Maya Washburn / Staff Writer
Unemployment rates from the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionately impacted women, highlighting the economic disparities within the U.S. These gender disparities are impacting women across the board, and FIU students are no exception.
In a report released by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 156,000 women faced unemployment, while 16,000 men gained jobs during December 2020.
Line graph uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to show a significant drop in women’s employment rates from April to Dec. 2020. Graphic by Crain’s Detroit Business.
Alexandra Cornelius, professor and director of FIU’s Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, provided insight as to how the pandemic has influenced women unemployment.
“I think that what pandemics and other crises do is really exacerbate and make more visible some of the health or labor disparities that already exist,” said Cornelius.
The types of career sectors many women occupy are some of the hardest hit by the pandemic, Cornelius said. These include childcare, healthcare, and restaurant and retail services.
Almost 70 percent of workers in the global healthcare workforce are women, according to the World Health Organization.
“[Women] are…very vulnerable, both to personal exposure to the virus and also to any cuts in employment in any of these service sectors… they’re going to be the first ones hit,” said Cornelius.
As the pandemic hit, 2.1 million women became unemployed between Feb. 2020 and Dec. 2020, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
In response to this statistic, Viviana Mejia, a junior and political science major who had recently lost her job as a law office receptionist, said she was “definitely not surprised whatsoever.”
Mejia visited her grandfather, who was in critical condition, in the Dominican Republic in December 2020. Her position as a receptionist was terminated in the same month. She suspects gender differences played a role in her job loss.
“The three guys [at the law office] would always go into an office and close the door and leave the rest of us [women] outside,” said Mejia.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that four times as many women than men left the labor force in September 2020 due to the pandemic. The results compare job losses of 865,000 women with 216,000 men.
Additionally, the Washington Post found that one in four women claim a lack of childcare to be the primary reason for their unemployment in the summer of 2020. Socioeconomic disadvantages only amplify the problem, as the survey also found that “low-income, less educated and nonwhite households were…less likely to have backup childcare.”
A report released December 2020, by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics summary found that out of women ages 20 and over, about one in 12 Black women and one in 11 Latinas are unemployed.
“[Minority women] are definitely going to be impacted by their vulnerability,” said Cornelius. “More than likely, they’ll do what they’ve always had to do to cope, which is to rely on networks to help [and] seek out other means of earning income…[like] the kinds of businesses that they can start up on their own while also taking care of children.”
Cornelius said affordable childcare for average working-class women has the potential to alleviate the issue of socioeconomic vulnerability during the pandemic.
Julia Rivera, a senior double-majoring in international relations and political science, lost her job in March 2020 when the Romano’s Macaroni Grill restaurant she worked at went bankrupt as the pandemic struck the nation.
She then babysat for working parents when daycares and schools shut down. She said it was a smooth transition of work because of her gender.
“Because I’m a woman…parents were more likely to leave me with their kids,” said Rivera.
When presented with the choice of which parent should stay home to care for the kids, women are almost three times more likely than men to assume this task, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Single mothers are not given this choice. Households with two incomes, however, may base this decision on finances.
“If men are still making more money than women in many fields and areas, then it makes more financial sense for the men to go to work,” said Cornelius.
“But of course, in addition to financial factors, there’s still lingering societal expectations of what women’s roles should be and what men’s roles should be,” she added. “I think overwhelmingly, there’s still the expectation that if someone’s going to stay home and be a caretaker, it should be the women in the household.”
This is not to say that only mothers find themselves in caretaker positions, Cornelius pointed out. Young women are also often expected to take care of elders or children in the household.
Prior to the pandemic, women held more jobs than men in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Cornelius suggested that women’s unemployment rates can drop if the world adapts to the pandemic’s changing circumstances.
“The key is to make sure that if the jobs do come back, there are more jobs that actually enable people to provide for their families and that they have access to health insurance,” said Cornelius. “Those are the things I think people will be looking for…not necessarily a return to 2019, which in retrospect seems really great, but something even better than that.”
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