Disclaimer: The following article is the opinion of a student writer at Montclair State University. This article does not necessarily reflect the views of The Montclarion or its staff.
Home is where the heart is. It’s also America’s untapped piggy bank.
In some homes, it’s financially feasible for the woman’s sole role to be a caregiver. However, the majority of women, at almost 75%, must work to support their households.
A woman’s presence in the workforce is seen as an achievement. Celebrating the decision for such inclusion, however, does not shed light on the unseen upheaval.
Women are an essential component of the U.S. workforce. And yet, it is inequitable how trying and inflexible most jobs are in supporting women, both in and out of the workplace.
Industries and companies are where we envision “working women” to be, yet women always could be found working somewhere: the home, something that only recently has been thought of as “real work.”
Taking care of one’s home is inarguably a form of labor. As it does not fit the definition of “work,” since it is unpaid, it falsely insinuates a lack of financial impact.
There is an adjacent issue here, one concerning women who do both paid and unpaid labor: working externally and taking care of their home.
When COVID hit, businesses responded by allowing remote positions. With this option, breadwinning women with families could handle both responsibilities. The primary factor in a woman’s job of choice is proximity to the home – remote positions eliminated that worry altogether.
Unfortunately, many major companies reverted those positions to be entirely in-person and it shows a disregard for our working population. This does not reflect how almost half of American households have both spouses working to support their families.
While there is a shift toward men getting more involved, most families fall into line with the traditional role of the woman handling all home responsibilities. Paying bills, food-shopping, doctor’s appointments and house repairs are just a few.
It goes beyond being progressive to equate the effort of home-maintenance to that of a typical job.
This is no emotional appeal but a legitimate statement about the impact women’s presence has had in the home and at work. There is an observable economic effect to these decisions.
Besides wage gaps, there is a trend with the types of jobs women hold and thus the amount they are paid.
Most women in the U.S. are employed in service-sector jobs, which also includes a handful of lower-paying roles like health aids.
The decision to leverage wages this way can be traced back to their societal value as they are often viewed as “not difficult.” Coupled with the fact that women take these jobs more than men for its within-reach qualifications and flexibility leads to lower salaries.
In short, working women flip a coin and face one of two issues: well-paying jobs that are accomplished remotely are no longer permitted or jobs that must be in-person do not pay enough.
If we expect women to partake in the workforce, change must proceed as a response to the modern family unit. This could look like implementing more convenient programs in work and even in schools, such as the starting time and when vacation breaks are scheduled.
The option to enter any workforce is valuable. Altering the current operations of these workforces is difficult but necessary since we bank on women with families to contribute to our economy.
This is something we should want and there is a financial consequence to this. As of recently, we are missing out on an additional $650 billion to the GDP from U.S. women participation, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
Policy changes at the state level need to increase working flexibility and appropriately compensate for health care wages. For this to happen, decision-makers must ultimately renounce notions of what has been historically, and narrowly-defined, as “work.”
The availability of women to work and the current level of participation is not as close as they could be. Because of this, our economy is not as strong as it should be: women strengthen us in multiple ways, many of them quantifiable.
Making Women’s History Month worthwhile means reevaluating the narratives we have not explored and gauging how that misunderstanding has impacted us socially and economically.
Women’s sphere of caretaking is large, encompassing not just their children but also parents, neighbors, even other people’s children. That being said, society must make jobs more accessible and tailored to our needs because we always have and always will need women.
