[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
UNDERPAID, OVERWORKED, AND
UNDERAPPRECIATED: HOW THE
PANDEMIC ECONOMY DISPROPORTIONATELY
HARMED LOW-WAGE WOMEN WORKERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 17, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-81
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-667 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Pat Fallon, Texas
Georgia Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Russ Anello, Staff Director
Jennifer Gaspar, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Derek Collins, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Crisis
James E. Clyburn, South Carolina, Chairman
Maxine Waters, California Steve Scalise, Louisiana, Ranking
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Minority Member
Nydia M. Velazquez, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio
Bill Foster, Illinois Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Nicole Malliotakis, New York
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on May 17, 2022..................................... 1
Witnesses
Vicki Shabo, Senior Fellow, Paid Leave Policy and Strategy,
Better Life Lab, New America
Oral Statement................................................... 7
Cynthia Murray, Fitting Department Associate, Walmart
Oral Statement................................................... 9
C. Nicole Mason, President & Chief Executive Officer, Institute
for Women's Policy Research
Oral Statement................................................... 10
Mary Katharine Ham (Minority Witness), CNN Commentator and Author
Oral Statement................................................... 12
Yana Rodgers, Ph.D., Professor of Labor Studies and Employment
Relations, Rutgers University
Oral Statement................................................... 14
* Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
No additional documents were entered into the record for this
hearing.
UNDERPAID, OVERWORKED, AND
UNDER-APPRECIATED: HOW THE
PANDEMIC ECONOMY DISPROPORTIONATELY
HARMED LOW-WAGE WOMEN WORKERS
----------
Tuesday, May 17, 2022
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:06 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom; Hon.
James E. Clyburn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Clyburn, Velazquez, Foster,
Raskin, Krishnamoorthi, Scalise, Jordan, Green, and Miller-
Meeks.
Mr. Clyburn. Today our select subcommittee is holding a
hybrid hearing where members have the option of appearing
either in person or remotely via Zoom. Let me make a few
reminders about hybrid hearings.
For those members appearing in person, you will be able to
see members appearing remotely on the two monitors in front of
you. On one monitor, you will see all the members appearing
remotely at once in what is known in Zoom as gallery view.
On the other monitor, you will see each person speaking
during the hearing when they are speaking, including members
who are appearing remotely.
For those members appearing remotely, you can also see each
person speaking during the hearing, whether they are in person
or remote as long as you have your Zoom set to active speaker
view. If you have any questions about this, please contact
committee staff immediately.
Let me also remind everyone of the House procedures that
apply to hybrid hearings. For members appearing in person, a
timer
[audio malfunction].
Mr. Scalise. Mr. Chairman, are you still on the call?
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. I also lost audio, so it's not just you.
Mr. Raskin. Mr. Chairman, we can't hear.
Mr. Clyburn. OK. Did you hear that?
Mr. Scalise. I hear that. I don't see you, but I'm picking
up your audio.
Mr. Clyburn. Was that the ranking member speaking?
Mr. Scalise. Yes, this is Ranking Member Scalise.
Mr. Clyburn. Can you hear me now?
Mr. Scalise. We can hear you, we just can't see you.
There we go, I can see you too. Hear you and see you now.
Perfect.
Mr. Clyburn. OK. I even see me. OK. Thank you for that.
Now, members who are not recognized should remain muted to
minimize background noise and feedback. I will recognize
members verbally, and members retain the right to seek
recognition verbally. In regular order, members will be
recognized in seniority order for questions.
If you are remote and want to be recognized outside of
regular order, you may identify that in several ways. You may
use the chat function to send the request, you may send an
email to the majority staff, or you may unmute your mic to seek
recognition.
Obviously, we do not want people talking over each other,
so my preference is that members use the chat function or email
to facilitate formal, verbal recognition. Committee staff will
ensure that I am made aware of the request, and I will
recognize you.
Now, at the request of the House Recording Studio, I will
count down from ten, and the livestream will begin when I get
down to one. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three,
two, one.
Good afternoon. The committee will come to order. Without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the
committee at any time. I now recognize myself for an opening
statement.
The coronavirus wreaked havoc on our entire economy and
much of our work force. The harm, while broadly shared, fell
disproportionately on the shoulders of women workers.
Women bear a disproportionate share of the care-giving
responsibilities in our country. Many more women than men are
the exclusive childcare providers for their households. And in
households where care responsibilities are shared, they are
often shared unevenly.
As a result, when the pandemic disrupted normal life in
2020, many working mothers were left unable to balance their
jobs with their increased responsibilities to take care of
their children, ailing parents, and others for whom they had
taken on this essential work.
During the early months of the crisis, women all over the
country are losing their jobs because of a lack of childcare
and other care assistance.
Women working low-wage jobs were hurt particularly hard.
Women in low-wage jobs are more likely to be the sole or
primary breadwinner for their household. This means they often
must balance the burden of making sure their household has
enough food on the table, with the challenge of taking care of
children or elderly parents.
For these women, there is rarely a rainy day fund to fall
back on. Every day's wages are necessary to make sure that they
can pay their rent and put enough food on the table.
Far too often these workers face the difficult choice of
either taking care of a sick child or going to work, or to try
to earn enough to support their family.
These women also tend to have fewer guarantees of job
security or steady income from week to week. Low-wage jobs tend
to have higher turnover.
Excuse me. Will you please close that door? Thank you.
These workers are more likely to get fired, forced out, or
voluntarily leave because the stress of balancing the job with
other obligations is simply too high.
Even when low-wage workers are able to remain on the job,
the precariousness of their employment takes a mental toll.
These jobs are also less likely to provide critical
benefits, like paid family and medical leave, and less
scheduling security, or flexibility, making it more difficult
for workers to manage caregiving responsibilities.
The select subcommittee has conducted a survey of 12 of the
Nation's largest private sector companies that reportedly
experienced significant work force reductions during the
crisis, to understand, among other things, who was laid off,
who got promoted, and who may have been forced to leave the
work force by other burdens.
Our analysis found that in 2020, women working in hourly
positions experienced disproportionate harm compared to men
working in hourly positions at the same place of work when it
came to firings, layoffs, voluntary quits, changes in wages,
and promotions.
Disproportionate harm exacerbated preexisting gender
disparities, further straining the families who rely on those
women's wages to make ends meet.
Despite a record-setting 8.3 million jobs added to the work
force since President Biden took office, low-wage working women
continue to face disproportionate challenges to participating
in the work force.
As of February, the female labor force had declined by 1.1
million workers since the pandemic began. The economy will
suffer lasting consequences if women continue to face obstacles
to full employment participation, too often forcing them to
choose between caring for a family member or going to work.
To build an equitable and thriving economy, we must take
further action to address underlying disparities and eliminate
barriers to work force participation.
We must ensure working women, especially low-wage women,
can support themselves and their families through times of
personal or economic upheaval while remaining in the work
force.
I would like to thank our witnesses for being with us
today. I look forward to hearing more about the challenges
facing low-wage, working women and what can be done to enable
them to contribute to our Nation's economy to the best of their
ability.
I now recognize the ranking member for his opening
statement.
Mr. Scalise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'd like to also
thank our witnesses who are joining us today.
I think it's obvious that the COVID lockdown policies that
were adopted harmed parents and kids disproportionately. As
more time passes, we see study after study confirming that
tremendous damage was done personally and emotionally and
economically by these lockdown policies, and much of it was
entirely unscientific and unnecessary.
Some states, mostly led by Democrat Governors, stayed in
lockdown for much longer than others, prolonging the pain and
exacerbating the damage. I wish we would've had this hearing
much earlier on the pandemic so maybe we could've learned how
to prevent some of the unnecessary harm that was inflicted on
American parents and kids.
But nonetheless, I'm glad we're having it now so that
Americans can see how their policymakers failed them, and
hopefully we, as a country, can do better and not repeat the
mistakes that were made if another public health crisis
actually hits.
In my opinion, one of the worst consequences from the
pandemic was the impact that school closures had on kids.
Mr. Chairman, I ask that you please hold a hearing on the
topic of the damage that was done to our young kids by these
closures of schools.
In fact, one of our witnesses, Mary Katharine Ham, is well
versed on this as a CNN contributor but also wrote an opinion
piece that I think would be a must-read for everybody. And the
opinion piece was, Democrats support for school closings comes
back to bite. And we'll hear from her later.
But multiple studies have been released that compare test
scores of kids, based on how much time they spent with remote
learning, compared to those whose schools provided in-classroom
learning. The numbers are heartbreaking.
And this isn't new, we've talked about this, myself, many
of the other Republicans on this subcommittee have highlighted
this over and over again, pleading that we get our schools
open, when we saw the Biden administration manipulating the
science to side with union bosses against our students.
A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic
Research found that student pass rates declined dramatically in
districts with fewer days of in-person instruction. The
researchers found, and I quote, passing rates in math declined
by 14.2 percentage points on average. We estimate this decline
was 10.1 percentage points smaller for districts fully in
person.
