How have American women
fared in their struggle with gender equality? Not very well according
to the latest figures from the World Economic Forum and WalletHub
financial website. In fact, things are getting worse instead of
better.
The gender gap in 21st
century America has only expanded. In 2020, the U.S. failed to place
in the top 10 – or even the top 50 – of the World Economic
Forum’s ranking of 153 countries based on gender equality. In fact,
the U.S. dropped to 53rd position from its previous rank of 51st.
WEC’s Global Gender Gap
Index found the U.S. currently ranks 70th globally when it comes to
the gender gap in health and survival. And, the U.S. currently ranks
86th globally when it comes to the gender gap in political
empowerment.
Women have outnumbered men on college campuses since
1988. They have earned at least one-third of law degrees since 1980
and accounted for one-third of medical school students by 1990. Yet,
they have not moved up to positions of prominence and power in
America at anywhere near the rate that should have followed.
(National Center for Education Statistics, “Fast Facts:
Enrollment,” available at
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98)
Change
and Resistance.” 2007.)
The workplace provides
even more evidence of the gender gap issue. Despite their advances
toward social equality, women are disproportionately underrepresented
in leadership positions. Women make up more than 50 percent of the
population, but constitute only around 24 percent of legislators and
25 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
(Adam McCann. “2020’s
Best & Worst States for Women’s Equality.”
WalletHub. August 24,
2020.)
This year, women also face
inequality when it comes to unemployment during the COVID-19
pandemic. Women have been laid off at a greater rate than men, and
are also getting re-employed more slowly. In addition, the share of
the workforce that is female is now at its lowest point since 2008.
One reason for this
greater effect on women is that the virus is significantly increasing
the burden of unpaid care, which is disproportionately carried by
women.
Women are also more
vulnerable to the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic because
they are more likely then men to work in service industries, which
have been hit especially hard in recent months. With so many schools
and daycares closed, many of the additional childcare
responsibilities have also fallen to women.
Females lose skills when
they leave the workforce, either because of job loss or to care for
children, which results in lower pay when they return, according to
the National Bureau of Economic Research.
To determine where women
receive the most equal treatment, WalletHub compared the 50 states
across 17 key indicators of gender equality. The data set ranged from
the gap between female and male executives to the disparity in
unemployment rates for women and men.
The study found the best
state in America for gender equality is Hawaii, followed by Maine and
Nevada in second and third place, respectively. The worst state for
women in terms of equality is Utah.
Bad News For Lady
Buckeyes
Ohio ranked Number 42 out
of 50, making it the ninth worst state in America in terms of gender
equality. The only place Ohio excelled was in having one of the top
smallest educational attainment gaps among advanced degree holders;
however, the state was among the bottom rung for having the largest
political representation gap in the nation – 47th.
Political
Representation Gap
In 2018, a Pew Research
Center study found that 61 percent of Americans felt positive about
more women running for office in 2018. The number of people voicing
support for women in politics was higher than in previous Pew
surveys.
Rachel Bernhard,
Postdoctoral Prize Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College at the
University of Oxford and political scientist who studies how female
candidates are portrayed and evaluated, referred to a recent study
(May 2019 by the American Sociological Association) on the persistent
gender gap in politics over the past 40 years. Bernhard says …
“One thing we really
see in this study is that women are doing great – but mostly in
offices where people assume they are qualified due to their gender,
like school board races … When the stereotype is that women aren’t
qualified – = mostly in executive offices like mayors – they do
worse than male candidates, even though they have more government
experience.”
University of
California Education. January 07, 2020.)
GOP Gender Gap
While women had a record
year in the 2018 midterm elections, bringing their total numbers in
Congress to 127, much of the data is still grim. For every woman
across both chambers, there are roughly three men. And the split
along party lines is even starker. Thirty-eight percent of Democratic
lawmakers are currently women, while just 8 percent of Republicans
are.
(Li Zhou. “How to
close the massive gender gap in Congress.”
Vox. August 14, 2019.)
A study from Georgetown
University professor Michele Swers found that liberal women in
Congress sponsored far more bills related to women’s health than
their male counterparts. Female lawmakers, backed, on average, 10.6
bills related to the subject, roughly double the number supported by
their male colleagues.
According to a 2018 Pew
Research Center survey, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents
are more than twice as likely as Republicans and those who lean
Republican to say there are too few women in high political offices
(79% vs. 33%). And while 64% of Democrats say gender discrimination
is a major reason why women are underrepresented in these positions,
only 30% of Republicans agree.
(Juliana Menasce
Horowitz, Ruth Igielnik, and Kim Parker. “Women and Leadership
2018.” Pew Research Center. September 20, 2018.)
Catalist, a progressive
data company, reported college-educated white women swung Democratic
by 10 points from 2016 to 2018, and non-college-educated white women
swung Democratic by seven points. A recent NBC News/Wall Street
Journal poll showed that both groups of white women favored a generic
Democrat over Trump by margins of 33 and six points, respectively.
The pool of women willing to embrace the Republican brand is
shrinking.
Diversity has never been a
strength of the modern-day GOP. The decline of Republican women in
elective office, the vast majority of whom are white, also mirrors
broader shifts in voting patterns. The Republicans’ white woman
problem is rooted in male tribalism. Much of the Republican primary
electorate that remains is so pro-Trump that they don’t trust women
candidates to be sufficiently aligned with the president.
Julie Kohler, a fellow in
residence at the National Women’s Law Center and a senior advisor
at the Democracy Alliance, says …
“The Republican base
that has coalesced around Trump has been increasingly characterized
by “hostile sexism” – antagonistic attitudes toward women that
stem from a belief that women want to control men. Hostility toward
women was a major factor predicting support for Trump in 2016 – the
first year it played a large and significant role in a presidential
election-- among Republican men and women alike …
“Hostile sexism is
not limited to Republicans. But its prominence within the
Trump-aligned GOP base suggests that Republican women candidates will
have a heavy lift for the foreseeable future.”
(Julie Kohler. “The
Republican Party’s White Women Problem.” The Nation.
August 28, 2019.)
Kohler continues:
“The GOP has invested
so heavily in white-male identity politics that the policies that
have become its Trump-era signatures – family separation, draconian
abortion bans – are widely unpopular with the American public and
profoundly alienating to many of the white independent and moderate
women who have historically voted Republican. Recent data from the
Voter Study Group revealed that one in five Republicans has
“economically left” policy preferences, with particular concern
for Social Security and Medicare. Two-thirds of these voters are
women.”
The gender realignment of
American politics is the biggest change in party affiliation since
the movement by loyal Democratic voters to the GOP in the “solid
South,” in the final decades of the twentieth century.
Trump can't seem to resist
attacking powerful, successful Democratic women and hindering full
equality of all women. The 2020 election will tell how American women
respond to the current widening of the gender gap.
In 2016, 63% of women who
were eligible to vote said they cast ballots in the presidential
election, compared with 59% of men. The Center for American Women and
Politics at Rutgers University reports that in every presidential
election since 1980, the proportion of female adults who voted has
exceeded the proportion of made adults who voted. Ladies certainly
have the electoral power to make sweeping changes.
No comments:
Post a Comment