A new study from the Pew Research Center reports staggering gaps in median wealth–a person’s accumulated assets minus her debt–between whites ($113,149), blacks ($5,677) and Latinos ($6,325). That’s a 20-to-1 white-to-black ratio of wealth and a 18-to-1 white-to-Latino ratio. Essentially, all of the economic gains made by people of color since the Civil Rights Movement [...]
Listen up, sisters! Deficit hawks will eat your lunch, your kids, your jobs and your retirement. An economy without a deficit is like a fish without water. Reducing the U.S. federal deficit will make unemployment and poverty worse–way worse. And that means that women’s economic condition will deteriorate even further. Today’s deficit hawks (and way [...]
For the last thirty years, displaced homemaker centers in New York have provided crucial computer training services, employment counseling, and other support services for nearly a quarter of a million low-income women struggling to re-enter the work force after abandonment, divorce, separation or death of a partner or spouse. As of November 1st of this year, however, all of New York state’s twenty-two displaced homemaker centers will be non-existent, thanks to massive budget cuts in the state.
A sex strike recently proposed in Belgium has ignited a debate about the efficacy of sex strikes. Proposed by parliament member Marleen Temmerman, the strike would be intended to break the eight-month political deadlock caused by a feuding Dutch-speaking North and French-speaking South. Though half-joking in her suggestion for spouses to withhold sex until their [...]
The latest employment figures place the economic “recovery” firmly on the Y chromosome. According to the National Women’s Law Center, the unemployment crisis declined for men in 2010–but grew for women. From January to December 2010, federal data shows that unemployment among women ticked up from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while the rate for [...]
Many cities will begin the New Year with a sad resolution: to make sure the number of homeless families doesn’t grow as much as it did the year before. A new survey of homelessness covering 27 cities, published by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, sheds light on the epidemic. A rise in family homelessness in many [...]
It seems that the Great Recession may have done for America’s teens what countless hours of puritanical preaching have failed to: dissuaded them from having babies. Federal health authorities reported last week that the birth rate among U.S. girls between 15 and 19 fell six percent from 2008 to 2009 to a record low of [...]
While the city’s recovery hobbles forward after Hurricane Katrina’s punishing blows, a deep affordable housing crisis continues to hold back impoverished mothers
Is President Obama’s emphasis on green jobs in his stimulus legislation–$55 million in funds directed toward developing green training programs–a 21st-century version of the New Deal? If yes, is it a gender-neutral New Deal? According to labor statistics, the answer is “no.” It turns out that a disproportionate number of “green” jobs are in fields [...]
Flex time, job-sharing, compressed schedules, and telecommuting: these workplace practices are needed now more than ever. The key is for employers to recognize that all employees are an asset, not a liability, and that the net effect of flex increases the return on that asset. Even in a recession.
