Obama pushes help for working women: How much do they need it? (+video)
President Obama spoke in Florida about the challenges women face in today's economy. Here's a fact sheet on where working women have made progress and where they still lag men.
President Obama is ramping up his attention to women's issues with midterm elections looming. On Thursday, he addressed the special challenges that women face in todays economy during a forum at Valencia College in Orlando, Fla.
Subscribe Today to the Monitor
Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition
The concern is pertinent, but the picture is nuanced. In many ways its the whole economy thats struggling, not just its female half. In fact, by some measures, US women are doing better than they ever have financially, relative to men.
Yet women still face a pay gap compared with men, remain poorly represented in positions of power, and generally carry the largest domestic duties even as they account for a rising share of family income.
In part, Mr. Obamas talk was aimed at mobilizing female voters with a were on your side message, paired with the partys attacks on Republicans as waging a war on women on social issues. Obama and fellow Democrats are eager to leverage a longstanding electoral advantage among women.
But where do women stand economically in America today? Heres a summary of key facts:
Women have rising duties as breadwinners. As of 2011, mothers were the sole or primary income source for a record 40 percent of households with children under 18, according to Census data tracked by the Pew Research Center, which researches demographic trends.
A gender pay gap exists, but its size is disputed. A commonly cited figure is that a womans earnings will be 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The gap is considerably smaller perhaps 7 to 9 percent once you adjust for pay-affecting factors such as varying time spent in the work force or varying occupations and skills. Scholars debate whether the remaining gap is entirely due to discrimination or partly to other additional factors.
Original post:
Obama pushes help for working women: How much do they need it? (+video)