Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/series/she-works-hard-for-the-money/)
Connie Larson is taking time off so her feet can heal, which means no pay and paying out of pocket. Beyond her own problems, she worries about the sales and commission quotas she is supposed to enforce. “It’s a fear-based situation,” she says.
Tabitha Waugh, a registered nurse in a West Virginia hospital, can’t complain about the pay. But it’s tough finding time with her kids and the work takes a toll, physically and mentally. “I just don’t want to do direct patient care forever,” she said.
She likes lots of things about her job, but the erratic scheduling means she doesn’t know when she’ll see her daughter at the end of the day. And her income isn’t enough to stop the runaway interest on her student loans.
Dee Jay Beard earns slightly less than the average bookkeeper and is bursting with business. She could probably ask for more, but so many of her clients are small businesses that suffered in the economic downturn that she’s kept her fees in check.
The women who gather on these two street corners of New York are looking for day work as housekeepers. The territory comes with harassment and haywire scheduling. Hurricane Sandy blew a different type of cleanup work their way, but only a few dare to give it a try.
Female workers at a plastic container factory are calling for a national boycott of Reynolds, the parent company of their former employer, to highlight charges of forced overtime they are bringing in an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board.
A child care director starts her day by picking up the cook, moves on to menu writing and is focused on ensuring legal safety standards. Her staff makes more than many child care workers whose earnings require them to depend on food stamps.
Many grade school teachers enter the occupation believing it fits well with raising their own children. For one woman, who didn’t bank on being a single parent, the salary–particularly in West Virginia–isn’t enough. Grandparents are needed.
She worked six days a week as a live-in nanny and kept going from one household to the next for six years. By Nepalese standards her earnings were good, but her U.S. employers were so bad she had to keep moving on.
As I write this, I am humming the late Donna Summer’s hit “She Works Hard for the Money” and remembering the scenes from the video, featuring a middle-age single mother, an everywoman, scrubbing floors, waiting tables, running a machine in a garment factory, feeding her preteen kids and falling into bed exhausted.