims to do, is vitally important. But it's also critical that lawmakers and laypeople alike understand how little popular support there is for the hands-off approach conservative lawmakers are peddling. In these times, people both want and need a government that is willing to take a strong hand on the economic front; they want a government that can acknowledge that unemployment has been uneven in its effects (recent statistics put levels at 12.4 percent among African-American women and 10.3 percent for Latinas, but just 7.4% for white women), and that is willing to champion policies that create jobs with decent wages to the benefit of low-income communities.

Across party lines, our poll shows that Americans believe in the government's ability to influence the economy. And what most of us want, though we may differ in the details, is for the government to use that influence to shore up this nation's economic future. Leaving millions of jobless workers out in the cold while lawmakers quibble, and then head out on vacation without a resolution, does nothing to further that cause.

So enough already with the party lines; in the real world, families are at their wits' end. Americans want -- and deserve -- far better than this. It's high time lawmakers started delivering.

Sara K. Gould
President and Chief Executive Officer
Ms. Foundation for Women

Arizona SB1070 Puts Abused Women, Reporters of Abuse, at Risk

Another entry into the debate about how SB1070 is going to affect the residents of Arizona -- particularly the women among them: According to representatives from the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which represents 35 domestic abuse centers and other organizations in the state, SB1070 is destined to jeopardize the safety of women and families subject to domestic abuse -- by dissuading them from seeking help for themselves and others out of fear that they might be deported as a result.

As Kendra Leiby, the Coalition's systems advocacy coordinator, told Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini,

The enactment of SB 1070 is absolutely going to prevent immigrant women from seeking domestic violence services. And not only are women going to be hesitant to leave abusive relationships, but they are afraid to make a call to report someone else's abuse.

So not only is the law likely to deprive women at risk of the ability to act to protect themselves, but it is also likely to prevent friends and neighbors from taking action on their behalf, because the consequence of reporting said abuse could be deportation -- even for the person who simply picked up the phone to save a woman's life.

Though the US does not have the kind of "good samaritan" laws that require people to act on behalf of others, as they do in other nations, this still constitutes a serious breakdown in our social contract -- and completely undermines the decades of work activists and organizers have dedicated to raising awareness about gender-based violence and the responsibility every single one of us has to bring the abuse of women to an end. If saving a life means putting your own family, and its livelihood, at risk, how many people can reasonably be expected to take action? The answer is far fewer than we need if we hope to make violence against women a thing of the past -- in the immigrant community or any other.

As July 29th (the day that the new law in scheduled to go into effect) draws nearer, more and more organizations and individuals from around the country are taking a public stand to denounce a bill that they see as not only discriminatory, but also life-threatening. To date, over 80 organizations -- including Ms. Foundation grantee Legal Momentum --have filed legal challenges to the bill, in support of a lawsuit initiated by the ACLU. And on July 29th, people from all over the nation will gather together in Arizona, and around the country, for a Day of Non-Compliance to protest this unjust law.

Stay tuned for more information about how to participate in upcoming events; in the meantime, check out the four actions Ms. Foundation grantee the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights suggests you take to stand up for the rights of Arizona's immigrant communities.

NYS Governor David Paterson Marks Passage of Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

Governor David A. Paterson

The New York State Assembly and Senate have agreed upon a final form for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and on 1 July Governor David A. Paterson released a statement of support:

"Today, both houses of the Legislature passed legislation that truly deserves to be called historic. It would make New York the first State in the nation to enshrine in law the basic rights of a class of workers that has historically and wrongfully been excluded from such protections: the domestic workers who care for our children, clean our homes, and provide the elderly with companionship. Their work is of incalculable value, yet our laws have failed to recognize it. This bill would change that, and serve as a model for such change on a national scale.

The bill passed today reflects an agreement reached earlier this week between my office and both houses of the Legislature. I am glad to have been a part of this process, and congratulate the sponsors, Assemblyman Keith Wright and Senator Diane Savino, who should feel justifiably proud of their achievement. Most of all, I must express my gratitude to the thousands of individual domestic workers who organized and fought for this legislation. They provide all of us with an example of how individuals can, through struggle and dedication, bring about positive change in the face of skepticism and doubt. This achievement belongs to them, and I will be pleased to sign it into law on their behalf." [Source]

We appreciate the work of the Governor and the New York State legislature and congratulate our grantee partners, especially Domestic Workers United, on their victory. We look forward to the expansion of these rights to domestic workers nationwide.

[See our previous coverage on the New York State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.]