Changes in English language, art scores were smaller, but
were significantly larger in districts with larger populations
of students who are Black, Hispanic, or eligible for free and
reduced-price lunch, close quote.
New evidence also proves exactly what we suggested would
happen, low-income students were hit the hardest by this policy
failure. According to a recent Harvard study, low-income kids
had more remote learning, and high-poverty kids were impacted
the most.
The study found that, quote, within school districts that
were remote for most of 2020 and 2021, high-poverty schools
experienced 50 percent more achievement loss than low-poverty
schools.
In contrast, math achievement gaps did not widen in areas
that remained in person.
A co-author of the Harvard study told a New York Times
reporter that, quote, this will probably be the largest
increase in educational inequity in a generation.
The New York Times article goes on to explain, quote, there
are two main reasons. First, schools with large numbers of poor
students were more likely to go remote. Why? Many of these
schools are in major cities which tend to be run by Democrat
officials, and Republicans were generally quicker to reopen
schools.
This is The New York Times article. This isn't me here.
This is The New York Times article. I'll say that again. Why?
Many of these schools are in major cities which tend to be run
by Democratic officials, and Republicans were generally quicker
to reopen schools.
High-poverty schools are also more likely to have unionized
teachers, and some unions lobbied for remote schooling. That
was The New York Times.
And finally, The New York Times says, second, low-income
students tended to face even--to fare even worse when schools
went remote.
So, Mr. Chairman, that was a headline from The New York
Times, which is not exactly a conservative publication. Look at
the devastating impact on our next generation caused by
Democrat leaders joining forces with union bosses to play
politics with public health.
These little kids are probably going to struggle
academically for years to come because of the overbearing and
scientifically misguided Democrat lockdown policies. This did
not have to happen.
By the summer and fall of 2020, the risks of keeping
schools closed were well documented, as well as the roadmap for
how to reopen them as safely as possible.
Yet even as teachers were prioritized for vaccines, some
refused to return to the classroom and under the Biden
administration, the CDC went so far as to allow high profile
union bosses to rewrite the administration's school reopening
guidance to make it easier to keep schools closed. We've, of
course, talked about this at multiple hearings too.
I want to remind everyone that in the summer of 2020,
Republicans, along with Donald Trump and CDC Director Redfield,
were urging schools to reopen. Democrats chose union bosses
over children. To me, that is unforgivable.
It's past time for Democrats to take responsibility for the
devastation that they caused and finally to start working with
us to fix it.
But instead of holding a hearing on this incredibly
important topic, we are having a hearing today with a thinly
veiled agenda to push for failed inflation-inducing policies
like a new minimum wage and government subsidies for paid leave
and childcare at a time when people are struggling to find
workers. And pay is higher than we've seen it in a long time.
Of course not only would these policies worsen inflation,
the biggest burden on American families right now, but they
would also have zero support for Republicans and even lack of
support from Democrats. There are a number of Democrats who
oppose this, because if this was something that was whole-scale
supported, it would've already passed in an overwhelmingly
Democrat House, Senate, with the White House. And it didn't
pass.
Mr. Chairman, I again ask that you please hold a hearing on
the devastating impact of school closures, so that we can learn
from these grave mistakes that were made and finally start
holding the union bosses, and those in the Biden administration
who did this, accountable.
Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the ranking member. We are going to--
I'm really tempted, as you can imagine, to respond, but I'm not
going to respond today. I'm going to move on with this hearing,
because I expect for us to get a lot of good ideas today as of
what to do going forward. I would hope we won't spend all our
time today talking about yesterday. I'm concerned about
tomorrow and the day after.
And with that, I would like to introduce our distinguished
witnesses. Vicki Shabo is a senior fellow for paid leave policy
and strategy at New America's Better Life Lab, where she works
closely with policymakers, researchers, advocates, and business
leaders on policy design and strategies to advance paid family
and medical leave for workers.
Ms. Shabo has advocated for policies that would advance
gender equity in the workplace for over a decade and has spent
years researching and speaking about paid medical and family
leave at the Federal and state levels.
Cynthia Murray is a fitting department advocate--or
associate at Walmart of Laurel, Maryland, where she has worked
for 21 years, while raising two children and a grandchild. Ms.
Murray has experienced firsthand the challenges faced by women
in positions paying low hourly wages, given minimal scheduling
flexibility, and only provided limited benefits.
Ms. Murray is also founding member and board member of
United for Respect which fights every day for dignity and
respect for workers across the country.
Dr. Nicole Mason is president of the Institute for Women's
Policy Research. Dr. Mason is one of the Nation's foremost
researchers on issues of women's work force participation, job
security, and economic well-being.
One of the few women of color to lead a major D.C. think-
tank, Dr. Mason coined the term ``she-cession'' at the start of
the coronavirus crisis, to describe the disproportionate impact
of the pandemic's employment and income losses on women.
Dr. Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a professor at Rutgers
University's labor studies department, where she conducts
research on women's labor and market status.
Dr. Rodgers also serves as a faculty director for its
Center For Women and Work, which focuses on promoting economic
and social equity for women workers, their families, and their
communities.
A scholar with three decades of experience, studying
women's work and well-being, Dr. Rodgers has consulted for the
World Bank, the United Nations, and the Asian Development Bank,
and served as the president of the International Association
For Feminists Economists.
Mary Katharine Ham is a CNN political commentator and co-
host of the parenting podcast, Getting Hammered.
Will the witnesses who are present please stand, and will
all the witnesses please raise your right hands. Do you swear
or affirm that the testimony you are about to give is the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you
God?
You may be seated.
Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
Without objection, your written statements will be made
part of the record. Ms. Shabo, you are recognized for five
minutes for your opening statement, and if I've messed up your
name, you may correct me.
STATEMENT OF VICKI SHABO, SENIOR FELLOW, PAID LEAVE POLICY AND
STRATEGY, BETTER LIFE LAB, NEW AMERICA
Ms. Shabo. That's fine. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. My
name is Vicki Shabo, and I'm a senior fellow at New America,
and I want to thank you for holding a hearing on this important
topic.
Yesterday we marked 1 million lives lost. Though the
economy is strong overall, millions of families are still in
crisis. At the beginning of the pandemic, Congress invested in
paid sick time and childcare, and this made a big difference.
But now most relief has ended, and despite the house Democrats
passage of the Build Back Better Act, Federal policymaking is
now stalled.
Inaction poses grave risk with respect to women, work, and
care. Women have borne the brunt of the last two years. For
Black, Latina and immigrant women, the pandemic has been
particularly challenging, and for women who are paid less than
$15 an hour, it has been brutal.
According to research by the National Women's Law Center,
among low-paid women workers, 41 percent say they have lost or
quit a job. Nearly half report having their hours cut. Nearly 3
in 10 also have caregiving responsibilities for an older or
disabled family member. And yet less than one-fifth low-paid
women workers have paid sick time, paid family and medical
leave, or even paid vacation time to care.
The U.S. work force is still missing nearly 1 million
women, disproportionately Black and Latina women, and too often
work and care are incompatible, which is why women with
caregiving responsibilities were more likely to exit the work
force.
Pundits and business leaders often speak of a labor force
shortage, but what we really have is a shortage of policies,
practices, and supports. This deficit forces too many people
into impossible situations at high costs to their economic
security and health, to businesses, and the economy.
So, let me talk briefly about four things we must do, all
of which are not only good for workers and families but also
are proven to boost labor force participation, help businesses,
and respond to the inflationary pressures that we're hearing so
much about these days.
So, first, paid sick time. To stay safe and healthy at
work, people must have paid sick days. Even the limited
temporary intervention Congress enacted early in the pandemic,
through 2020, prevented an estimated 15,000 cases of COVID per
day nationwide.
To be frank, we haven't seen the private sector step up,
large companies that weren't covered by that emergency-paid-
sick-days requirement. Some provided COVID-specific paid sick
time early on, but many didn't, and put hurdles in place that
could make using sick time very difficult.
And as the pandemic has continued, large profitable
companies that offered COVID paid sick leave has cut it back--
have cut it back just as Omicron surged.
And now with another wave rolling through and more
predicted to follow, Amazon announced that it is eliminating
COVID emergency paid sick time entirely, leaving workers with
just five days per year, for all COVID and non-COVID purposes.
And these workers are lucky. About half of service sector
workers don't have any paid sick days at all.
We can't answer an endemic new normal without paid sick
days as a public health mitigation and preventive health
strategy. This isn't a nice-to-have, this is a must-do.
Second, paid family and medical leave. The pandemic also
showed that access to paid leave for more serious personal or
family health issues, or to allow parents to care for a new
child, is essential. Paid leave has important economic and
health benefits for workers, children, people in need of care,
and families, as well as benefits for business.
And again, here the market, the private sector, has fallen
short. Just 23 percent of private sector workers have paid
family leave through their jobs, and the highest paid workers
are seven times more likely to have paid family leave than the
lowest paid. But even 60 percent of the highest paid don't have
paid family leave.
