Women's Economic Security (Part 3)

Across the state, Tour participants stressed the problems women face making ends meet. They focused particularly on women’s need for economic equity, which includes access to opportunities, such as higher education and training programs that will lead to higher wages, access to higher paying careers and enforcement of pay equity.

A living wage

Many participants mentioned the success of living wage initiatives as one promising, regionally focused, grassroots strategy to boost the incomes of low-wage workers and an antidote to inaction in raising the minimum wage at the federal level. In California, 20 Living Wage Ordinances have been adopted by city or county governments, from Sebastopol to Sacramento to Santa Monica.

The most recent, in the City of San Diego, requires contractors to pay employees a minimum of $10 per hour with benefits or $12 per hour without benefits. Immigrant activists and union members have often been at the forefront of campaigns to win passage of these ordinances, frequently in the face of concerted opposition by chambers of commerce and industry lobbies. The need for a living wage is driven, in part, by the high cost of living in California.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard for California for 2003, released by the National Economic Development and Law Center, describes the income required by California’s working families, on a county-by-county basis, to pay for the basic needs of rent, food, child care, health care, transportation, miscellaneous costs and taxes. Statewide, on average, a single parent with a preschooler must work full-time for a median wage of $12.50 per hour (almost double the state minimum wage of $6.75) to pay for basic household costs. In one-third of California counties, these families require an hourly wage above $15 per hour to make ends meet. Even then, a single head of household would have no opportunity to build assets or to save for her own retirement or for her child’s college education.

In California, low-income families are doubly stressed — not only do they face a high local cost of living, but the standard measure for determining eligibility for benefits as well as for setting state funding levels for many public aid programs is the federal poverty level, which is based on much lower national average estimates of the cost of living.