4/27/20 - The Hill: Supporting Frontline Women Amid COVID-19

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, one in three jobs held by women have been deemed “essential.” In fact, 72 percent of grocery store cashiers, 89 percent of home care workers, and 91 percent of nurses are women. Meanwhile, women have long performed caretaking duties at home disproportionately, whether for children or elderly parents. This domestic work has never been easy, and now with the closure of schools across the country, many women have added teaching to their long list of responsibilities. 

Our country is relying more heavily than ever on the labor of women, which brings the chronic undervaluing of their work into more glaring light. It’s hard to reconcile the public reverence for our frontline workers with the persistent reality that women make 80 cents for every dollar a man makes, with black and Latinx women faring far worse than their white counterparts. Worse: We are relying on women on the frontlines — in the workplace and at home — to get us through this crisis, yet as the coronavirus has destabilized our economy, women are bearing the brunt of the fallout. 

60 percent of people laid off because of the virus have been women. Black women are twice as likely as white men to have been laid off or furloughed because of the coronavirus. Given the cumulative effects of the gender wage gap, this leaves many families with little in the way of emergency savings to get through this difficult time. In 2016, the average black family had 10 cents to the dollar of the typical white family in terms of household wealth.