For workers in the service sector, there's a significant
unmet need. Only half of all service sector workers and just 37
percent of Black service sector workers took a leave that they
needed. The inability to pay bills, the risks of losing jobs
and health insurance loomed large.
A national paid leave policy is long overdue. It helps
families afford the income shock of missed weeks of work, which
is especially important in a period of high inflation. It saves
lives, support jobs, yields cost savings, and boosts the
economy.
Next, childcare. Workers' loss of access to childcare was
perhaps the most acute barrier to work for parents during the
pandemic. McKinsey reports that 45 percent of women who left
the work force cited childcare as one of the reasons, compared
to 14 percent of men.
And even before the pandemic, access to childcare was
challenging. About half of the population lived in childcare
deserts, and now it's even worse, with 9 to 10 percent of
childcare program spaces having been lost.
Cost is also a significant barrier, and for low-income
families with children under five, childcare expenses are 35
percent of their income.
The cost of childcare inflation exceeded annual inflation
by four percent in 2020. Doing nothing on childcare at this
moment is unacceptable. It's essentially telling tens of
thousands of childcare providers, millions of parents, and
millions of workers who lost jobs in this sector that their
work and their interests don't matter.
It's depriving businesses of workers, and it's depriving
the economy of a source of strength.
And briefly, scheduling predictably and flexibility in
notice. Knowing when, where, and for how long one will work is
key to planning our lives.
Yet too many service sector workers, especially people of
color, face short notice about shifts, canceled shifts,
expectation of on-call work, and more.
Shift Project research shows that the pandemic did nothing
to improve these practices.
So in conclusion, more than any other moment in modern
history, the coronavirus crisis has revealed the ways in which
our current practices, systems, and policies fail workers,
families, businesses, and the economy.
Inequalities by gender, race, and income have widened,
particularly when it comes to people's ability to work and
care. The current moment of gridlock and inaction is untenable
in the short-term and will cause significant harm and danger
and loss in the longer term. And we can't wait another moment
for change. Thank you, and I look forward to answering your
questions.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much.
We will now hear from Ms. Murray.
Ms. Murray, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA MURRAY, FITTING DEPARTMENT ASSOCIATE,
WALMART
Ms. Murray. Good afternoon, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking
Member Scalise, and members of the House Subcommittee on the
Coronavirus Crisis. Thank you for the opportunity to testify
today.
My name is Cynthia Murray, and I have been a Walmart
associate for 21 years. I work at a store not far from where
you're sitting today, just 20 miles away in Laurel, Maryland.
I'm here today on behalf of all retail workers who have
been on the front lines keeping our country running during this
pandemic. In the beginning, we were dubbed essential but
treated as expendable.
Since the onset of the pandemic two years ago, large
corporations like Walmart and Amazon have made historic profits
at our expense, at the expense of our health, our families'
health, and in many cases, our lives.
In return, we've seen little to no increase in wages, had
to fight for basic protections, and are still dealing with
inadequate paid leave and unpredictable scheduling that affects
our work-life balance.
It took two decades at Walmart before I made even $15 an
hour. Even though I risked my safety and my son's safety day in
and day out to keep my store running, Walmart is the largest
private employer of American women and people of color in the
country. And our fight for dignity has been going on since well
before the pandemic.
As a founding member of United for Respect, I've been a
huge part of our fight for respect at work since our founding
in 2010. Next month, I will bring a resolution to Walmart
shareholders that will create a first-ever National Pandemic
Advisory Task Force at Walmart, made up of associates like me.
I'm doing this because we can't afford to wait for change.
My fellow workers are suffering. Workers like Janikka Perry,
who was a Walmart associate in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Janikka clocked in for her shift on January 16. She felt
sick that day but knew that calling in would likely result in
retaliation, or worse, termination. Janikka finished her shift
feeling ill and then went into the bathroom.
Paramedics found her unconscious on Walmart's bathroom
floor two hours later. She was pronounced dead that night. She
was only 38 years old.
And Walmart isn't the only company sacrificing people for
profit. At Amazon, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in rapid
growth, expansion in profits, but it's been a very different
story for the workers who made that success possible.
Workers battled illness, injuries, and unpredictable
schedules. Thousands of workers contracted COVID-19, and many
tragically passed away.
Amazon was accused of concealing cases from workers and
health agencies and retaliating against employees that
advocated for their safety.
Amazon workers work in a high-tech sweatshop. Workers like
Courtenay Brown and Daniel O., from the moment customers click
the purchase button until the second the product reaches their
home, Amazon workers like Daniel and Courtenay are monitored,
timed, and punished if they don't meet super human standards
for fulfilling orders.
These dangerous practices create high levels of stress,
anxiety, and depression among workers, and injuries that are
more frequent and more severe than at competing businesses.
Daniel will make history this month by presenting a
resolution to Amazon shareholders to end the punishing quotas
and surveillance that drive Amazon's injuries.
I'm also testifying for workers at PetSmart, owned by the
private equity firm BC Partners, workers like Isabella Burrows
who struggles on just $14 an hour and knows the emotional
difficulty of trying to take care of sick animals while the
store is understaffed.
Isabella just wants to receive the support, policies, and
pay she needs to succeed at her job she loves.
I'm urging you today to act on behalf of workers like
myself, like Janikka, like Courtenay, like Daniel, and like
Isabella.
We are looking to you to move crucial policies that give us
the time off, the dignity we deserve, like the Healthy Families
Act, the Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights, and the Schedules
That Work Act, just a few to name.
Thank you again for your time.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Ms. Murray.
We will now hear from Dr. Mason.
Dr. Mason, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. C. NICOLE MASON, PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN'S POLICY RESEARCH
Ms. Mason. Good afternoon, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member
Scalise, and members of the subcommittee.
My name is Dr. C. Nicole Mason, and I'm the President of
the Institute for Women's Policy Research, an economic think
tank focused on women's economic security and understanding
women's labor force participation.
I thank you for the invitation to testify today about the
long-term impact on the pandemic on women and how we might
chart a path forward toward a full and equitable recovery for
those most impacted by job and income losses; specifically,
women of color and lower-wage workers.
I ask that my written testimony be submitted for the
record.
Two years ago this month, the national unemployment rate
was 13.3 percent, and the number of unemployed persons was 21
million. For women, the unemployment rate was 17.8 percent.
During the early months of the pandemic, women lost four
times as many jobs as men, triggering a she-cession, an
economic downturn defined by income and job losses in sectors
dominated by women--service, leisure and hospitality,
education, and healthcare.
To put this in perspective, at the start of 2020, we were
celebrating the gains made by women in the work force. At that
time, women made up 51 percent of the labor force. This is no
longer the case.
In April 2022--2022, 180,000 women left the labor force,
compared to 131,000 men, and there are still close to 1 million
fewer women than men working or actively seeking a new job in
February 2020.
While the national unemployment rate has dropped
significantly to 3.6 percent, the unemployment rate for Black
and Latina women is still 1.8 and 1.4 times higher than the
unemployment rate of White women.
The pandemic has also exacerbated and deepened many of the
existing inequalities and disparities in our society--health,
income, racial--and exposed the many--that many of our systems
are failing women and families.
Prior to the pandemic, many women, especially those in the
hardest-hit sectors, did not have health insurance, paid family
and sick leave, job security, predictable scheduling, or
flexibility. Many women had to choose between their pay or
coming to work sick, or fear losing their job for taking care
of themselves or their loved ones.
Now, two years into the pandemic in terms of women's mental
health and economic well-being, one in four women report their
families are worse off financially than they were a year ago,
and almost one half are either very worried or somewhat worried
about whether or not their total family income is enough to pay
their bills.
Now, as women begin to return to the work force, we are
seeing disparities between the policies women need to succeed
and what is being offered by employers. In a recent IWPR survey
of women workers and the future of work, we found there is a
gap between the women--the benefits women desire, such as paid
leave, health insurance, and fair compensation, and what--what
employers currently offer.
For women reentering the work force, a living wage and
health insurance are the top two desired benefits, followed by
retirement benefits and job security. Paid vacation, family and
sick leave are also top consideration. But at least one in
three women workers say they lack these critical benefits,
including paid leave, health insurance, or job security. And
more than 75 percent of women surveyed said these benefits in
particular are very important, or important when considering
future job opportunities.
Prior to the pandemic, we did see some progress in terms of
the enactment of policy--workplace--workforce policies that
helped to facilitate women's participation in our economy at
the state and local level, but the pandemic all but wiped out
those gains.
It also bought into sharp relief the fundamental needs of
women in today's work force, comprehensive paid leave and
childcare policies, so women can take care of their families
and pursue their education and/or professional careers.
In this moment, we have an opportunity to address these
issues head-on. We can advance policies and programs, many that
have been mentioned by my--by the other witnesses, at the
Federal and state levels and in our workplaces to support
women's reentry into the work force and their career
advancement. We can also fix the systems that weren't working
for women, families, and workers before the pandemic, while
creating the post-pandemic policies and structures to build a
fair and equitable economy for all.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Dr. Mason.
