Author: Gwen Rubinstein

Dear Washington Post: When Will Gender Discrimination Be Off the Menu?

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A Washington Post reporter walks into a high-end restaurant and discovers that some waiters write orders down and others don’t.  This is front-page news.  I am not kidding — you can read the article by clicking here.

What the reporter failed to notice is that all the waiters – and all the people he interviewed – were men.  This is not an accident.

The restaurant industry has a history of gender (and race) discrimination, particularly in higher-end establishments.  One recent study found that discrimination in New York City prevented many women (and people of color) from obtaining the industry’s living wage positions and that women paid a “gender tax” of 21.8 percent lower earnings than they would have received if they had the same qualifications but were men.

What does this mean locally?

According to our new Grantee Partner Restaurant Opportunities Center-DC, the restaurant industry is one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors in the city.  Restaurant jobs represent 7 percent of total employment in DC (more than 21,000 workers) and are expected to grow 12.1 percent over the next 10 years, adding nearly 6,000 new jobs.  The industry is expected to thrive even during the recession.

In contrast to other major cities, the majority of restaurant workers in the city are women (50.5 percent here versus 30 percent in New York, for example).  Many, particularly women of color, are single mothers.

Unfortunately, a lot of these jobs do not pay family-sustaining wages.  The median wage for DC restaurant workers is $9.11 (less than $20,000 per year for full-time work), often without benefits.  In fine-dining establishments (the focus of today’s Washington Post article), however, wait staff and bartending positions can earn anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 a year.

So as you consider participating in our region’s semi-annual Restaurant Week, may I suggest you pay attention to the staffing of the restaurants you choose?  For my part, when making reservations at higher-end restaurants this week forward, I will start by asking whether they employ any women waiters.  If not, I intend to take my business elsewhere.

Unemployment Rate for Single Moms Reaches 25 Year High

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

IWPR Unmarried Women Employment Graf

Now that we know the facts, what are we going to do?

From all reports, our current recession was supposed to be friendlier to women than men – who can forget “the man-cession”? Many of the job losses have been in fields (such as manufacturing and construction) that disproportionately employ men, while other woman-dominated occupations (such as education and healthcare) have continued to add jobs.

The latest news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, is not so great for women. Single women with children saw their unemployment rate rise to 13 percent in December 2009 – the highest it has been in more than 25 years, according the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation (click here for more details).  In fact, this rate has increased pretty steadily – up from 11.4 percent a month earlier and 9.5 percent a year ago. Number-wise, this translates into 310,000 more families in need.

What should we do with this information? Can we please start paying attention to the implications of these data in our public benefits, workforce development and work support policies? Please?

Graph credit: Institute for Women’s Policy Research

A New Year's Wish List for Economic Justice

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

NewYearsResolutions

9 Things We Can Do to Ensure Economic Justice for Women

What we are told about recessions is weird.

For most of 2007, Bush Administration officials said we were not in a recession, although the rest of us, especially those who had been struggling even when the economy was on firmer footing, knew we were. Now, at the end of 2009 and continuing into 2010, Obama Administration economic advisers tell us the recession is over, although many of us would disagree, based on our own personal situation and experience.

Here in our region, we often hear that we are doing better than most other parts of the country. While that is true overall, unemployment here is still higher than it has been for some time, meaning more people are out of work. In addition, some local jurisdictions are doing worse than others. Unemployment in Ward 8 in the District, for example, was nearly 30 percent in September 2009 (click here for statistics).

My new year’s wish is for economic justice, particularly for low-income women raising children alone (it’s not that we don’t care about you men, but this is The Women’s Foundation, after all). Regardless of whether the economy is weak or strong, my wish list includes:

—  More emphasis on and support for subsidized jobs in both the public and private sectors, at least until the economy recovers enough to create more jobs on its own. Public service employment would be one example. Another example, on the private side, is a transitional job program, evaluations of which have shown it to result in increased employment and earnings (click here to read the job program evaluations).

—  Increased investment in skills training linked with growing sectors of our regional economy, such as health care. Training should be holistic and include a focus on literacy, soft skills training, career and technical skills training and wrap-around services (such as child care) that help women complete training and successfully transition to the paid workforce.

—  Increased investment in job retention services, including critical work supports like child care and transportation that help keep people, particularly low-income women, in the jobs they already have.

—  More attention to asset building. Assets are a first line of defense against job loss and economic disaster for many families, particularly low-income families.

