Title: Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits-Women's Work, Women's Poverty
Author: Albelda, Randy; Tilly, Chris
Source: Sojourner, 22(12):14+, August 1997. ISSN: 0191-8699
Publisher: Copyright © 1997, Sojourner Feminist Institute

Women's lives have changed dramatically over the last 40 years. Women find themselves in jobs, educational institutions, and public offices they never would have dreamed of in the 1950s. New social freedoms and economic opportunities mean that a woman living without a man is no longer considered an oddity.
But other things haven't changed so much. The U.S. economic and political system has yet to catch up to the social and cultural strides women have made. For one thing, women are still primarily responsible for providing or finding child care and taking care of domestic chores. This means that women are increasingly doing both kinds of work--unpaid work in the home and work for pay. More and more women--and especially more and more mothers--are in the paid labor force. Two out of every three mothers have a paid job outside the home.
          In 1947, a woman was only 38 percent as likely to be working or looking for work as a man. By 1996, that percentage had more than doubled to 79 percent. Of course, these patterns differed by race: for example, Black women have always been more likely to work than white or Latina women. But the overall trend prevails across racial boundaries. Black women were 54 percent as likely to be in the paid labor force as Black men in 1954, and 88 percent as likely in 1996.
          More work for women has not translated into equal pay. Women make two-thirds of what men do for every hour they work--67 cents on the dollar. Further, because women work fewer hours a year than men do mostly because of family-care responsibilities--women's average annual earnings stand at one-half those of men.
          To be sure, over the last two decades men's earning power has declined--especially for men who are not in relatively high levels of management. The days in which the majority of middle-class men could support an entire family on their paycheck are pretty much gone. Middle-class women's entry into the labor force is partly due to an increased desire to have more economic independence and partly out of financial necessity. In the 1990s, women's unequal pay coupled with the decline in men's income give both men and women something to be angry about!
          Even though women are now more likely to work for pay, many do not earn enough to support themselves and a family. For the growing number of families headed by women only, the end result is financial disaster. In 1995, almost two out of every five people who were poor lived in single-mother families. This is more than twice the rate in 1955.