We will now hear from Ms. Ham.
Ms. Ham, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN COMMENTATOR AND AUTHOR
Ms. Ham. I am here as a couple of things. I'm a mom of
three girls. I am a commentator and public figure, and I'm
someone who watched, wrote about, and worked with a generation
of parents, particularly moms, as they fought tooth and nail
for months on end to get access to one of the most basic
legally required public goods there is: School.
In 2020, American mothers were called upon to parent in
crisis. One day in March, I was a newly married working mom of
two with a first grader in my local public school. By Friday of
that same week, the school we walked half a mile to was closed.
It did not reopen its doors for more than a year.
My life changed. My career shifted. I was one of the lucky
ones. One of the reasons I'm interested in this issue is
because I know it was harder for other people. Had this
happened when I was a single mom, I don't know what I would
have done.
Sometimes people don't believe me when I tell them the
schools were closed for a year. If you didn't see it up close,
it seems absurd, impossible even, but more than 6 million
students in this country, mostly concentrated in America's
bluest metro areas and their suburbs, where I live, were
deprived of in-person instruction for more than a year. They
got the worst of it, but some 30 percent of American students
missed more than four months of school. That's another 15
million kids. Imagine how many moms.
The length and breadth of school closings are important to
remember because, as you might imagine, functioning schools are
pretty important to the participation of moms in the workplace.
You guys have mentioned all the inequities. I have no quibble
with them at all.
According to a Brookings publication, between February and
August 2020, mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost
2.2 million jobs, compared to 870,000 among fathers. In the
month of September 2020 alone, 1 million people left the work
force, and 80 percent of them were women.
The month is not a coincidence. September 2020 was the
month that women had to make or break. They had to make the
decision whether they were going to stay home with their kids
when schools did not open or go back to work.
Their jobs--this pandemic had a way of exacerbating many of
the issues we had before the pandemic, as my fellow panelists
have pointed out. Women did more caregiving and housekeeping at
the home. They did more once they had to be Zoom butlers for
their children.
Childcare was expensive and hard to come by for young
children before the pandemic. It became worse as daycares
closed in many states and large cities obliterated the one
stable source for older children as schools shut down for the
foreseeable future.
This remains important because those schools, particularly
the ones who shut down for the longest periods of time, remain
incredibly unstable and not reliable as a source of putting
your kid in an educational space due to quarantines and all
sorts of other things. Normalcy has not returned.
While private schools functioned with safety and success
just blocks from shuttered public schools, children most in
need of both structure and education public schools formerly
offered languished in virtual school. You heard about some of
the results of that, and I will not belabor them. But the bad
effects are compounding as those kids who missed most school
have both emotional and academic tolls that make school harder
on students, teachers, and parents alike. It did not have to
happen, and we need to account for it.
In American cities, while children weren't getting an
education, their moms were. They learned about teachers unions,
that their first priority wasn't necessarily students. They
learned how to FOIA. They learned that, if they asked for the
public good that unions and school boards claim to value,
they'd be accused of being racist, no matter how diverse their
coalition was, or wanting to sacrifice children. They learned
occasionally Federal law enforcement might look into them for
the sin of attending and speaking at school board meetings. One
Alexandria, Virginia school board official asked parents if
they'd like their children to be alive or educated.
A friend of mine who advocated for children with
disabilities to get their legally required aides was told by a
school official she just wanted her brunches back.
Some moms learned they could be swing voters, something
they never imagined, which certainly fueled the win of
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, who made
concentrated appeals to frustrated parents.
The political part of this is not--I don't intend to use it
as a cajole, but it's important to understand because there is
a trust issue here. Democrats have lost a 15-to 20-point lead
on the issue of education in the last two years that existed
perennially for 20 years before that, because of alignment with
teachers unions and because of support for vast spending on
education. But it's gone.
And so, when we talk about structural change to help moms,
we have to account for the fact that they were failed
dramatically by bureaucratic debacles, politics, in the public
good closest to their homes and most important to them. Many of
them have looked elsewhere for solutions.
And I would just say, if we want to make structural change
that makes life easier for working moms--and we should--we
should note that 5 trillion has been out the door, and still
the most persistent structural change is that these folks don't
have a public school to send their kids to, in many cases, on a
reliable basis.
If we wanted to come up with creative solutions and apply
them to this generational problem, we need to earn that trust
back by acknowledging it.
Mr. Clyburn. Well, thank you very much.
Ms. Ham. Sure.
Mr. Clyburn. The chair now recognizes Dr. Rodgers for five
minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. YANA VAN DER MEULEN RODGERS, PROFESSOR OF
LABOR STUDIES AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS, FACULTY DIRECTOR,
CENTER FOR WOMEN AND WORK, ON BEHALF OF RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Ms. Rodgers. Thank you.
Chair Clyburn, Ranking Member Scalise, and distinguished
members of the committee, thank you for this invitation to
address the issue of low-income women's experiences and gender
disparities in the pandemic economy. As a labor economist, I've
spent the past three decades studying women and work, and I now
serve as the faculty director of a university research center
that focuses on women and work.
In terms of women's work during the pandemic, we've already
heard some of the statistics from Dr. Mason. Women were more
severely hit in terms of higher unemployment rates, and
disparities were even worse for women of color.
The gender wage gap overall remained about the same, but
gender pay inequities worsened for Hispanic and Black women
during the pandemic. Women were also disproportionately
represented among frontline workers. Overall, 64 percent of
frontline workers during the pandemic were women. And frontline
workers were overrepresented by Black workers and Hispanic
workers. And, as we heard from Cynthia Murray, they experienced
a number of hardships. They were also more--less likely to be
covered by health insurance, and they earned less on average
than those working in nonessential industries, meaning their
safety nets were especially weak if they were to contract
COVID.
Men and women both allocated more time toward childcare and
household chores during the pandemic, but the research does
show overwhelmingly that women's workloads increased relatively
more.
At the national level, in the spring of 2021, about 6.5
million families with children reported experiencing childcare
disruptions, and research by my center at Rutgers shows that,
specifically in New Jersey, 21 percent of low-income parents
indicated that they had to cut their work hours because of
childcare disruptions. And another 23 percent indicated that
someone left or lost their job as a result of childcare--the
childcare crisis. That was low-income parents. These
percentages were much lower for high-income families; only
about 7 or 8 percent indicated these kind of losses.
Now, as Chairman Clyburn said, we do need to look forward
at a host of policies that can support low-income workers, and
first is that the Federal Government can help to incentivize
employers to provide employment policies in the private sector
that support and retain women, especially in the area of work-
life balance, but also to develop resources, remove bias, and
eliminate sexual harassment.
In addition, the government needs to work with employers to
do more to help workers with unstable schedules. Scheduling
instability leads to economic hardship because of limited
opportunity for career growth and fluctuating paychecks. There
is also evidence that scheduling practices have a role in
perpetuating racial inequality.
The public sector needs to do a lot to support low-wage
working parents. First and foremost is to develop national
legislation that values care. Priorities for strengthening the
care infrastructure include providing paid family leave and
paid sick leave, creating universal free childcare and long-
term eldercare, boosting pay inequity and job creation in
nursing, and improving working conditions and pay for paid care
providers. Investing in the care infrastructure can grow
employment and reduce women's unpaid work burdens.
In addition, one of the most important policy levers for
helping low-income workers is the minimum wage. Women are more
clustered than men in low-wage jobs, so raising the minimum
wage will help to close the overall male-female wage gap, as
well as the racial and ethnic wage gaps. The Federal minimum
wage is just $7.25 per hour, which is not considered a living
wage in most parts of the country. A number of states and
localities have raised their minimum wages, and it's time for
the Federal Government to follow suit.
The research shows that minimum wage hikes do not lead to
big layoffs or to higher inflation. So overall, in summary, the
best way for the government to shore up a supportive work
environment in the future is to develop national legislation
that values care, raise the minimum wage, and incentivize
employers to adopt workplace policies that recognize the
domestic responsibilities of their employees.
Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Dr. Rodgers. And thanks
to all of you for your statements today.
And we will now move into a period of questions. And the
chair recognizes himself for five minutes, and I think I will
get to a question. But I must make a statement.
Today is May 17. It may not mean anything to anybody in the
room but me, but it was 68 years ago today--I remember exactly
where I was--when the Supreme Court handed down its 1954 Brown
decision. Sixty-eight years ago today.
Now, I could spend the rest of my life talking about what
happened before Brown, and all of us can spend the rest of our
lives talking about what happened before COVID-19, or we can
spend a little time trying to figure out how best to move
forward from whatever mistakes may have been made, whoever may
have made them, or we can spend a lot of time assigning blame.
I would hope that, after listening to these statements here
today, that we can come up with some recommendations that this
committee can hopefully get the entire Congress to respond to
so that we can do something about going forward. I was
attending triple-shift school--not double shift, but triple
shift--when that decision came down. But I have not spent all
my life worrying about that. I'm trying to see what we can do
going forward.
