The COVID-19 crisis shines a spotlight on the gender gap for women everywhere, and especially in the U.S.
Women disproportionately hold jobs in industries with little to no paid family and sick leave, including fields that expose them to the virus. Two-thirds of tipped workers are women and many have few benefits, if any at all. Only 9.2% of low-wage workers can work from home.
Research the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island released earlier this year emphasized that women represent the vast majority of the workforce in the caregiving and childcare industries. For the most part, these jobs do not pay family-sustaining wages and often do not come with benefits such as paid family and sick leave beyond Rhode Island’s state mandate. Women of color, who make up 47% of the state’s health care support workforce, are significantly disadvantaged by caregiving-pay inequities. Seventy percent of black mothers don’t have access to paid family leave, despite 80% of them being the main breadwinner for their families.
We can lean into the new world order of this pandemic.
Edgar Villanueva, author of “Decolonizing Wealth,” notes that “when it comes to giving or getting access to money, white men are usually in charge and everyone else has to be twice [or more] as good to get half [or less] as much.” This is a moment to ensure as we dig out of the economic, political and public health disarray in the coming months, that we all spend some time at home reflecting on the system that put us here in the first place. We hope more leaders, influencers and donors take some time to ask themselves the following questions:
• Are private and public teams making decisions about the outbreak response representative of the intersectional diversity of our community?
• Are we gathering data on how the virus is specifically impacting women and people of color, both physically and economically?
• What supports and services should be directed toward those who provide formal and home-based care so these individuals and their families can be safe and economically secure?
• Are frontline workers such as nurses, health aides, in-home nurses, child care workers, grocery store employees and critical manufacturing workers being fairly compensated and supported now and will they be in the future?
Our future will be challenging. Working women and their families already struggle to stay healthy, pay bills while taking care of children out of school, elders and other family members who are vulnerable to COVID-19. Our leaders have two choices: to keep doing the same things and expect different outcomes or take this opportunity to reset who we value in our society. We can lean into the new world order of this pandemic and approach it as a long-neglected gender and equity issue. The Women’s Fund of Rhode Island stands ready to share our expertise in intersectional, gender-lens equity for those who seek advice. You can learn more about our services at www.wfri.org.
Kelly Nevins is the executive director of the nonprofit Women’s Fund of Rhode Island.
