Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
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February 16, 2022 |
Right now, we face critical challenges to women's equality, both in the U.S. and around the world—but it can be hard to keep up. In this weekly roundup, find the absolute need-to-know news for feminists.
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BY MARTHA BURK | Economy defies omicron, adds 467K jobs in January, the Associated Press headline practically screamed on January 5. Good news indeed for a U.S. economy battered by coronavirus since late 2019. But virtually hidden in the hype was some not-so-good news for women: 27 times more men than women joined the labor force last month.
A peek behind the curtain of job numbers shows us why. It’s been clear from the start of the pandemic that women, most notably women of color, lost far more jobs than men. Lack of childcare has been a primary reason. When daycare and schools shut down, it’s a straight-up economic calculation in a two-earner family for the lower earner (guess who?) to quit and take care of kids. In a single-parent household (again, predominately women of color) there’s no decision at all. Not only are daycare and school workers—overwhelmingly female—out of jobs, so are the women further up the ladder who depended on them in order to go to work.
Other jobs dominated by women were also on the forefront of losses—work in the leisure and hospitality sector like restaurants, bars, travel and tourism, lodging and recreation took big hits at the height of the pandemic. And while women make 52.7 percent of that workforce, they gained less than 35 percent of those jobs added in January. The numbers were even bleaker for women in the education and health sector—100 percent of the job gains went to men.
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What we're reading: |
We know it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. That's why going forward, we'll provide a weekly roundup of the stories we think are important that Ms. may not have covered. Here's what we're reading this week:
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Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on Apple Podcasts + Spotify.
We're kicking off our Road to Confirmation series with a deep dive into President Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. Who are the most likely candidates? What credentials and experience would they bring to the role? What distinguishes the speculated short-list candidates from each other? And if confirmed, how would a Biden nominee influence the Court?
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