And so I'm going to ask this question. Ms. Murray, you work
at a Wal-Mart. You shared with us some dramatic--two dramatic
situations involving your fellow employees.
What would you suggest we do going forward?
Ms. Murray. We need quite a few things to move forward.
One, we need to put in place for workers to have paid sick time
off. We need to stop pushing workers to come to work sick
because they get penalized for missing a day. That is one thing
that we need--we need definitely in our country right now.
We need better healthcare for workers that work the hours
that they work, and childcare. We need to do a whole lot better
for our working mothers that have to take time off when they're
sick, and then they become sick.
So, our policies overall have to change with our companies.
Our companies have to stop pointing out our workers. Our pay
has to become better for each and every one of us.
Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you.
Ms. Shabo, would you have some answers to the problems just
expressed by Ms. Murray?
Ms. Shabo. Absolutely. I mean, the situations that Ms.
Murray described are horrible, and they're not unique. And we
know that, when workers have access to paid sick time, they are
more likely to take themselves out of the work force for a
shorter period of time. They're more likely to get healthcare
that they need in an acute way. They're more likely to get
preventive healthcare. People are healthier. Contagions spreads
less.
As I said, even the limited temporary policy that Congress
put in place on a bipartisan basis at the beginning of this
pandemic prevented 15,000 cases of COVID per day nationwide.
And, if that policy had been expanded to businesses of all
sizes, if the Department of Labor had enforced it, if the
regulations that had been written had not been circumscribed,
we would have been in a much different place.
And, if workers had had paid sick time without being
penalized, we could have had a shorter pandemic, which would
have actually produced better results for the country overall.
Mr. Clyburn. So----
Ms. Shabo. We also do need child--I mean, childcare is a
huge problem. It's something we have to do something about.
It's something we needed to do before. Paid family and medical
leave has long been an issue. Fair schedules, entirely
beneficial to workers and to businesses, and yet we keep
perpetuating these policies that hold people back.
Mr. Clyburn. Dr. Mason, I'm interested in what your
research may have found regarding this issue.
Ms. Mason. Much of our research supports what Vicki has
said about the impact of the lack of paid sick leave on workers
and the need for us to have and pass paid sick and family leave
at the Federal level.
What we've found during the pandemic and some other of my
colleagues pointed out that, because of the lack of childcare,
because of the overrepresentation of women of color in the
hardest hit sectors, what--they suffered disproportionately
during the pandemic.
And so, when we look at policies that we will need, it's
paid sick and family leave, it's health insurance, but it's
also raising the minimum wage, because you noted yourself that,
before the pandemic and during the pandemic, many of these
women were hanging on by a thread economically, and the
pandemic exacerbated their economic vulnerability.
So, in this moment, we've learned so much over the last two
years, and we have an obligation to workers and to families to
get it right this time around and create policies that are
equitable, fair, and that move us toward our goal--I believe
our shared goal of economic prosperity for all.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much.
The chair now recognizes--I think the ranking member--Mr.
Jordan, you are now recognized.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Clyburn. I'm going to give you six minutes.
Mr. Jordan. That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Ham, has the Biden administration--has the Biden
administration done anything right?
Ms. Ham. On the issue of schools, they have----
Mr. Jordan. Well, I'm saying in general.
Ms. Ham. In general?
Mr. Jordan. I mean, seven out of ten Americans think the
country--I don't know if I've ever seen wrong track numbers
this high. Seven out of ten of our fellow citizens think----
Ms. Ham. I mean----
Mr. Jordan [continuing]. this country is on the wrong
track.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. they're pretty bad, which is one of
the reasons I speak about this issue and bring the political
part of it to bear, because great confidence has been lost in
this particular demographic, with really good reason.
Mr. Jordan. Yep. You're----
Ms. Ham. In order to improve one's political fortunes, one
needs to recognize that that happened.
Mr. Jordan. Now, you said you're a mom with, I think, two
children. Is that right?
Ms. Ham. Three kids.
Mr. Jordan. Three kids? Mom with three kids. Everything
costs more? Everything costs more today?
Ms. Ham. Yes, that's correct.
Mr. Jordan. Clothes cost more for your kids, food costs
more, gas to take them to soccer practice, band practice,
whatever your kids are involved in. That probably costs more,
too, right?
Ms. Ham. That's correct.
Mr. Jordan. Yes. And, if you're a mom who needs baby
formula, that costs more, too, if you can even find it. I mean,
everything costs more, right?
Ms. Ham. It--yes. If you can find it, which is another
grave issue for many moms. And I would say, on the of issue of
the--of economic issues and inflation, just like with the
school stuff, the reason I care about these things is because,
if it is hurting me, I know that it is hurting other people----
Mr. Jordan. Yes.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. far more, because I have some amazing
things in my employment. I have some flexibility. I don't have
some of the things that you guys have mentioned, but I have
some flexibility. I have abilities to work around this. I have
the ability to teach my kids at home. I opened up my home to
other people's families who did not have that ability----
Mr. Jordan. Yep.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. because I knew that these trends were
hurting other people who did not have the resources I had far
worse than they were hurting me. And I deeply want those to be
acknowledged and dealt with before we move to the solution,
because the problem must be acknowledged before we move to the
solution.
Mr. Jordan. Well said. And let's talk about some of those
people who were directly impacted in a much worse way than you.
Everything costs more today. They kept your kids out of
school, I think you said for a year. But more than--for more
than 6 million students in the country, mostly concentrated in
America's bluest metro areas--I'm reading from your testimony--
they were deprived of in-person instruction for more than a
year. They got the worst of it.
But some 30 percent of American students missed four
months. That's another 15--21 million kids missed 30 percent or
more of their education.
So, everything costs more. They kept your kids out of
school. And here is the thing that gets me. If you are a mom
who showed up at a school board meeting to speak out against
some of the things that were being done to your son or
daughter, you might have been targeted by the Justice
Department. I mean, I think you mentioned in your opening
testimony, the election in Virginia, Mr. Youngkin, it was a
huge issue last fall. But I've never seen anything like this.
We had whistleblowers come forward, over two dozen cases
where this threat tag designation that Mr. Garland put in
place, this apparatus and process he put in place. So, they
keep your kids out of school. Everything now costs more for a
mom, for a dad. And, if you go show up at a school board
meeting to speak out against some of the things they're doing
with your kids' education, oh, my goodness, you may get
investigated by the FBI. Such a deal for the tax-paying moms of
this country.
Ms. Ham. Yes, it's a problem, because--and, again, the
reason I talk about this as often as I do is because a lot of
families were hurt who have far more--fewer resources than I
do. And, when they had the temerity to go before their public
servants and ask for the public good, to which they are
entitled and for which they paid the same amount of taxes, even
when it did not exist, they were pilloried, and, in fact,
sometimes targeted by Federal law enforcement, which is a very,
very big deal.
Mr. Jordan. Now, Ms. Ham, you're a journalist, right?
Ms. Ham. Yes, I am.
Mr. Jordan. And who do you work for?
Ms. Ham. CNN.
Mr. Jordan. You work for CNN?
Ms. Ham. And I freelance various other places. I've written
for The Atlantic and----
Mr. Jordan. So, I just want to walk you through real quick,
because I've never seen anything like this in my life.
September 29, the last year, the National School Board
Association sends a letter to the Biden administration saying,
Use domestic terrorism acts and laws and statutes, the PATRIOT
Act, to go after moms and dads.
Five days later, the Attorney General of the United States
issues a memorandum where he actually puts in place a process--
an apparatus to do just that. He sets up a--what he called a
dedicated line of threat communication, what I would call a
snitch line, so people could snitch on their fellow citizens
who were showing up at these school board meetings.
And then, 16 days after that, the F--and he sends that
memorandum, by the way, to every U.S. attorney in the country.
And then, 16 days later, the FBI sends out an email to FBI
agents around the Nation. And, as I said, we learned from
whistleblowers that they used that apparatus to go after moms
and dads.
So, from September 29th to October 20th, they put this in
place. First thing I always say is I've never seen the Federal
Government move that fast on anything. But, when it comes to
chilling moms' and dads' speech, oh, my goodness, they can
operate at record speed. That is frightening.
And as a journalist, I would think--and as a mom, you would
say the same. Is that correct?
Ms. Ham. Yes. And, by the way, the sort of exodus from the
National School Board Association by local school boards
shows--and some----
Mr. Jordan. And----
Ms. Ham [continuing]. State school boards shows that----
Mr. Jordan. State of Ohio got out of it.
Ms. Ham. Yes. Shows that this was a--this was a misstep,
and it became very public. And it is a betrayal of parents, who
have the right to speak to their public servants--and, by the
way, we're barred from doing so for much of the pandemic
because they were not allowed to be in person, just like their
children were not allowed to be in person.