—  Additional housing assistance, including mortgage relief and rental assistance. Our region’s foreclosure rates are slightly higher than the national average (click here for details) and particularly high in Prince George’s County and among minority homeowners.  Foreclosures are also not only in the subprime market anymore, and they are trickling down and affecting renters, translating into greater displacement and homelessness.

—  A strengthened safety net for those who do not or cannot benefit immediately from all of the above. Something is terribly wrong with our welfare system when caseloads go down as poverty goes up, as has happened in DC (click here for details).

—  Increased federal financial support for state and local governments. This will help soften the foreseeable cuts in public services and employment that accompany another year of budget shortfalls in DC and Maryland and Virginia counties in our region. Now is just not the time for cuts in critical housing, social welfare, public health and workforce development services and personnel.

Finally, I would also challenge local and national reporters to produce more nuanced stories about the economic situation and, specifically, economic inequality in our region. Now *that* could be really informative.

What’s on your list?

How about Cars for People Who Need Them But Can't Afford Them Day?

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

Today is Car Free Day, an international event celebrated every September 22nd that encourages people to leave their car at home.  Our region signed on last year and is participating again this year.

Car Free Day is intended to highlight transit, bicycling, walking and all alternative modes of transportation and take cars off the road so people can think about what their region, city or neighborhood might be like with fewer cars.

I want to propose a different type of car day: Cars for People Who Need Them but Can’t Afford to Buy, Insure or Maintain Them Day.

I know, I know – it’s not as catchy.

It’s not that I’m opposed to Car Free Day. 

I celebrate it nearly every day because I don’t own a car.  I am a big fan of public transportation (I commute by bus) and walking.  But I live and work in parts of town with rich public transportation options.

The frustrating truth is that many low-income residents in our region – especially low-income, women-headed families East of the River and in Prince George’s County – actually need more access to private transportation to be able to work and take care of their families.

According to Census data, nearly half (48%) of all non-elderly poor in the District lived in households without a car.  They participate in Car Free Day every day but not all willingly.

Car ownership programs for low-income families and individuals have demonstrated their effectiveness by producing significant income and asset gains for participants. Programs in our region, like Vehicles for Change, and national programs like Ways to Work and its local partners Northern Virginia Family Service (a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation) and Family Matters of Greater Washington need and deserve support.

I hope we can all agree that our region’s transportation challenges call for multifaceted solutions beyond just “more people should take public transportation.”

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Dear WaPo: There are more challenging things than "squeaking by on $300,000."

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

The good news is that the Washington Post yesterday discovered the plight of women-headed families struggling in the recession and this economy.

The bad news is the Post focused on a woman-headed family that was, in the words of the headline, “squeaking by on $300,000” and in New York, no less.

The nicest thing I can say about the article is that it represents a serious failure in news judgment and demonstrates a poor sense of reality about the many woman-headed families, including in our region, working to get by on one-tenth of that or less.

Meanwhile, median income for women-headed families in the U.S. was $33,370 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, more than 65,000 women-headed families with incomes of less than $40,000 live in our region, according to data collected by the Urban Institute for The Women’s Foundation.

I challenge Post editors and writers to “squeak by” on that, and I challenge the Post to pay attention to that.

I would be happy to help connect Post writers and editors with these women and their families, to whom our Grantee Partners are providing job training, financial literacy/wealth creation and early care and education services through our Stepping Stones initiative.

Washington Post, if you’re listening: Please call me.

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Helping prevent proposed cuts to D.C.'s safety net will help low-income women. Join us.

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

The stock market may be going up – but, unfortunately, other economic indicators, such as unemployment and homelessness are, too.

This means continued down times for many D.C. families, particularly low-income, women-headed families.

To make matters worse, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is proposing cuts to key social welfare programs that more and more residents are turning to in their time of increasing need.  Specifically:

  • Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. Proposed cut: $6.2 million. According to Stepping Stones Grantee Partner, DC Women’s Agenda (DCWA), about 50,000 low-income parents and children in DC receive TANF, and 90% of the adults in these families are women. The current TANF benefit for a family of three is the same as it was in 1991 – and provides families with only 29% of the poverty line;
  • Workforce Development. Proposed cut: $5.4 million. According to U.S. Department of Labor (based on data reported by the city), more than half of the adults in the publicly funded workforce development system in the city are women;
  • Adult Literacy. Proposed cut: $2 million. According to the DC government, a majority (55.1%) of those served in publicly funded adult literacy programs in the city in 2007 were women; and,
  • Local Rent Supplement Program. Proposed cut: $2 million. Originally an addition to the budget by the City Council, this funding would have extended housing assistance to an additional 180 families, mostly headed by women, according to DCWA. Now it is in serious jeopardy, as are the additional families that could have benefited.

