Since 2003, Rep. Rosa DeLauro has been a voice—sometimes the lone one—in a push to expand the child tax credit to the nation’s poorest children. With President Joe Biden’s support, the plan is likely to pass.
Pressure and guilt, in all their forms, converge around this time every year, when the invisible work women typically do at home gets ratcheted up a few notches for the holidays. Add to that the pandemic, which has claimed more than 300,000 U.S. lives and, at its worst point, 20.8 million jobs. People are burnt out. Women most of all.
And yet, the household work—who keeps track of what groceries to buy, what appointments to make, the outfits needed for the holiday photos—continues to fall on women, as it historically has.
Women continue to weather the worst of this coronavirus-induced economic storm, but out in the horizon, another disturbance is forming.
Public sector jobs are expected to take a greater hit as plummeting tax revenues across the country slash local and state government budgets, setting off layoffs and furloughs. When the job losses come, it’ll be women who will be most at risk.