From watching conservative lawmakers systematically strip women of their reproductive rights amidst the cover of the pandemic to envisioning the socially-distanced debates to come in the 2020 presidential election — two elderly white men, both in the high-risk range for COVID-19, duking it out on the national stage to take the helm of a nation with growing counts of death, illness, and economic depression disproportionately hurting its most vulnerable communities — this pandemic has laid bare many of the shortcomings of the U.S. political system. Among them is the need for more women, and especially women of color, in our government. While this lack of representation in public office represents an ongoing obstacle to fully addressing women’s needs, it has become an especially salient one at a time when those needs are heightened by growing economic insecurity and attacks on women’s most fundamental rights.
Right now, women are both serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis to keep us safe and suffering the brunt of its impact. As industries that are largely female and nonwhite, from hospitality to education, are hit the hardest, women too often end up paying the price of our shuttered storefronts and schools. Just two days ago, The New York Times’ “In Her Words” newsletter shouted out the increasingly gendered disparity of the pandemic — “For the First Time in Decades, This Recession Is a ‘Shecession’” — marking the first time it used the word “shecession” in 169 years of publishing. The newsletter invoked the fact that women accounted for 55% of the 20.5 million jobs lost this April, with women of color facing especially high unemployment rates. These disparities come on top of a preexisting gender pay gap: according to Payscale, “in 2020, women earn 81 cents for every dollar earned by men” on average, and women of color earn even less than that. This inequality can only be exacerbated by leaves of absence from work that women may have to take in the coming months due to safety and health concerns or caretaking responsibilities during the pandemic.
At the same time they face new levels of economic insecurity, women continue to play some of the most critical roles in our economic and health care systems. According to a public letter addressed to Congress and authored by the National Women’s Law Center along with partner organizations, “Women make up 70% of the global health workforce, and in the U.S., comprise 75% of hospital workers, 93% of child care workers, 90% of people helping in private homes, and two-thirds of cashiers and retail people in grocery stores.” In a nutshell, women are keeping our basic societal infrastructure intact; they are doing essential work. This is not to mention the inequitable portion of domestic work, including the bulk of caretaking and household responsibilities, that many women are assuming, or the dedication they are showing to upholding public health, as women are more likely than men to practice social distancing.
When it comes to pandemic leadership, however, the voices of women often feel curiously absent, with the exception of a few high-profile female lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Yet perhaps that absence is not so curious considering that the U.S. ranked 75th out of 193 countries for women representation in government as of 2019, a poor showing that reflects long-standing barriers to the success of U.S. women political candidates in comparison to those in other Western democracies. Despite the electoral gains of 2018 and the rise of the #MeToo movement, as well as the dedication of many current female lawmakers, misogyny continues to rear its ugly head at nearly every turn in U.S. politics, including when women candidates were pushed out of the Democratic presidential primary and recently, in the sexist attacks faced by Gov. Whitmer in her efforts to slow the pandemic’s spread in Michigan.
Though women’s needs must be front and center in the short-term response to COVID-19 and the long-term planning, there is good reason to doubt that our heavily white, male government is capable of rising to the occasion. Already, it is becoming harder for women to access abortion and vital reproductive health services in many states. While women’s and women-led organizations are fighting to preserve access to essential care and innovating ways, such as TelAbortion, to meet the additional challenges posed by the pandemic, as well as making demands of Congress for concrete action aimed at women’s health and security, these efforts to stave off political attacks and lobby for congressional funding represent only temporary fixes. Without lasting electoral change to put women into office, the same sacrifices of women’s needs and rights are bound to repeat when the next crisis hits.
We’ve long needed a woman in the White House, but in the meantime, it is essential to ensure that we are taking every opportunity right now to empower the women fighting on the front lines with every candidate we support and every vote we cast. That means making sure we are voting at every opportunity — granted that we can do so safely, whether by mail or otherwise — and sounding the alarm for our neighbors to vote, too. We need lawmakers who will actually advance a system that puts women at the forefront, who recognize that “women’s work” is the linchpin of our society, and there is no one better to meet that description than women themselves. And where women on the front lines of the crisis are already showing us the way forward to a more just and equitable system, we need to listen and follow their lead.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons / 1st Lt. Andrew Layton