The Girls’ Guide To The Economy Part 11–”Why Does It Take A Woman To Say That The Emperors Have No Clothes?”

The title of this post is a quote from PunditMom aka Joanne Bamberger on Twitter.  I had the good luck to run into Joanne at the recent Women, Action and the Media conference along with numerous other women who are speaking in a powerful, informed feminist voice about the economy and particularly on how it impacts women’s lives.

The conference was held at MIT where I noticed that a panel discussion on the economy was scheduled for a few nights after the WAM conference.  Not one of the panelists slated to speak was a woman.  In sharp contrast, WAM devoted 2 outstanding sessions to the economy, and the topic was addressed in numerous other sessions as well.  Several of the women who spoke at those sessions live in the Boston area and it is most unfortunate that they weren’t invited to speak at the MIT panel as well because what they are saying is  crucially important.

But the sad  truth is that women are being systematically shut out of the economic dialog, in much the same way they are routinely excluded from conflict resolution dialog and peace negotiations.  And it isn’t just the right-wingers who are excluding and de-valuing women’s voices and needs.  A recent column by Ralph Nader called “The Ones Who Got It Right” lists people that we should have been listening to instead of the Wall Street media drumbeat, and he’s right we should have listened to everyone that he lists but…only 2 of them are women and as this series of posts has certainly made clear, there many, many more very wise women that we should have been and should now be listening to, one of whom is:

The head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, Elizabeth Warren   (who) will this week call for the removal of top executives from Citigroup, AIG and other institutions that have received government funds in a damning report that will question the administration’s approach to saving the financial system from collapse.

As for the impact of the stimulus package on women’s work, Joanne Bamberger wonders what would happen if this were the focus of our economic strategy:

I know you might be wondering what glue I’ve been sniffing to wonder aloud about what our economic recovery could look like if “women’s work” was valued in the way men’s always has been. I don’t mean the stereotypical world of motherhood and careers limited to nursing and teaching. I mean the work of all women in the workforce, especially mothers.

The economic stimulus package that we’re all hoping will save our financial health is based on an outdated premise. This idea of focusing on “shovel ready” jobs and professions not particularly female friendly, like helping out the guys on Wall Street, may sound like a good quick fix, but I have to ask two questions – do we really need all the shovel ready stuff and who is the stimpak really going to benefit in the years to come?

Realistically and traditionally many of those jobs will go to male workers. I have to wonder, has that entered President Obama’s mind? When all the economic policy wonks were gathered to create this supposed miracle plan, was there any discussion about how to stimulate the economy by making sure that the equally important jobs traditionally held by women – ones that are increasingly being performed on flex schedules – see some of that stimulus? Where are the tax incentives and credits to keep women, who are disproportionately responsible for family and caregiving obligations, in their jobs?

Randy Albelda, a professor of economics and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Social Policy at University of Massachusetts Boston and a participant in one of the economic panels at WAM, points to the male-centric nature of our current economic path  in a recent OpEd titled The Macho Stimulus Plan:

Jobs in construction and many of those that come with green investment often pay decent wages with benefits. But they are overwhelmingly held by men. Outside of trickle-around effects, this stimulus package will not create jobs for women in any close proportion to the numbers that will be unemployed. Almost one-quarter of families with children under the age of 18 are headed and supported by women as are the majority of single-adult households without children. This package will not put food on their plates.

Like the need to rebuild our physical infrastructure there is as big a need in developing and expanding our social infrastructure. Caring for children, the disabled, and elderly are best done when families are able to combine their own time with those of competent, trained, paid care workers. Yet their current costs make this almost prohibitive for many families. There is also a healthcare and education crisis looming. State and local funding for education and healthcare was an enormous burden before the economic downturn and has become an almost insurmountable one now.

Albelda, along with writer and attorney Linda Hirschman and Prof. Susan Feiner  were among a group of progressive economists who founded a group called W.E.A.V.E., Women’s Equality Adds Value to the Economy which has put forth a platform that calls for:

No. 1: Affirmative action plans:
These ensure that women and people of color are actually hired and trained for public-sector jobs. In the years since Bush took office, the number of federal contracts has risen sixfold. Spending has also gone way up, to almost $368 billion currently from $209 billion in 2000. Staff to monitor these contracts at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, meanwhile, dropped. In his inaugural address Obama talked about government conducting its business in the “light of day” and on his first working day in office he emphasized financial transparency. Government contracts are the place to put those sentiments into action.

No. 2: Infrastructure projects:
In 2003 only 4 percent of the roughly 400,000 registered apprentices were women. Scholars with expertise in these matters must be brought to the policy table so this gross discrepancy can be fixed. This is critical because while women hold 10 percent of construction jobs, most–5.8 percent–work in offices where wages are about 16 percent lower. Unless the Labor Department recommits to workplace integration–by gender and race–the jobs that pay a truly livable wage will not benefit women or people of color in proportion to their presence in the labor force.

No. 3: Spending on health care, child care, education and social services:
This spending both provides jobs to women and provides services needed by all families. The fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is families. Forty percent of requests for emergency shelter come from families. More than 85 percent of homeless families are headed by a lone parent, and most are women.

Feiner, a founding scholar in the field of feminist economics, was also a presenter at WAM as part of a panel entitled “Women & The Economic Crisis:  Getting Beyond The Corporate Media Narrative.  A transcript of the presentations from that session can be found here and Feiner talks more about feminist economics here, of particular note I think is Steiner’s presentation regarding payroll taxes and women.

Finally, I want to give a nod to the Fem 2.0 Blog Carnival on Women and Work, which has links to additional posts specifically addressing this aspect of the economic crisis.

It should be quite clear that 11 parts later in this series of posts:

1.  There are many, many women who are saying very important things about the economy that should, and need to be, heard. 

2.  Equally important, the impact that economic policies have on women is not the same as they have on men.

Until such time as those two points become an integral part of our economic decision making, there is NO possibility, by any real definition, of a healthy economy.

Note: You can find the first 10 parts of this series here.