Women’s Healthcare Rights in Crosshairs While Pay Raises Slow

As if women didn’t have it bad enough while dealing with their healthcare rights being challenged, now we come to find out that their pay isn’t going up either. It was already low, according to Society for Human Resource Management. This is bad news for women who have been struggling during the pandemic.

COVID-19 is hard on women because the U.S. economy is hard on women, and this virus excels at taking existing tensions and ratcheting them up. Millions of women were already supporting themselves and their families on meager wages before coronavirus-mitigation lockdowns sent unemployment rates skyrocketing and millions of jobs disappeared.

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Women earn less because they are more likely to leave the workforce as a result of social expectations placed on them as mothers and caretakers, heightened by the pandemic. Unemployed women also face a disproportionate wage penalty compared to men when they re-enter the workforce.

Society for Human Resource Management

With the housing market also on the rise, women working from home with families looking to upgrade to a new home is tougher than ever. Prices have been increasing during the pandemic and the chances of them going down while interest rates go up are pretty slim. Many have had to bite the bullet and bid with inflated prices in order to get the homes they need. Although, this is great news if you are selling your house.

Especially concerning is that women make up a large portion of US healthcare, and they are not keeping their positions filled due to stress from the pandemic. With the increased number of people flooding into hospitals one would think hospitals could afford more staff, or provide pay raises to keep the ones they have, but this has not been the trend so far. This leads to women quitting and getting work elsewhere, which only makes things worse for the hospital. Many locations have even had to bring in the national guard just to help with staff shortages.

If things don’t get better for women soon, we could be in trouble for a while. They help hold up the world and should be treated as equals. In a time where they face such great adversity, we need to stand with them and make the world a better, fairer place.