THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION BROOKINGS CAFETERIA PODCAST GENDER EQUALITY, UNPAID WORK, AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE Washington, D.C. Friday, May 15, 2020 PARTICIPANTS: Host: FRED DEWS Managing Editor, Podcasts and Digital Projects The Brookings Institution Guests: STEPHANIE AARONSON Vice President and Director, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies The Brookings Institution MOLLY KINDER David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program The Brookings Institution ISABEL V. SAWHILL Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, Center on Children and Families, Future of the Middle Class Initiative The Brookings Institution * * * * * 1 P R O C E E D I N G S The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. DEWS: Welcome to the Brookings Cafeteria, the podcast about ideas and the experts who have them. I’m Fred Dews. That’s the simple text of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, that gave American women the right to vote and which was ratified in August 1920. In the centennial year of this milestone in women’s political equality, Brookings has launched a new series on gender equality in which Brookings scholars, public officials, and other experts examine not only the imperfect implementation of women’s political participation but also how gender equality has evolved since 1920 and the social, economic, and political forces that have kept the United States from achieving full gender parity. You can find this new initiative and its first set of essays on our website, Brookings.edu/19A. That’s the number 19 and the letter A. On today’s episode of the Brookings Cafeteria, I’m excited to present a conversation among three Brookings scholars whose research eliminates some of the key issues in women’s participation in the workforce and society, with attention to the gender impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Isabel Sawhill is a senior fellow in Economic Studies at The Brookings Institution, working in the Center on Children and Families and on the Future of the Middle Class Initiative. She’s co-author of one of the first essays in our 19A Initiative. Stephanie Aaronson is the vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings. And, Molly Kinder is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy 2 Program at Brookings and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. You can follow the Brookings Podcast Network on Twitter, @policypodcasts, to get information about and links to all of our shows, including Dollar and Sense, the Brookings trade podcast; The Current; and our Events podcast. And, now, here’s Isabel Sawhill, moderating the discussion with Stephanie Aaronson and Molly Kinder. SAWHILL: Thank you, Fred. And, I am very excited to be part of the launch of the 19A series at Brookings. I think we have posted four essays already, one by Susan Ware who’s a distinguished historian of the whole period when women were gaining suffrage, one by Lori Robinson and our colleague Mike O’Hanlon on women in the military, one by myself and Katie Guyot on what we call the time squeeze that’s been caused by the fact that more and more women have gone to work and are the backbone of middle-class prosperity, and one that we’re very excited about by Janet Yellen, tracing the history of women’s involvements in the labor market. That essay was something that Stephanie Aaronson worked hard on with Janet when they were both at the Federal Reserve, and I’m sure she’ll have more to say about that. Now, we planned this series on the 19th Amendment long before the coronavirus became part of all of our lives, and I think it’s very fitting that we are not going to let a focus on women’s equality be derailed by the current virus. But, I do think the virus has actually highlighted some of the challenges and issues that women face in the labor market and in the home, and we’re going to be talking about those. And, so, let me start with this whole question of how women have been affected by the virus. And, I think we know that in terms of health effects, what I read anyway is that men have more vulnerability to the virus from a health perspective. They are contracting it in slightly 3 greater numbers than women. But, women have been very hard hit in terms of the economics. So, Stephanie Aaronson, let me turn to you first to talk a little bit about the economic effects of the coronavirus. AARONSON: Let me just start off and say thank you, Val, for inviting me here to join in this conversation with you. I think the employment report released last Friday, which showed eight -- data for April, showed that women were much more likely to lose their jobs than men were. So, relative to February the unemployment rate among women is up 30 percentage points compared to 10 percentage points for men. Now, these are shocking numbers for everyone, but it is clear that women have been particularly hard hit by the economic shutdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. And, this is actually in contrast to the usual pattern. So, typically, the unemployment rate of men is more cyclical than that of women. Construction and manufacturing are highly cyclical industries, and men are more likely to be employed in those industries. But, I think it isn’t so surprising that we have seen that women have been harder hit so far in the event when you consider that many of the industries that have been the most affected by business closings, including retail and leisure and hospitality, and even some health fields for elective procedures, are heavily dominated by women. And, not only all women have been affected equally. This speaks to another issue, which is that women of color, and especially Hispanic women, have seen the highest rates of job loss, again, because they are more likely to work in these service jobs which have been so affected by the closings. And, the only other thing I would just add is that this impact, the job loss, is particularly difficult because many of these jobs are low-paid jobs, and so the women who are losing them do not have a lot of cushion to fall back on. So, for these women, the special COVID benefits that 4 have been passed, like the unemployment insurance benefits, are particularly beneficial, assuming that women are eligible to receive them and are able to apply. SAWHILL: That’s a really nice summary. And, let me now turn to you Molly. Molly Kinder has been doing a lot of work on what we call essential workers during this pandemic. And, I’ve been fascinated to hear a little bit about your work. Tell us more about it and about what you’re finding. KINDER: Sure. Thanks, Belle. And, I just want to echo Stephanie. It’s such an honor to be in this discussion, and I’m so proud of Brookings for this terrific 19A series that we’re doing. When we typically think of a big disaster in this country, whether it’s a catastrophic weather event, like Hurricane Katrina or flooding, or an event like 9-11, so often the workers we think of in that response are first responders. They’re military. They’re firefighters. And, the iconic image of 9-11 is a firefighter in New York City. This pandemic is different. I think the workforce that we’re seeing, really at the front lines, women are a very big part of that. And, because of this role, this essential role that women play, which is that women are at the forefront of caring for others, whether it’s treating those who are critically ill with the coronavirus, whether it’s caring for the most vulnerable to the pandemic, which are older individuals at home or in nursing homes, making sure that we’re fed - - so, cashiers in grocery stores, or cooking the food that we’re eating, and even cleaning, to make sure that hospitals are safe from the virus, this is work that women predominantly have done. And, in this moment it highlights how valuable this work is to society. And, in fact, it’s not just in the pandemic. Well after this is over, women are going to play this critical role of caring, for being the front line of healthcare, for making sure that our population which is rapidly aging and the number of older people who are going to need to enter 5 into their older age in their personal home or in a care facility, it’s women who have those roles. And, yet at the same time, the interviews I’m doing with these workers reveal this gap between the societal value that they play and how underpaid and undervalued they feel, and they are. So, a lot of these roles, the average earnings are just so low. So, a typical home health worker makes just about 11.50 an hour. These are poverty wages, and these women are literally in poverty. They rarely have benefits like health insurance or paid leave. And, the women that I’ve interviewed who are doing these roles, they’re now risking their lives and trying to keep their family afloat in this hard time. They’re struggling financially. Some of the stories have really been pretty heartbreaking about what they’re enduring.