Local groups (including many Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation), under the umbrella of the Coalition for Community Investment, have organized the Save our Safety Net Coalition to help prevent these cuts from being realized.

I urge you to join them in the fight against these damaging cuts.

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Minimum wage increased: Happy raise, ladies!

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

My thoughts today are with all of the working women (and it is mostly women) who got a raise today when the federal minimum wage increased to $7.25.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up more than two-thirds (67.8%) of hourly workers paid the minimum wage, even though nearly the same number of women and men work in jobs paid hourly rates.

This increase is undoubtedly a welcome help to many low-income, women-headed families in our region.  While it only adds up to $112 per month (pre-tax), for someone working full time, it is more than a 10% increase over the previous minimum wage of $6.55.

Still, much remains to be done to improve the economic security of low-income, women-headed families, including further attention to the minimum wage.  Even with this increase, today’s workers are still behind, compared to 20 years ago, when the minimum wage was $2.90 – which is $8.62 in 2009 dollars.

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Finally, the media realizes that the poor are impacted by the recession, too.

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

Finally, after all of my concern, conveyed through blogs like this one, about how the media isn’t covering the recession from the perspective of those hit the hardest—the poor—this is exactly the article I’ve been waiting to see for months to see! 

Leave it to Barbara Ehrenreich to remind us all that there are some who are "Too Poor to Make The News."

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Job training and creation should also be the solution for unemployed single mothers.

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

Thank you to the Joint Economic Committee for drawing attention to rising unemployment among women-headed families in its new report, “Women in the Recession: Working Mothers Face High Rates of Unemployment.”

With so much public attention being paid to job loss among men, which, don’t get me wrong, is and should be of deep concern, the challenges for women have too often been overlooked.

How many others – besides we at The Women’s Foundation and those who attended our May 2009 Stepping Stones Research Briefing– would know that the national unemployment rate for women who are heads of households was 11 percent in May – higher than the 9.8 percent rate among men?.

Our national response to rising men’s unemployment, particularly in the manufacturing and construction sectors, has been to increase funding for job training and education and engage in job creation.  In fact, this was a key focus of the stimulus package passed earlier this year – and the President has also been talking about this even more in the last few days.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it is always good public policy to fund job training and job creation.  But I can’t help but compare this response to “welfare reform” of the 1990s, where low-income women heads of households were forced into “work first” and “rapid labor market attachment” models that basically forced them to take a job, any job, and offered only barriers to education and training. (This “work first” approach was also a hallmark of the Workforce Investment Act, which reformed the public workforce training system.)

A recent paper demonstrates quite strongly just how counterproductive this approach is.  Research concluded that welfare reform decreased the probability of both high school and college attendance among young adult women by 20 to 25 percent.  In other words, welfare policies have kept women from the very education and training that would help lift them and their families out of poverty and, ironically, offer more protection against unemployment. (Unemployment among individual without a high school diploma is 14.8 percent, compared to 4.4 percent for college graduates.)

I hope that as the Administration and Congress turn their attention to programs serving primarily women and that they will continue to be solidly committed to job training and creation.

Gwen Rubinstein is a Program Officer at The Women’s Foundation.

Join us for the 2009 Stepping Stones Research Briefing on women and the recession.

Posted on by Gwen Rubinstein

Sunday is Mother’s Day – and the media are already filled with stories about mothers and motherhood and the recession.  For example, here and here.

You probably won’t hear much about the mothers who are too often invisible, even in good times: low-income women raising children alone.

Well – you can have a whole morning of that – for free! – at our upcoming Stepping Stones Research Briefing, which is co-sponsored by The Urban Institute.

Stepping Stones is The Women’s Foundation’s multi-year initiative focused on increasing economic security and financial independence for low-income, women-headed families in the Washington metropolitan area.

This year, the briefing will feature two panels highlighting strategies for increasing and preserving the income and asset gains of low-income, women-headed families in our region through the current recession.

We have speakers from the Center for American Progress, Greater Washington Research (of the Brookings Institution), Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington DC LISC, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, Vehicles for Change, Opportunity Cars and The Urban Institute.

Please join us on Wednesday, May 20, 2009, 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., at the Katharine Graham Conference Center of the Urban Institute at 2100 M Street, NW, 5th Floor.

To RSVP, follow this link.

Please also spread the word by sharing this blog, responding that you’ll attend to our Event on Facebook or Tweeting about it (We’re on Twitter @TheWomensFndtn.).

Gwen Rubinstein is a program officer at The Women’s Foundation.