Women's Economic Security (Part 3)

In California’s economy, many two-parent households need two incomes to stay out of poverty, let alone to get ahead. But many women can find only low-paying, dead-end jobs, which contributes to the fact that more than 10 percent of California women live in poverty. Among poor women in the state between the ages of 25 and 59, 36 percent work, while 25 percent rely on public assistance as their main income source.

For working mothers, child care imposes additional costs. After paying for child care, there is often little money left for other basic family needs. Full-time care for a two- to five-year-old child represents almost 50 percent of pre-tax earnings for a woman working full-time at the minimum wage of $6.75 per hour and 20 percent of pre-tax earnings for a woman working full-time at a much higher average pay of $18.20 per hour. California families with two children devote between one-fourth and one-third of their basic budget to child care.

Tour participants noted that single women often must take two or three jobs to make ends meet, which curtails their ability to care for their children. Therefore, participants emphasized, a living wage needs to go hand-in-hand with access to affordable, quality preschools, along with extended day care and child care facilities.

Higher-wage and non-traditional careers

To do more than survive in California’s high-priced economy, women need jobs that pay more than the minimum wage. Tour participants pointed out that one starting point to higher wages would be economic equity; that is, ensuring equal pay for equal work, a goal that, in spite of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, has not yet been achieved. Today, among high school and college graduates alike, women earn one-third less than men. This situation is in part a reflection of the fact that positions that have traditionally been filled by women pay less than those traditionally filled by men. Women need to have access to the job training that will allow them to qualify for higher-paying positions not traditionally held by women. Even in many professional positions, however, when key factors that influence earnings are taken into account — including years of work, hours of work and job tenure — women on average still earned around 80 percent of what men earned in 2005.