And I also, as a free-speech enthusiast, would love--love
for people--parents who disagree with me to speak----
Mr. Jordan. Sure.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. vociferously----
Mr. Jordan. That's called America. That's called the First
Amendment.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. at all of these meetings as well. So,
look, it's a problem. I think it, again, goes to the trust
problem. And one of the reasons that parents will look with a
highly skeptical eye on the next solution coming down the pike
for them is because this very basic service was taken away from
them.
Mr. Jordan. Yep.
Ms. Ham. And it was taken away from them in such a way that
it was very hard to address. They were left with, as you guys
note, very few safety nets in some cases. And they remain
rightly skeptical that their local government or the Federal
Government in some cases is going to be able to step in and
solve these problems.
So, I think it's very important to look to the future. And
one of the things we need to recognize is that, in the present,
many of America's metro area schools remain unstable for the
very women we're talking about----
Mr. Jordan. Yep.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. because their children have to
quarantine teen for 10 days because they saw a person at a
soccer field that had COVID.
Mr. Jordan. I'm out of time, but I just want to get one
more question in if I could, Ms. Ham.
Do you support school choice?
Ms. Ham. I do.
Mr. Jordan. God bless you. I do, too. And I don't think--I
don't think Americans should vote for any candidate for any
office if they're not in favor of letting moms and dads decide
where their son or daughter is going to get the best education.
That's so fundamental.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you, Ms. Ham.
Mr. Clyburn. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. Just
keep on living. You'll see how fast the government can work. It
worked real fast before 1954.
With that, the chair recognizes Ms. Velazquez----
Mr. Jordan. We'll deal with that later.
Mr. Clyburn [continuing]. For five minutes.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Mason, women of color are overrepresented in the
hospitality and service sectors, which tend to feature lower
pay and fewer benefits. And these jobs saw some of the
largest--saw some of the largest dropoffs in employment during
the pandemic.
Dr. Mason, what kinds of challenges have women of color,
particularly those who work in low-wage jobs, faced in
participating in the work force during the pandemic?
Ms. Mason. So, thank you so much for this wonderful
question, and I also want to say that I appreciate Ms. Ham's
invocation of her experience as a mother and navigating the
pandemic. I do want to say that I am, too, a mother, a single
mother of 12.5-year-old twins.
And the caregiving challenges for me was exacerbated by
school closures. And I understood that it was really important
in this moment for us to really take the pandemic and its
impact on--you know, on the public health really, really
seriously. And, for many women of color, I was very fortunate
to be able to work remotely. For many of the workers that we've
been talking about today, that was not the case.
Many women of color, lower-wage workers, because of the
lack of paid sick and family leave and the fact that, in order
to get paid, you have to show up physically to a location, had
to drop out of the work force. And a lot of the conversation
and narrative around who was able to drop off--out of the work
force left these women out of that conversation.
But, in truth, Black and Latina women, because of
caretaking responsibilities and demands, the lack of paid sick
and family leave, were more likely than other women to exit the
work force.
And, as I said, many of these issues around workplace
flexibility, lack of paid sick leave, the high cost--high and
exorbitant costs of childcare, were issues for many women of
color in the work force, lower-wage workers. And the pandemic
just exacerbated those challenges and that reality for many
women.
And, when we look at the--even the policies that were
passed to stem the pandemic, many workers--immigrant workers
and lower-wage workers who worked at companies who were
excluded from providing paid sick leave, were women of color.
So, you know, I just want to say, in this moment, as we are
thinking about how we move forward, thinking about a
comprehensive package of policies that will improve the working
conditions, wages of lower-wage workers is what we need. The
blame game and looking at who is to blame for what happened
during the pandemic is counterproductive and doesn't get us to
where we need to be.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you.
Ms. Mason. All right.
Ms. Velazquez. Thank you.
Ms. Shabo, while policies like paid leave will benefit
women greatly, these type of low-wages jobs are the least
likely to provide access to these benefits.
How have differences in access to benefits like paid leave
impacted the experiences of different segments of women
workers?
Ms. Shabo. Thank you for the question, Ms. Velazquez.
We know from states that have paid family and medical leave
programs in place--and there are now 11 of them, plus D.C.--
Delaware just passed this past week, which is very exciting--we
know from states like California that are going on nearly 20
years of experience that women are better able to stay
employed. They have wages that go up over time.
The program has been particularly beneficial to Latina
women, who are able to take a longer leave, which means that
they're able to care for their new children. We know that women
who are caregivers to older people or disabled adults are able
to come back to work.
These are prowork policies that support women. They support
families and the people who need care. They support businesses.
And, in fact, businesses in New York, your state, and New
Jersey became more favorable toward paid leave policies--public
paid leave policies during the pandemic. These are our win-win
policies for workers, businesses, families, and the economy
overall.
And if I could just say one--one thing about this school
closure. I just want to point out that, actually, Democrats'
HEROES Act, which was passed in July 2020, included $5 billion
to upgrade schools for HVAC and ventilation. If that had passed
with Republican support that it needed, we would have been past
the school closure issue much faster. We would have gotten kids
back to school.
But I agree with Dr. Mason. And I'm a mother as well. We
can't have kids be in schools that are unsafe.
But I want to pivot toward the future, and I really
appreciate the question, Ms. Velazquez.
Ms. Velazquez. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up, but I
just would like to add that, coming the midterm election, no
one in this country should support any candidate who really
talk about and support replacement theory.
I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you, Ms. Velazquez.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Green for five minutes.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Scalise, and I want to thank our witnesses for joining us
today.
The committee today is titled to have us discuss and focus
our remarks and questions on the pandemic's economy's impact on
low-wage working women. And I'm going to do just that. I'm
going to speak about the No. 1 impact on low-income families
across the board in our country.
The most important pressing economic issue facing American
workers is inflation. Some of us have been warning that the
massive amount of Federal spending pumped into the economy
would lead to sustained inflation. I warned the fed chair in
this room about this back in 2020.
Yet, in 2021, Democrats rammed through $2 trillion spending
package on a party line vote. And, unsurprisingly, United
States is witnessing the highest inflation in four decades.
Inflation is crushing the budgets of working families, who are
now struggling to afford everyday expenses. In April, the
consumer price index was 8.3 percent over the previous year.
Think about that.
Prices are going up by over eight percent across the board
on many of the most common household goods. Rent has increased
11 percent in the past year, disproportionately hurting low-
income Americans. High gas prices are causing pain at the pump,
with the average price of gallon of a gas up nearly 50 percent
in the past year.
According to the Joint Economic Committee, inflation costs
American households an average of $569 each month. That's
nearly $7,000 a year.
Parents go to the grocery store and find that food prices
keep going up. That assumes that what they are looking for,
such as baby formula, is even in stock.
Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a donor to the Democrat
Party and liberal causes, warned that--and I quote--``this
administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an
already overheated inflationary economy, and only Manchin saved
them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most
hurts the least affluent,'' end quote.
Bezos is right about inflation being a tax on the least
affluent. Working Americans are bearing the brunt of
Bidinflation, and each passing day makes it more and more
difficult for them to afford everyday expenses. Working mothers
have been especially hard-hit as they try to provide for their
children while their paychecks are eaten up by inflation.
The Biden administration has stubbornly chosen to ignore
this reality. First, they said that inflation was transitory.
Again, I remember asking the fed chair in this room. That's
exactly what they said. It's transitory.
As it became obvious that inflation wasn't going away,
President Biden tried to cast the blame everywhere else to
avoid responsibility for a crisis that his policies have
created in the past year. Meanwhile, inflation continues to
rise, costing Americans hundreds of dollars every single month,
and eating away at the value of their savings.
In conclusion, massive infusions of cash within this
economy have actually taken almost $7,000 a year out of the
pockets of the poorest among us. This is the legacy of the past
year, and it is academic truth.
Let me ask a question to Ms. Ham in the little bit of time
that I have left.
What do you think are some of the impacts of this inflation
on the working moms and, you know, folks that are--what we
would call less affluent in our society?
Ms. Ham. Well, again, speaking--you read out all the
numbers, and the numbers are very stark. And I'm sure that
every single person here has felt them when you go to the
grocery store.
It's not rocket science, and, again, I know that I have
abilities and resources and flexibilities that other families
do not have. And, if we are hurting, then other people are
hurting so much worse.
And the idea that the solution to all of this always is
more trillions of dollars, I think, is misguided, because we
have put ourselves in a situation with the 5 trillion already
out the door, and yet somehow couldn't get schools back open.
Strangely, as I said, public schools all over the country,
public schools in Europe, public schools in Scandinavia, in
Britain, they all opened. The counterfactual exists where you
could safely reopen.
That is not to say March 2020, right? This is not a
reckless pursuit. But to note that the costs to children,
particularly those who were already at a disadvantage, and
their families would be greater and terrible from a year of
closed school--the idea that that is improper to look at, to
acknowledge, the idea that that is somehow only in the past
when a generation of gains for minority students have been
wiped out and then some, they will be dealing with this for the
foreseeable future.
And my thought is, given that the 5 trillion couldn't
handle opening schools properly, maybe we should concentrate on
those issues, because the Federal Government is not that great
at doing a bunch of things well.
