Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/series/bias-price/)
Here’s how the cost of gender bias is playing out in real life.
The series examines this price of gender bias over a life span, showing clearly that gender stereotyping, violence, wage and employment bias work together to impinge on economic opportunities of U.S. women and girls.
There’s no way to quantify the damage, but tribal leaders estimate it’s in the billions. “It happens every day in every native community; it’s that common,” says Jodi Gillette, former special assistant on Native American Affairs to the White House.
If you reach retirement age without any Social Security checks to keep you going, it often means you just keep on doing the same unpaid or low-wage work. “These women are an invisible population,” says the leader of an advocacy group.
Trends in female employment all add up to a “perfect storm” for women’s retirement, says a labor economist. Those trends also raise women’s stakes in any election-year discussion of adding or subtracting from Social Security.
It could account for 7 percent to 10 percent of the wage gap but there’s so little data it’s hard to know. After 5,000 New York school guards won a big settlement last year the family of one 45-year-old mother of two suddenly had $7,000 more a year.
Without a paid-leave buffer, women with children rack up big losses in income of between $49,000 and $230,000. On top of that, child care costs often consume half of paychecks. Part of the Bias Price series.
Women of color and those earning low wages are least likely to be accommodated during their pregnancies. It’s also acute for women in traditionally male-dominated industries. “I wanted to work,” says a music conductor who asked for a stool while she worked under hot lights.
“I feel rude asking for more money,” says one babysitter here, reflecting on why she might earn less than boys. “Babysitting is just one of those things where it’s harder to ask for more money because you’re not in a ‘professional’ atmosphere.”
The Ban Bossy campaign wants girls to hang on to a barometer of self-worth. One teen says in elementary school she “never worried about what everyone thought.” Fourth in the Bias Price series, with reporting from Racheal Creech.
Employers can be expected to lowball women on starting pay, says a salary negotiator. That begins a wage gap for the college-educated that widens over time and leaves a woman accumulating a $1 million deficit. Third story in the Bias Price series.
When women become homeless due to domestic violence the costs–medical, legal, child care, lost wages, trauma, loss of self-esteem–are hard to even estimate since they overlap and compound one another. The second in the Bias Price series.