Erin Garner-Ford For several months, we have heard that the Great Recession is winding down. Jobs are trickling back. Wall Street has rebounded. And fears of a full-blown depression are yesterday's news.
For many Central Valley residents, however, economic recovery is a luxury afforded to those who had something to lose in the first place.
Nowhere is this more evident than among low-income women. In Tulare County, where half the work force is female, the unemployment rate remains an alarming 15.8 percent.
A recent poll conducted by Lake Research Partners for the
Ms. Foundation for Women and Center for Community Change (CCC) shows that nationwide, Latinas have been especially hard hit by the recession: Two-thirds say their personal situation has been affected by the country's economic downturn and more than half report that they or someone in their household has lost a job in the past year.
These women were struggling long before the recession began and continue to struggle today. When low-income women lose their jobs or have their work hours reduced, they have little to fall back on. The same poll shows that 35 percent of women, and more than half of Latinas, have $500 or less in savings.
Unfortunately, the difficulties confronting women and their families are too often pushed to the back burner in policy debates. Our government leaders have an opportunity to change that as Congress considers several pieces of legislation that could make an enormous difference for thousands of low-income women in our state. These include bills that would create jobs, provide education and training opportunities, ensure equal pay for women, paid family and medical leave, affordable child care and immigration policies that will help women.
Many members of Congress consider it politically risky to support such policies, assuming that voters oppose any legislation that would cause an increase in the federal budget deficit — if only temporarily.
But the
Ms. Foundation/CCC poll found that most people are less concerned about the deficit than they are about rising health care costs, the lack of jobs with family-sustaining wages and the affordability of everyday expenses such as food and gas.
Most people also consider helping those who are struggling key to strengthening our economy. Three out of four said policies that would create more jobs with decent wages and benefits for low-income families are important to them personally and even more believe such policies would be good for the economy.
They also see a need to address structural inequities in the economy that hold back major segments of the population. Three out of four, for instance, consider equal pay and benefits for men and women personally important to them and an important component of a healthy economy.
In our community, many of the low-wage jobs are filled by immigrant women who spend long hours working in the fields and packing sheds. These low-paying jobs do not provide room to grow and thrive in our society and are almost always excluded from the conversations around unemployment.
Whether or not our country is still in a recession is an irrelevant concept to thousands of Central Valley women and their families who have struggled for years to make ends meet.
Our country and our state will not experience a genuine economic recovery unless helping them becomes a priority.
Erin Garner-Ford is co-director of ACT for Women and Girls in Visalia.
[Source:
Visalia Times Delta]
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