Call it the Great She-cession.
While Covid-19 has wreaked havoc not only with millions of Americans”™ lives ”” there were more than 173,000 deaths as of Aug. 18 ”” and the country”™s economy, data shows that it has had a much more severe impact on the nation”™s female workers than it has on their male counterparts.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women lost almost 11 million jobs via layoffs or furloughs between February and May. Although 2.9 million of those jobs were regained in June, many of them are in the hospitality sector ”” one of the most susceptible to the changes in consumer behavior during the Covid era.
The situation in Connecticut has been no better. When the economic effects of the pandemic were first seen by the state”™s Department of Labor ”” during the week of March 15 ”” 50,109 females filed for unemployment, compared with 28,464 males. The week of March 22 found 39,331 females and 32,101 males filling; and the week of March 29 it was 32,753 women against 27,158 men. Since then, with some exceptions, the female numbers are higher than male figures.
In addition, although women make up just under half of the U.S. workforce, they represent nearly two-thirds of the workforce in the 40 lowest-paying jobs, according to a report by the National Women”™s Law Center (NWLC). “In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolds, it is these women and their families who are likely to be hit first and hardest by the recession that is sure to follow,” it predicted.
“Women are typically in the types of jobs that have been the most hard hit,” affirmed Fran Pastore, president and CEO of the Woman”™s Business Development Council (WBDC) in Stamford. In addition to hospitality, she cited the childcare, home health care, restaurant and entertainment sectors, “where the biggest numbers of businesses are struggling to come back.”
Further complicating the situation is that “We continue to live in an environment where women with small children work, but they still have the prime responsibility for home life,” said Amanda Moras, an associate professor of sociology and the assistant dean of student success for Sacred Heart University”™s College of Arts and Sciences.
“So they really have two jobs ”” it”™s just that the work at home is unpaid,” Moras said. “And employers know this. Women are often treated as a liability in the workplace. Since they”™re the ones usually responsible for their children and families ”” and kids do get sick ”” they get treated as ”˜unreliable.”™”
Although flextime and, especially with the coronavirus, working from home options have become more acceptable even before the pandemic, Moras said women are still getting short shrift.
More employers “need to stop scheduling meetings and start scheduling deadlines,” she said. “Female employees may not have three hours to sit in a meeting, but they can log out at 3:30 or 4 to get ready for the kids coming home from school and their husband returning from work, and then go back online afterward.”
GENDER PAY GAP EVEN WORSE FOR MINORITIES
The gender pay gap of course is nothing new, Moras said, though it should still be sobering. According to the most recent Census Bureau data, in 2018 women earned on average 82 cents for every $1 earned by men. However, those figures nosedive when one drills down to ethnicity: Black women earned 62 cents, while Hispanic/Latinos earned just 54 cents.
“Black women and Latinas continue to be hit hard by the economic crisis,” the NWLC announced earlier this month. “While the overall unemployment rate dropped to 10.2% in July, almost one in seven Black women (13.5%) an Latinas (14%) remained unemployed.”
Pastore said she is all too aware of the situation, noting that many of Connecticut”™s roughly 4,500 childcare facilities are home-based and run by women of color.
“Those businesses have been very much affected by the Covid crisis,” she said. “Many of them were already operating on thin margins, and many have closed down for good.”
As of July 31, less than 48% of Connecticut”™s licensed childcare programs were open. Those that remain open, face the challenge of working within reduced group-size restrictions. Along with increased cleaning supply and PPE costs, Pastore said, leave the state in an unhappy situation where there already was a shortage of about 52,000 childcare slots.
“With schools closed, it”™s not just a matter of missed educational opportunities, but ”˜What the hell do I do with my kid?”™” Moras said. “We don”™t have universal childcare like some other countries do.”
The WBDC announced on Aug. 13 a new partnership with the state Office of Early Childhood. The agency”™s CTCARES for Child Care Businesses program is designed to address immediate, short term, and longer term opportunities to stabilize programs and grow capacity through funding, training, and technical assistance.
The WBDC is weaving business best practices throughout the program to ensure that those businesses have free access to business experts and individualized support.
“These are unprecedented and hazardous times for the childcare industry,” said OEC Commissioner Beth Bye. “This WBDC partnership, along with our regional accreditation projects, and regional family child care network support, creates an infrastructure to help early childhood programs survive and thrive for children and families in Connecticut.”
“The goal,” Pastore said, “is to help those businesses not only survive, but thrive.”
The WBDC is also helping business owners pivot where possible to take advantage of the new realities. As an example, Pastore said restaurants and food trucks could explore refocusing their efforts on catering as the pandemic continues to last.
The organization helped more than 3,500 people with “every single aspect of business development” during the first 13 weeks of the crisis ”” four times the number of people it normally sees over a given 12-month period, Pastore said. “We”™ve seen it all and done it all.”
As for the jobs that have been lost, Moras said she wasn”™t sure if the majority of them would be coming back.
“When you”™re looking at the service industry, tourism and the like, I just don”™t know,” she said. “For married heterosexual couples, it”™s tough to say, ”˜Maybe we can both work part time and take care of the kids that way,”™ when you can only get health benefits if you”™re full time. Then it becomes a question of, ”˜One of us needs to significantly cut our hours or leave our job entirely,”™ and you”™re ultimately going to choose the person who makes less money ”” who”™s often the wife.
“It”™s a cyclical thing,” Moras continued, “and (the gender-based pay gap) just exacerbates it.”
Asked what she advises her students as they start thinking about jobs post-graduation, Moras said that ”” in addition to hoping that the Covid crisis is solved soon ”” the value of a liberal arts education is that it helps hone a number of skills.
“We like to say that we”™re not prepping you for your first job, but for your 10th job,” she said. “A lot of the jobs in 20 years probably don”™t even exist right now, given how technology keeps evolving. A year ago, could anyone imagine that telehealth would be as big as it is now?”
