Editor s Note: The Moral Economy is a new series that tackles key economic topics through the prism of Catholic social teaching and its care for the dignity of every person. This is the seventh article in the series.
The gender pay gap, persistent and global, is an evident structural economic injustice and despite widespread agreement that it deserves immediate remedy, it is proving annoyingly difficult to solve.
For almost 60 years, since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, it has been illegal in the United States to pay men more than women for doing the same job. And yet in 2020, women earned 82.3 percent of what men did in all jobs combined. Put another way: In the United States, women, who make up about half of the population, earn only 40 percent of the gross domestic product. And in the last 25 years, the gender pay gap in the United States has shrunk only eight percentage points.
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By Bill Knight
Some businesses say they’re struggling to fill vacancies as the pandemic starts to ease; the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says 42 percent of small businesses have unfilled openings; and the National Restaurant Association suggests people would prefer staying home and subsisting off unemployment insurance, which through Sept. 6 includes a $300 federal supplement to state benefits.
However, HALF of restaurant workers were denied benefits because their pay was too low to qualify, says the One Fair Wage (OFW) coalition.
The problem is more complicated that the alleged greed of the jobless, and the solution is simple.
Women have been harder hit, according to the Brookings Institution, which reports 40 percent had to drop jobs when schools and child-care services closed.
AP
In this Friday, May 29, 2020, photo, Sara Adelman holds her daughter Amelia in Salt Lake City. Adelman is burning through her vacation time to help manage her current status as a working-from-home mom since her daughter s daycare closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
The national unemployment numbers released at the beginning of the month confirmed what many had anticipated: the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic is staggering. In fact the scale of this crisis is unlike anything since the Great Depression and for the first time in decades this crisis has a predominantly non-white, female face.