March 2021
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Recognizing Women’s Rights for All of Us By Kelsey Mahaffey FiftyForward All of Us Project Director In 1995 March was designated as National Women’s History Month. Today, more than 25 years after this historic designation, women are continuing to live, and make, incredible history. Vice-President Kamala Harris is the first female, as well as the first Black woman and first Asian American, to be elected to the second highest office in the United States. While this shows we have made strides in closing the gender gap between women and men, we still have a long way to go. Women’s History Month is a chance to celebrate the achievements of women who have gone before us; it also serves as a reminder of the important work women continue to do, and the barriers they still face. Various movements to address women’s inequality have happened over the decades, including the suffrage movement to win women the right to vote in the early 20th century, and the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. While the “firstwave” of feminism focused on women’s legal rights, the “second-wave” expanded to all areas of women’s experience including work, home, politics, and sexuality. Today in the U.S., women remain underpaid. Among full-time workers in 2016, women earned less than 81 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Jobs in childcare and service industries, the vast
majority held by women, continue to occupy the bottom of the income ladder. In contrast, women represent only 5 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies. In the current climate of COVID-19, women -- especially Black, Hispanic, and Asian women -- are also disproportionately affected. Frontline or essential jobs in the health care and social work sectors are overwhelmingly made up of female employees. According to the Center for American Progress, since the pandemic, women have lost a net of 5.4 million jobs during the recession — nearly 1 million more job losses than men. Continued on page 2
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