She Works Hard for the Money
Let's take a closer look at women's wage gap. Using 1993 data we found that overall, women average $10.46 per hour to men's $13.32 (we limit our discussion here to the earnings of men and women who were the primary wage earners in their families). And even though women in the workforce are actually slightly more educated than men, on average no matter how far they scale the educational ladder their pay lags behind men's. For example, women who dropped out of high school earn only one dollar an hour more than men who don't even have a first-grade education. A female high school graduate earns less than a male high school dropout. Women with a Master's degree still don't catch up with their male counterparts who hold only a Bachelor's degree.
          Again looking at primary adults in families, we found that women with children on an hourly basis (i.e., adjusting for the total number of hours logged in) earn somewhat less than those without children and a lot less than men, and they work many fewer hours than women without children. Men, meanwhile, earn several dollars per hour more than women regardless of whether they are married or have children, and work many more hours.
          Race matters as well. Black and Latina women earn less than white women, regardless of marital status or presence of children. Black and Latino men also suffer a wage penalty. Within every racial and ethnic group, women earn lower wages than men, and in most cases women with children earn less than other women, with single mothers usually earning the least of all.
          One of the most important reasons for these wage disparities is that men and women work in different jobs. Despite the inroads women have made over the past twenty years, close to half of all employed women work in clerical and service jobs, compared to one-sixth of men. Women have entered managerial and professional ranks, and this helps account for the reduction of the gender gap from the mid-1970s onward. But within these upper-echelon jobs, women remain disproportionately concentrated among lower-level managers and lower-paid professionals (such as nurses and teachers, rather than doctors and lawyers). Women in the labor market continue to encounter both "glass ceilings" that block upward mobility and "sticky floors" that crowd them into low-paid jobs.
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The High Cost of Children
Another reason why women continue to earn less than men is children. Women with children tend to work fewer hours and their hourly wages pay for it. Raising young children used to be widely considered a full-time job. With women's desire and need to enter the labor force, raising small children is now part of the "double day" for many women and increasingly for men. That is, women work outside the home for pay and then do a considerable amount of unpaid work. To accomplish this, women (and more and more men) need jobs with a great deal of flexibility. Women with young children typically work part-time and try to find jobs located close to their child-care provider. But flexibility usually comes at a cost--lower wages and fewer benefits.
          Part-time work pays about 40 percent less per hour than a full-time job, and about half of that wage gap persists even for similar workers in similar jobs. So a 20-hour-a-week job does not usually pay half as much as a comparable 40-hour-a-week job--instead, the average part-time job offers less than one-third the weekly wages of a full-time job. Further, part-time jobs almost never come with fringe benefits. About 22 percent of part-timers receive health insurance as a benefit, compared to 78 percent of full-time workers. Only 26 percent of part-time workers get pension coverage, whereas 60 percent of their full-time counterparts enjoy such coverage.
          Shorter hours on the job are not the only flexibility parents need in jobs. Typically, parents need to find work and child care close to each other. This limits the pool of available jobs. In a recent Los Angeles area survey, 30 percent of women reported that in the last year, child care constraints had caused them to not look or apply for a job; another 10 percent turned down a job they had been offered, and 6 percent quit or were fired from a job due to child care issues.
          Even mothers who have successfully made their way into full-time, high-status jobs face significant barriers. Full-time jobs--at least those that pay well--often assume a "wife" at home doing large amounts of unpaid work. When professional women who do not have "wives" cannot work more than 40 hours a week, they often find themselves shunted aside to the so-called "mommy track." Women's responsibilities at home, in addition to gender discrimination at the workplace, limit their ability to be promoted to the highest ranks of their workplaces. They hit the glass ceiling. Although women make up 46 percent of the workforce, only 5 percent of senior managers in Fortune 2000 industrial and service compares are women.
          In the United States, individual families--in particular mothers--bear the costs of having and raising children. Until 1993, the United States had no national parental leave policy. Even now, the law only stipulates that employers with 50 or more employees must allow parents to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave from their jobs. Many workplaces slip below this law's threshold: nationwide, 43 percent of the workforce works in establishments employing 50 or fewer workers.
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The fewer hours and lower earnings of women with children are one reflection of the growing tug-of-war between work and family. As more and more women work outside the home, families face escalating burn-out. For families with children especially, important and unavoidable duties must be performed for households to function. This all takes time--and money. And despite the fact that work done in the home has no market value when family members do it, it is extremely valuable work. If the work is not done adequately, neglected family members pay the price first, and often society ends up paying as well.

Everyone Depends on Women's Labor
On the whole, women's steady increased participation in the paid labor force over the last 50 years has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, in a culture that puts such a high premium on earning ability, consumerism, and economic independence, the ability to earn income affords U.S. working women more respect and choices than ever before. Women's wholesale entrance into the labor market has broken down many of the barriers between men and women: it is more common to see women and men as equals at work, and for both men and women to share the work of caring for children. On the other hand, the increase in women's labor participation means that more women work the "double day" and raises expectations that all women can and should work. For the first time in U.S. history, most childless women can earn enough on their own to support themselves without the help of a father or a husband. However, because women's wages are still lower than men's (on average), they usually cannot support themselves and others without another adult's income. It now typically takes two adult workers to support children.
          But with everybody working, who's supposed to care for children and other relatives that need our care? Neither business nor government has accommodated the social revolution in women's economic roles by reducing the work week or providing day care for workers or child subsidies for all families, regardless of their structure. Instead, families, businesses, and government continue to depend on women's unpaid labor.
          At the same time, both businesses and the government have used the expectation that women will work for wages to squeeze more work for less pay out of families. Businesses rely on that expectation to keep both men's and women's wages down. Men's falling wages (falling, that is, after adjusting for inflation) have been made up by family members--typically women --working more hours. But when women enter the labor force to offset men's lost wages, this action accommodates the lower wages. Ironically, the corporate structure has absorbed many of women's new-found gains, resulting in a new family wage system in which two adult earners are the standard. The result is an acute family speed-up: like Alice in Wonderland, families must work harder to stay in the same place. To be sure, the previous system (the single male breadwinner) had its problems, but it at least afforded certain numbers of men and women the time to take care of their families.
          Meanwhile, politicians have exploited the expectation that women will join the paid labor force, using it to justify slashing government aid to poor single mothers. Since there already are not enough jobs for everyone who wants one, the idea that all single mothers should and can find jobs is hardly realistic. But nonetheless, the new rules of the game either reduce single mothers' government-provided compensation for the work of caring for their children, or require them to perform additional work--or both. And because other mothers, especially those in low-income families, have to do paid work to support their families, it has made them resent the poorest of mothers who receive direct aid, fueling government cuts in welfare.
          For working women (and increasingly men) with children, neither the job structure nor the government provides much support for the time-consuming and important work of caring for families. The bottom line is that women are expected to work, but their labor-market opportunities remain severely limited. Caring for children and other family members imposes a steep cost in time and money. The gender gap in wages continues to yawn. And in the sputtering U.S. economy, unemployment and a shortage of good jobs still stymie many job-seekers--and will do so for the foreseeable future. These labor market hurdles loom large for all women, but they loom largest of all for single mothers.