Mr. Clyburn. The lady's time has expired.
The chair recognizes Mr. Raskin for five minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The right to make your own reproductive decisions about
your own body is a basic human right, but the GOP has been
advocating for decades to take that right away from American
women. And now we know that, after packing the Supreme Court
with right-wing ideologs, they are about to get their way. If
Justice Alito's narrow majority holds and the Supreme Court
strikes down Roe v. Wade and abolishes the constitutional right
to privacy, access to safe and legal abortion will be abolished
or dramatically curtailed in more than 20 states immediately.
But our colleagues say in Congress that abortion is murder,
and they want a nationwide law making it a crime for women to
have abortions anywhere in the country.
So, these bans will be terribly painful for women who work
in low-wage jobs. And, Ms. Mason, I want to ask you that--what
would a nationwide Republican law against abortion in the
United States do to affect women's ability to participate in
the economy?
Ms. Mason. Thank you so much for this question. It's
actually a real travesty, the impending Supreme Court decision,
and will have a devastating impact on women workers, especially
workers of color.
IWPR did a study this time last year, and we found that, as
a result of state-level abortion restrictions, not even
thinking about the recent Supreme Court decision, states--state
and local economies and women workers would lose $105 billion
annually because of these restrictions. And, with the impending
Supreme Court decision, we know that those costs will be
exacerbated.
And, when we talk about the losses--the economic losses to
women, we're talking about lost wages, lost productivity, and
especially without paid sick and family leave as well as
healthcare insurance, the costs to these workers are
exponential, including the--potentially the loss of jobs.
And so, when I think about this ban and put it in context,
what I want to point out for sure is that many of the states,
Mississippi included, are--have been and historically been
hostile to not only women, but women of color and people of
color.
Mississippi ranks low--the lowest, or among the lowest
states on every social indicator of well-being for women. This
ban before the Supreme Court, as well as the other states that
are considering similar laws, are all states that have not
taken care and concern around women's economic security, and
this bill or these bans just, again, will have a devastating
impact on women's economic security, but also families'
economic well-being overall.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you for that.
You know, the same people who want to brand women in United
States as criminals for exercising what is today, at least for
a few more weeks, a constitutional right have consistently
voted against paid family leave policies.
So, Ms. Rodgers, what will be the effect on women in the
workplace if they have neither reproductive choice in the full
panoply of healthcare that women enjoy today, nor paid family
leave policies available to them?
Ms. Rodgers. I agree very strongly with what Dr. Mason just
said, that there is no gender equality in the workplace without
paid family leave, without access to affordable childcare, and
without full access to reproductive health services, including
access to safe abortion.
And there is now a large body of very rigorous empirical
evidence showing that access to abortion services affects
positively women's investment in their education, women's
attachment to the labor force. It also reduces their likelihood
of living in poverty as a result of being denied an abortion.
And access to these services reduces their likelihood of
raising children in poverty if women are denied an abortion.
There is even evidence at the macroeconomic level showing
that abortion rights and liberalizing abortion laws also
positively improves GDP per capita. There is as much as an 11
percent increase in women's labor supply when we have a
reduction in abortion restrictions, which could lead to an
increase in GDP per capita of up to seven percent.
Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you for that.
Mr. Chairman, I just want do say that, when you look around
the world, giving women control over their own reproduction and
fertility is the key to ending poverty, and we're moving in
exactly the wrong direction today.
I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank the gentleman for yielding back.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Miller-Meeks for five minutes.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And, first, I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for
coming before the committee to testify today.
And I think that we're all concerned with the impact that
the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and school closures have had on
children and parents alike. And, unlike some of what I've heard
in this room today, there is not a blame game, but the reason
you have to look back, as I can tell you, being a physician, a
nurse, a 24-year military veteran, and a director of the
Department of Public Health, if you don't--if you don't do a
review of what you've done, that sets the precedent.
And, since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I have
written extensively--and even being sworn into Congress--
written extensively and talked about the adverse consequences
of locking down a society, that the pandemic was life versus
life. It was never life versus the economy. And, if we don't
want to recognize that, the precedent going forward for the
next pandemic is that we do exactly the same thing.
Just last week, The New York Times reported on the high
cost of school closures. Thank goodness they finally recognized
that there was a cost of school closures on our most vulnerable
population. They found it was very clear that remote schooling
was not good for learning and that schools with large numbers
of poor students were more likely to go remote.
They even link this finding to the fact that students
typically live in cities run by Democrat officials, and even
the World Health Organization last year said we should not
continue locking down schools, that childhood poverty had
increased by over 15 percent because of our response to the
pandemic, and it would be decades until we recovered that loss.
Our great Governor, Governor Reynolds in the state of Iowa,
with the concert and approval of our legislature--and I was a
state senator at that time--decided in the fall--the end of the
summer, fall of 2020, we would reopen Iowa schools to in-person
learning and had no adverse consequences or effects.
Ms. Ham, can you talk how disproportionately low-income
students and parents have suffered from prolonged school
closures?
Ms. Ham. I mean, it's becoming painfully obvious in these
studies of learning loss during this time. And this is the kind
of thing--again, to your point and to your point, made
eloquently, Representative Clyburn, about Brown v. Board, we do
not fix things by not talking about this grave error, right,
which was the pre-Brown v. Board era of schooling in American
society, right?
We should never put that in the rearview mirror forever,
because it then causes us to make the same mistakes in the
future, which is a great reason for you to bring it up in this
hearing.
The same goes for this, where we have made grave errors.
And, as I said, these are not in the past. Schools remain
destabilized. And the kids and the parents who have to deal
with this learning loss, in Chicago in particular--I believe it
was in Cook County, one county board member--a Democrat
obviously--it's Cook County--said, like, in the last 18 months,
that they've had two years of learning loss among those kids.
They will have to wrestle with that, and their parents,
many of them single parents, will have to be doing the
tutoring, finding the tutoring, floundering to get them back up
to speed.
And my suggestion is simply that, when we are talking about
solutions, let's concentrate a whole lot of it on clawing back
what we gave away during the last two years, which were
consistent and very good gains for minority students in places
where they really needed help.
And we gave it away for no reason, because, after a very
short period of time, the facts made clear that you could have
kids in school safely and that it was, in fact, a safer place
than many other places, because it did--it only reflected
community spread and, in fact, was insulated from it a bit with
other mitigations.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. And we talked a lot about the lack of
child nutrition--nutrition when schools closed, with child
abuse because mandatory reporters were not in school to see
children.
We also--when I came into Congress and my first markup in
Education and Labor happened to reveal that there was over $60
billion that was allocated to schools that was not spent, and
even after the ERF package COVID relief was passed for schools
to reopen and teachers put at the top front of the line to get
vaccinations, still schools remained closed.
So, we also note that, once schools reopened, some harmful
policies have remained in place, such as forcing our children
to be masked.
I recently introduced a resolution to express disapproval
of the requirements in the Head Start programs to wear masks in
the classroom. Three and four-year-olds continuing to wear
masks, despite being very obvious now and research showing now
on the negative impacts, the speech impediments on children
having to wear masks in school.
So, Ms. Ham, we only have a few short minutes. Can you
discuss the impact that masking in schools has had on our
children?
Ms. Ham. Yes. I think there is a broader point here, which
is that, you know, the experts say don't look backward, we need
to spend more money on these problems in the ways that we have
proscribed. But the experts were wrong about sending kids back
to school and whether it would be dangerous. And they told you
that putting your kid on a screen for six hours a day would be
an awesome idea and everything would work out fine, even though
we knew from years of study that that probably wasn't a great
idea.
They told you that covering your kids' face with a mask was
the safe thing to do, and it was totally worth any of the
interaction and socializing and speech therapy that they would
lose as a result. In many cases, it wasn't, particularly for
children with disabilities who suffered the worst from some of
these mitigation processes.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you.
I yield back my time.
Mr. Clyburn. There is a vote on, and we have to vote.
So, we would like to go to Mr. Foster for five minutes, and
I'm going to try to get to Mr. Krishnamoorthi before we have to
go vote.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One of the biggest factors pulling women out of the work
force during the pandemic was needing to care for ill or loved
ones or children learning from home.
The bipartisan Families First Coronavirus Response Act
required employers to provide paid sick and family leave to
certain employees that were--are affected by their coronavirus.
Although the coronavirus is still circulating, that provision
expired at the end of 2020.
Last year, I introduced the Pandemic Leave Extension Act,
which would extend FFCRA's paid leave requirement until the end
of the public health emergency.
Ms. Shabo, how would widespread access to paid family and
medical leave for coronavirus-related issues make a difference
for women workers?
Ms. Shabo. Mr. Foster, thank you so much for your
leadership and for your question.
So, the FFCRA was a good first step. It prevented 400 cases
per day per state, or more than 15,000 cases per day
nationwide. And it was limited, as you know. It did not affect
workers in larger businesses who had trouble.
