Why Are More Women Living in Poverty?

Continuing to honor Women's History Month, here's a post from Lulu Marin, a brilliant anthropologist friend of mine:

Women face a much greater risk of poverty for a number of inter-related reasons, including:

Women are paid less than men, even when they have the same qualifications and work the same hours. Women who work full time earn only 77 percent of what men make—a 22 percent gap in average annual wages. Discrimination, not lack of training or education, is largely the cause of the wage gap. Even with the same qualifications, women earn less than men. In 2007, full time, year round female workers aged 25 to 32 with a bachelor's degree were paid 14 percent less than men.

A woman works as a waitress at a diner. Women are often tracked into “pink-collar” jobs that typically pay less than jobs in industries that are male-dominated.

Women are segregated into low paying occupations, and occupations dominated by women are low paid. Women are tracked into “pink-collar” jobs such as teaching, child care, nursing, cleaning, and waitressing, which typically pay less than jobs in industries that are male-dominated. In 2007, nearly half—43 percent—of the 29.6 million employed women in the United States were clustered in just 20 occupational categories, of which the average annual median earnings were $27,383.[1]

Women spend more time providing unpaid caregiving than men. Women are more likely than men to care for children and elderly or disabled family members. One study found that 69 percent of unpaid caregivers to older adults in the home are women. Because combining unpaid caregiving with paid work can be challenging, women are more likely to work part time or take time out of the workforce to care for family. Twenty-three percent of mothers are out of the workforce compared to just 1 percent of fathers.

Women are more likely to bear the costs of raising children. When parents are not living together, women are more likely to take on the economic costs of raising children. Eight in ten custodial parents are women, and custodial mothers are twice as likely to be poor as custodial fathers.

Pregnancy affects women’s work and educational opportunities more than men’s. The economic costs associated with pregnancy are more significant for women. Unplanned and mistimed pregnancies in particular can result in the termination of education and keep women from getting and sustaining solid employment.

Domestic and sexual violence can push women into a cycle of poverty. Experiencing domestic or sexual violence can lead to job loss, poor health, and homelessness. It is estimated that victims of intimate partner violence collectively lose almost 8 million days of paid work each year because of the violence perpetrated against them by current or former husbands, boyfriends, or dates.

 

Half of the cities surveyed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors identified domestic violence as a primary cause of homelessness.

 

-Lulu Marin

 

[1] Found online from various sources (citations to come). For more info check out a great book about women's issues: BITCHFest.

Comments

[Emily]

I would like to add "seamstress" or "sewing" to your list of underpaid mostly women.
Sewing is a semi-skilled profession, that is way under paid.
Compare "driving a truck" a MAN'S job and sewing- custom curtains,quilts,auto seats, ect. we are Not given the same "statis" or pay as if a man was doing the job.
Nurses have come a long way = now there are a lot more men entering the feild of nurseing.
My daughter is a nurse, with a stay at home dad (laid off construction worker) He is going bald fast trying to keep up with their 1 and 2 year old children. This is the hardest job he has ever had.
And, for him to go back to work, they need affordable daycare.
The hardest job, that directly affects the overall health of their children, has to be at a low enough pay scale for them to make it worth going to work. So, my daughter, or any woman, will end up forgoing her job to care for what is really important- her children.Because that is how it has always been.

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