What Might Be Done?
While resolving the work-family crisis will by no means be easy, a first step is recognizing that the mismatch between family and corporate structure is not the fault of individual family members. The goal is to improve the standard of living for all while at the same time achieving more economic equity. This is not an impossible task, as our European counterparts have shown. Changes in how we organize families, jobs, and government programs are all in order. We need to:          1) Create an income-maintenance system that realizes the need for full-time child care. Let's truly value families and acknowledge the reality of children's needs. This means financially supporting families engaged in full-time child care and providing alternate sources of child care for those who work outside the home.
          2) Create jobs that don't assume you have a "wife" at home to perform limitless unpaid work. With women making up 46 percent of the workforce--and men taking on more childcare responsibilities--a change in work styles is overdue. A shorter work week also makes sense.
          3) Close the pay gender gap and boost wages to a living level. One way to achieve gender pay equity is to require employers to reevaluate the ways in which they compensate comparable skills. Poor women need pay equity most, but all women need it. Another way to close the pay gap is to increase the minimum wage. Most minimum-wage workers are women. Another wage booster would be to support unionization and end the unfair advantages of antiunion employers. Unions raise pay levels most for the lowest paid.
          4) Tame the family budget busters--housing and health care. High-salary workers receive health benefits and can readily afford housing. Low-wage workers don't have these advantages. Government should provide these supports; universal health care is an important first step.
          5) Expand the safety net. Unemployment insurance and temporary disability insurance needs to be extended; five states have already done this.
          6) Make education and training affordable and available for all. In an economy where the premium on skills and education is increasing, education and training are necessities for young people and adults, women and men.
          7) Promote community-based economic development. Low- and moderate-income communities across the country are tapping their own underutilized resources to build housing, create jobs, and provide services. They deserve financial and technical support.
          8) Secure funding with a fair tax structure. Many of these proposals require government spending that is consistent with the ways in which our counterpart in other industrialized countries spend money--especially for universal child allowances education and training, and universal health care coverage. The United States needs to seriously consider how much and from whom it takes. Taxes paid by the wealthiest families as a percentage of their income have fallen dramatically over the last fifteen years, while the burden on the bottom 80 percent of us has risen. Federal, state, and local governments have taxed middle- and low-income families for too long without assuring them of the basic benefits they increasingly can't afford. The alternative--not funding child allowances, health care, and training--may prove more costly to society in the long run.

Time vs. Money
Remember the old adage "time equals money"? It refers to the cost of wasting time. But the equation also runs the other way: if you have more money, you can save yourself some time by paying for services you don't have to do yourself. For example, at the end of a busy day, many of us would rather buy a take-out dinner than take the time to cook it ourselves.
          People with high-paying jobs and long hours tend to buy many of the services a "wife" used to do at home. But for poor families, the time vs. money tradeoff is much more difficult. Without enough money--even when doing paid work--such relatively simple and necessary chores take more time.

[....]         Copyright 1997 Sojourner Feminist Institute
Excerpted by the authors from their book Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits: Women's Work, Women's Poverty, just published this month by South End Press.
          Randy Albelda and Chris Tilly are economists at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Lowell (respectively). Both are members of the Dollars and Sense magazine collective. Copyright ©  1998, Sojourner Feminist Institute