If we were to bring back FFCRA, even if it's in its
original form, it would have a significant effect on the spread
of illnesses through workplace, particularly as masks have been
removed, particularly as large companies are no longer telling
people that there has been a spread in their workplace,
particularly as they're rolling back, as Amazon has, all of
their emergency paid sick leave. So, it would be tremendous.
In addition, if we still covered childcare leave, when
workers do have children who are being asked to quarantine or
stay home or when schools do have outbreaks, it would allow
parents to maintain their jobs and take care of their children.
FFCRA was tremendous. It was helpful to employers.
Actually, more employers filed for FFCRA tax credit relief than
filed for some of the other employer retention tax credits and
others.
So, this was an important first step. It was bipartisan,
and I applaud Congress for that. And it's a real travesty, a
misstep, and shortsighted that it expired, and in particular
that the requirement expired. But now there is not even tax
credits available either.
Mr. Foster. Yes. So--but it's fair to characterize it as a
probusiness piece of legislation----
Ms. Shabo. Absolutely.
Mr. Foster [continuing]. In its effect?
Ms. Shabo. When workers have access to paid sick time,
they're more likely to stay home, which means a shorter period
of spread through their workplaces.
Actually, Ms. Mason's institution, IWPR, did a study of the
H1N1 flu several years ago and found that the period of
illnesses or contagion within workplaces was shorter. And, you
know, we can't miss--misread the steps here. People need access
to paid sick time.
And businesses need to know that their workers are healthy,
that they're not coming to work at lower productivity, and that
everyone is working as they should.
Mr. Foster. Thank you.
I'd like to speak for a moment about the macroeconomic
effects of this. Women's incomplete work force participation
has economic consequences for everybody. Studies show that the
labor market disparities cost our country trillions of dollars
of potential GDP, let alone the impact on families--individual
families' well-being. And this places the United States at a
global competitive disadvantage, and it's left the United
States ranking second to last in growth for women's work force
participation among the OECD countries.
The pandemic has just exacerbated that trend. If labor
force participation for American women was at rate similar to
those of Canada, Germany, or the U.K. during the pandemic, the
United States would have saved an estimated $97 billion of GDP
losses.
Now, so, Dr. Rodgers, could you explain how low female
labor force participation and over a million women leaving the
labor force during the pandemic impacts our economic growth?
Ms. Rodgers. That is such an excellent question.
One of the fundamental inputs into economic growth is the
input of workers. We need both physical capital as well as
human capital. And it's both the number of workers as well as
their education that matters.
So, when women are withdrawing from the labor force because
of constraints that they face, that is indeed a--puts a damper
on economic growth, and there is a number of studies that have
shown what you've just alluded to, that women's labor force
participation, when that gap with men closes, gender inequality
is reduced, and economic growth is promoted.
And we've also seen literature showing that, when laws are
changed and companies are more inclusive, when women have
greater rights around the world, including in the U.S., that
also promotes economic growth.
One study that I did looked specifically at laws
surrounding sexual orientation as well as gender identity, and
we found that one additional right supporting inclusion in the
economy contributes to an increase in GDP per capita of $2,065
on average. These are large effects, and gender equality does
matter for the macro-economy.
Mr. Foster. Thank you. And I guess I can't let your
reference to both human and physical capital slide without
mentioning--giving a shout-out to the Cobb-Douglas production
function. One of the fundamental macroeconomic papers of I
guess all time, and authored--coauthored by Senator Paul
Douglas of Illinois.
Ms. Rodgers. Absolutely.
Mr. Foster. I yield back.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mr. Foster.
The chair now recognizes Mr. Krishnamoorthi for five
minutes.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Ham, I'd like to turn your attention to an article that
we found in The Federalist dated April 10, 2018. It's entitled
``Equal Pay Day Hypes''--I'm sorry--``Equal Pay Day Hype
Ignores the Facts and Women's Feelings About the Workplace.''
I have this article in front of me. And I just want to draw
your attention to page four of this article.
And, here, you say, quote, ``Women are far more willing to
give up higher pay for more comfortable work requirements.''
You wrote that as part of this piece, correct?
Ms. Ham. Yes. The piece is about how, when you do the
calculations of equal pay day in such a way that does not take
into account people's desires for what their workplace looks
like, you end up not accounting for the fact that women desire
the ability----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Correct. I'm just--I want to turn our
attention to this statement. Women are far more--this is what
you said: Women are far more willing to give up higher pay for
more comfortable work requirements.
And, you know, I'm just thinking about Ms. Murray, who has
testified today, who spent over 20 years working at Wal-Mart,
and to this day brings home just over $16 per hour.
Do you really believe, Ms. Ham, that Ms. Murray doesn't get
paid a living wage or higher than $16 per hour because she
chooses not to be paid more?
Ms. Ham. No, I do not believe that. The----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And do you believe that she chooses----
Ms. Ham. The poll that--may I--may I----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi [continuing]. Comfortable work
requirements over being paid more?
Ms. Ham. No. The poll--what I'm referring to in that
article, which you clearly read, is polling on what women want
in a workplace, which I think is important to all of us, and
one of the things they do want--and one of the things that, by
the way, we've taken out of the pandemic and can increase, to
you guys' points, is more workplace flexibility.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I'm looking at this----
Ms. Ham. I am not casting----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I'm looking at this article.
Ms. Ham [continuing]. Aspersions on any particular worker
at all.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. There is no poll. There is no polling
that this is citing here for this very broad statement. I don't
see any citation whatsoever to any polling data.
Ms. Ham. The New York Times and others have----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. In fact, there is data that underlies
that very broad statement.
Ms. Murray, I want to ask you a very simple question. You
are paid $16 per hour. You've worked 20 years at Wal-Mart. Do
you feel like you've chosen to get paid less than your male
counterparts?
Ms. Murray. No, not at all. And a lot of male workers get
paid more than the women do at Wal-Mart.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. For doing the same job?
Ms. Murray. Yes. And we've asked Wal-Mart to be opened
about how they pay--how the pay rate is for men and women, and
of course they will not show us that.
But, no, I don't choose to get paid less than men, and I
don't stay at Wal-Mart because it's a comfortable position.
It's not. I stay there now because I feel workers need a voice
across the country, and the only way that's going to happen is
through other workers, like me and other workers that speak up
and speak out.
And that's why I'm asking for workers to be put on boards
of big companies, workers that work inside stores, so that they
understand what these workers go through, because they just
ignore us. They don't come in and really truly look and see
what's happening.
So, the only way we can make these changes is to ask your
workers that are on the front line. We are deemed essential
workers. Treat us like that.
We do not need just the 40 cents a year raise. That does
nothing for any worker in the country.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So, let me--let me turn to Dr. Rodgers
for a second.
With regard to this statement, women are far more willing
to give up higher pay for more comfortable work requirements,
what is your opinion about that statement? And let's just say
that there is polling that shows that some people make
tradeoffs----
Ms. Ham. Of course they do.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Is this an accurate----
Ms. Ham. Of course they do.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Is this--is this an----
Mr. Clyburn. Excuse me.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. But is this an accurate----
Mr. Clyburn. Ms. Ham?
Mr. Krishnamoorthi [continuing]. Statement to describe the
entire--entirety of the situation with regard to women?
Ms. Rodgers. No, absolutely not. It's not a willingness to
give up pay. Women face a whole structure of constraints
forcing them to make decisions and difficult choices. And
especially low-wage women or low-income women are not willing
to give up pay in order to be able to care for their children.
These are constraints they face.
Ms. Ham has mentioned several times that education is a
public good that we need to be investing in, but I want to
emphasize that health is also an incredibly important public
good, and we need to invest in health.
That means investing in HVAC systems in schools and
improving the health at schools when they are open. It also
means investing in our paid care workers, investing in our
nurses, investing in personal protective equipment, which, as
you probably remember, was in scarce supply at the beginning of
pandemic.
So, we really need to invest in health as well as education
in order to achieve gender equality.
Mr. Clyburn. Thank you very much----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you.
Mr. Clyburn [continuing]. Dr. Rodgers, and thank you Mr.
Krishnamoorthi.
We are just a few moments before we have to go to the floor
to vote, and I want to thank all of our witnesses here today
for being here.
And of course I'm going to truncate my closing statement
here today to say that every one of you that testified today
expressed some kind of research that has been done. And we came
to this hearing because of surveys, questionnaires, and getting
information from, I think, about 20 employers, about who got
laid off and why.
Now, we can spend the rest of our lives analyzing--in fact,
I think when I was coming along, we used to call it the
paralysis of analysis. At some point in time, we've got to stop
analyzing and start making recommendations as to what we do
going forward. For some reason, we want to keep studying the
issue.
We don't need to study these issues anymore. We know what
the problems are. We want your good minds to help us find some
solutions, and solutions are what we're looking for with these
hearings.
So, I want to thank you all for being here today. And, to
the extent that we got some solutions, we're going to try to
act upon them.
But let me just close with our standard statement.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative
days within which to submit additional written questions for
the witnesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the
witnesses for their response.
With that, this meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:48 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]