More Than A Magazine, A Movement
On March 16, the Senate confirmed Isabella Casillas Guzman, President Biden’s pick to lead the Small Business Administration (SBA), an agency that has seen its profile grow enormously in response to the pandemic. She is the first Latina to lead the agency and the only Latina in Biden’s diverse Cabinet.
“Now more than ever, our small businesses need us,” Guzman said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, women have lost three decades of hard-fought gains in a single year. But injustices and inequities that existed long before COVID-19 have been exposed—and conversations around how we can support women are finally started. This is a moment like none before, and we need permanent, structural change to reach full equity.
Magnolia Mother’s Trust and other guaranteed income programs make the case that cash without restrictions is a crucial and powerful component of the social safety net that the federal government should provide.
As President Biden prepares to introduce a new plan aimed at jumpstarting economic rebirth, he must build on a key lesson from the past year: There is no equitable jobs plan that does not include child care.
As has been well-documented during this pandemic, women and men interact with the economy differently. Because of occupational segregation and caregiving obligations, women have been forced out of the workforce at a higher rate than men. For new full-employment policies to serve women, they must proactively address these and other obstacles.
From the Spring 1972 issue:
“Society needs women on welfare as ‘examples’ to let every woman, factory workers and housewife workers alike, know what will happen if she lets up, if she’s laid off, if she tries to go it alone without a man.”
The first year of the pandemic has been devastating for working women in a way that we’re only just beginning to quantify. We all know it’s bad. But how bad?
Nearly two-thirds of the employees making minimum wage are female. In states that have increased the minimum wage, the gender pay gap has begun to close.
“The economy can’t recover as long as millions of people who have been hardest hit [by COVID] are still being paid poverty level wages.”
When Lilly Ledbetter, a longtime manager at Goodyear, discovered her salary was significantly lower than her male colleagues, she took the company to court. While her case was overturned at the Supreme Court, her hard work finally paying off when President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 into law as his first official act.
Now, Lilly’s life and her case are going to be the subject of “Lilly,” a feature film, directed by Rachel Feldman and starring Patricia Clarkson. Ms interviewed Ledbetter and Feldman about their exciting project.
Domestic workers often endure horrific abuses that go unchecked. Many are brought to the U.S. by employers promising a better life, only to find themselves subjected to forced labor, denied wages, and threatened with deportation.
“All I want as a domestic worker is recognition. Domestic work is seen as a lowly job but it’s a decent job and it’s vital to society. We should not be ignored. We are important.”
