Update: A New York ballot measure to create constitutional protections for abortion and create explicit protections for people who experience discrimination, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.
This election cycle, caregivers are finally receiving the attention they deserve. Thanks to advocates’ efforts, both presidential and vice presidential candidates are proposing solutions—from plans to make high-quality child care more affordable to promises to provide Medicare for home care. But it makes sense: Childcare costs are outpacing inflation, a care worker shortage is coinciding with a booming senior population and caregivers are crying for help.
What is less talked about this election cycle, however, is how the New York State Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), or Proposal 1 (Prop 1) on the 2024 ballot, could help caregivers in New York. Because women shoulder the burden of unpaid family caregiving responsibilities, the demands of caregiving disproportionately affect women. This disparate impact within the care economy renders the caregiver crisis a critical sex equality issue. As an inclusive, comprehensive and clear sex equality amendment, Prop 1 could offer much-needed support for caregivers across the state.
For example, while New York has some of the nation’s best laws to support caregivers, including the country’s first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and a first-of-its-kind prenatal leave law, New York State, unlike New York City, does not have a law that explicitly prohibits caregiver discrimination. New York State law only prohibits employers from discriminating based on familial status—a prohibition that protects parents, but does not protect caregivers supporting an aging loved one or an adult with disabilities. With Prop 1, however, state lawmakers would have greater power to pass laws addressing caregiver discrimination as a sex equality issue, and individual caregivers would have stronger state constitutional grounds to assert their discrimination claims on.
As an inclusive, comprehensive and clear sex equality amendment, Prop 1 could offer much-needed support for caregivers across the state.
Prop 1 could also help address a consequence of the disproportionate impact of unpaid family caregiving on women—the motherhood wage gap. Despite New York State’s robust equal pay laws, New York mothers are paid $0.65 to every dollar paid to fathers, among all workers, including part-time and part-year workers—a gap that is worse for mothers of color and one that exists across all education levels and nearly every occupation. The disproportionate burden of caregiving is one structural cause of the motherhood wage gap—outright pay discrimination and occupational segregation also contribute to mothers’ lower pay.
Prop 1’s explicit mandate to address structural barriers would give lawmakers more power to develop affirmative solutions, like universal childcare, to address the systemic barriers that are the underlying causes of the motherhood wage gap.
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