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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., commented on new Department of Labor data Tuesday showing the wage gap burden on women – especially on women of color – and how the coronavirus pandemic disproportionally left more women and moms jobless.
The data release coincided with an Equal Pay Day event at the Capitol on March 15 – the date that women in the United States must work until to be paid the same amount men were in the prior year.
"These statistics are staggering," Pelosi said at the event. "They're not only staggering, they're heartbreaking."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with reporters at the Capitol on Aug. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In 2020, women earned 83 cents for every dollar earned by men. The gap is particularly stark for Hispanic women (57 cents) and Black women (64 cents) when comparing their wages to White, non-Hispanic men.
During the coronavirus pandemic, women lost 11.9 million jobs compared to 10.1 million jobs lost by men from February to April 2020. The Department of Labor also reports that 4.4 million women left the labor force between February and April 2020, compared to 3.9 million men – putting women's labor force participation rate at a 35-year low in April 2020.
Mothers, who were dealing with canceled school and spotty day care services, lost an estimated 3.5 hours per week in work between February and April 2020, greater than the 2.5 hours per week decline for fathers’ work hours, according to the Department of Labor report.
"It's not just about the impact of a pandemic," Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said at the Equal Pay Day news conference. "It's about how low pay and limited opportunities left women vulnerable and continue to leave women vulnerable, especially women of color in this country. These injustice[s] have been created over many decades. This isn't something new."
The report from the Department of Labor is called: "Bearing the Cost: How Overrepresentation in Undervalued Jobs Disadvantaged Women During the Pandemic." It documents how women lost more jobs during the pandemic compared to men and how Black and Hispanic women experienced the most significant employment problems.
Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh tours Levitt Pavilion Steelstacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on June 2, 2021. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The reasons are twofold: Women – who have performed the majority of unpaid family caregiving — were hardest hit when children were home from school and disabled and older family members lost access to care services. Second, women were overrepresented in industries that experienced the pandemic’s worst job losses, such as in leisure, hospitality, education, health care and child care.
Women's concentration in low-wage jobs with few benefits is called industry and occupational segregation.
The report finds that segregation by industry and occupation cost Black women an estimated $39.3 billion, and Hispanic women an estimated $46.7 billion, in lower wages compared to White men in 2019.
Data from the federal government also showed the wage gap in each of the states for all women and then compared for Hispanic women and Black women. The overall wage gaps were the highest in Wyoming (65 cents for each dollar men make), Utah (70 cents) Louisiana (72 cents), Oklahoma (73 cents) and Alabama (74 cents).
The states with the lowest wage gaps in 2019 were Vermont (91 cents), Maryland (89 cents), Hawaii, California (88 cents) and Nevada (87 cents.)
"The preexisting vulnerabilities of Black and Hispanic working women are due to long-standing labor market policies and practices that systematically devalue and disadvantage women, particularly women of color," the Department of Labor report said. "Due to the legacy of slavery, racial and gender stereotypes that Black women 'should' work outside the home persist.
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"Discrimination against Black men has also resulted in their lower earnings and underemployment, creating financial necessity for Black women to work for pay to support their families," the report continued. "As a result of these and other factors, Black women have had greater labor force participation rates than White women as far back as data has been collected."
Vice President Kamala Harris visits the Ben Samuels Childrens Center at Montclair State University in New Jersey on Oct. 8, 2021. (Justin Lane/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Data from the Department of Labor also showed the wage gap in each of the states for all women, and then compared for Hispanic women and Black women. For instance, the data released Tuesday show that in California, Hispanic women lost $14.5 billion in wages in 2019 and Black women lost $1.5 billion as a cost of occupational and industry segregation.
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