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Unequal job losses now will translate into smaller nest eggs and Social Security benefits down the road.

\"Women can't be full participants in the labor force and pay into their retirement if they don't have child care,\" said Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, an assistant dean at the University of Texas. Credit... Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

\n\n

During the first months of the pandemic, Leah Tyrrell found that she could pull off a balancing act: working in sales for a San Diego clothing maker and caring for her three young daughters at home. Her hours had been reduced, and working remotely in the morning left her time to be with the children the rest of the day.

\"At the time, I thought I could tackle it,\" Ms. Tyrrell said.That changed in Augustwhen her employer started asking people to return full time. Her company was flexible, but something had to give - and since her husband was bringing home a bigger paycheck, she quit work to help her girls, ages 9, 8 and 5, with online school.

\"It was a very tough decision, but we just decided that, especially having a third child in kindergarten on the computer, I would need to sit and guide her through what the teacher was talking about,\" she said.

Retirement is still on the distant horizon for Ms. Tyrrell, 43, but she hopes the long-term damage to her nest egg will be minimal. She participated in her company 401(k) plan, which had a matching contribution, and aims to resume saving when she goes back to work after the pandemic recedes.

\"When I do go back, I hope it will be with a company that provides a match, but I'll definitely lose at least a year of any kind of savings,\" she said.

The hit to her retirement resources - and to those of other women in her shoes - could be considerably deeper.

Policy experts have long acknowledged a gender gap in retirement security. Women tend to earn less than men, and they are more likely to take time off from work to care for children or elderly parents. Even brief career interruptions diminish wage growth, retirement savings and Social Security benefits, which are determined by wage history. Women also tend to outlive men, needing to stretch resources over more years. In particular, they face higher health care expenses in retirement.

Now, the pandemic recession is disproportionately damaging the careers of women - so much so that some experts call it a \" shecession.\"

In November, the national unemployment rate dipped to 6.7 percent from 6.9 percent, the Labor Department reported last week. But the pace of job growth has stalled, and millions have dropped out of the labor market altogether, especially women. One recent study found a disproportionate decline in employment for women of prime working age, 25 to 55, compared with men - and especially so for mothers.

Women are overrepresented in industries experiencing the highest job loss, according to a recent report published by the Y.W.C.A. U.S.A. Latina, Black and Asian-American women have been hit hardest, the report found. Many entered the pandemic earning less, and they have experienced higher jobless rates in the downturn, said a co-author of the report, Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, assistant dean at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.

\"They already were vulnerable, and many may never become fully employed again,\" she said.

Even a short-term interruption in wages can have a surprisingly large impact on retirement. Each year out of the work force translates into losses considerably larger than the immediate salary over the arc of a career, according to research by the Center for American Progress. The losses compound over time in the form of missed wage growth, retirement savings and Social Security benefits, as illustrated by a calculator developed by the center.

For example, a 35-year-old woman earning $80,000 a year who leaves the work force for five years can expect to lose $197,000 in retirement assets and benefits, assuming she retires at age 67, according to the calculator.

\"My biggest worry about what's going to happen as a result of this recession in the longer term is that we'll be setting back families dramatically,\" said Michael Madowitz, an economist with the center who developed the calculator.

Jobless rates for women have spiked. Four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force in September alone, and barely half that number returned during October and November, according to Center for American Progress research.

For Edith Ben Ari, the breaking point came in August. She was struggling to balance her job as head of a school in Oakland, Calif., for children who have learning disabilities with the needs of her two children, ages 8 and 6. Her parents, in their 80s, live nearby and are in good health, but the pandemic also focused her on the possible need to pivot attention in their direction at any moment.

\"The combination of running a school remotely, my meetings on Zoom and providing the care my kids needed was brutal,\" said Ms. Ben Ari, 44, who has worked in special-needs education for more than 20 years.

Edith Ben Ari and her daughters. She loved her job as head of a school in Oakland, Calif., but resigned to help her children with remote learning and to be available to her octogenarian parents. Credit... Edith Ben Ari

\"I was pouring my heart and soul into my job, which I loved so much,\" she said. \"But I realized I just couldn't keep doing it - I was stretched so thin that by the end of the day I had nothing left to give to myself, my family or anyone else.\"

Ms. Ben Ari's husband, a financial adviser, is the higher earner; that, combined with the need to focus on her family, led her to resign in August; she plans to continue her work in special education as a consultant.

That financial calculation is common, said C. Nicole Mason, president and chief executive of the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a think tank focused on increasing the power and influence of women and closing inequality gaps.

\"If you're trying to calculate who should leave the work force, the pay equity gap means that women are more likely to exit the work force when there are two earners,\" she said.

An oft-cited Census Bureau statistic is that women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. But that's a rough measure, and the institute's research has found that the gap is even larger - 49 cents on the dollar in 2015 - when measuring earnings of all workers, including those who work part time or sporadically, over a 15-year period.

The structural problems that women face during their working lives translate into problems maintaining their living standards in retirement, and raise their risk of falling into poverty late in life. Those risks are accentuated by their longevity: In 2018, the average life expectancy in America was 81.7 years for women and 76.6 for men, according to the Society of Actuaries.

Women also face higher health care expenses in retirement, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist and professor at the New School for Social Research. \"For men, the 'good' bad news is that they die sooner, but a greater part of their retirement time is healthy,\" she says. \"Women live longer but a larger percentage of their retirement time is spent needing assistance with their daily living.\"

Single women are most at risk - a group that includes those who are widowed, divorced or never married (and they're more likely to live alone than men).

Social Security plays a crucial role as a source of guaranteed lifetime income in retirement, and most proposals advanced by Democrats include changes aimed at improving the economic security of women.

A plan from President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. would tweak Social Security's benefit formula to award work credit to people who cared for children or other relatives. It would also expand benefits for widows in certain circumstances, and bump up benefits for seniors who had collected payments for 20 years. Finally, it would adopt a new yardstick to determine Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment - the \n

The financial hurdles women confront to attain financial security in retirement can be colossal, as a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing last week validated bluntly.

The hearing entitled, \"Women and Retirement: Unique Challenges and Opportunities to Pave a Brighter Future\" focused on the barriers that women face in planning for a financially secure retirement and how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this fragility.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the aging committee and subcommittee member Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), explored the findings of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that they requested, which details how factors such as pay inequality, time spent caregiving and access to Social Security benefits and how the timing of filing for those benefits can dramatically impact women's retirement security.

\nRead: This is one task everyone in their 50s should consider before it's too late

If you've got the time, consider watching the video of the hearing. Mind you, it's a far cry from the \"The Real Housewives of The Potomac.\"

The hearing divulged the real, real life about gender inequality-the decidedly non-frothy facts about women's higher risk for falling into poverty than their male counterparts. And it's significant.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Retirement Research, on average, women face a larger retirement savings gap than men and experience higher poverty rates at older ages.

The hearing also focused on recommended steps that can be taken to address the challenges women face including financial education initiatives, proposed legislation, potential state efforts and federal grants to stimulate financial education as well as public-private initiatives to boost high-school and employer-based education.

\nRead: When it comes to Social Security, these strategies can pay off for married couples

Collins, too, is still beating herself up for cashing out her retirement-plan savings to buy a car in her mid-30s, a personal story she also shared in a hearing last year.

She bemoaned the financial decision she made when she left the Hill as a staffer with more than 10 years of retirement contributions and withdrew all of the money in order to buy a car. She admitted that she simply didn't understand the future financial implications of that bad choice for her ultimate pension.

Top concerns for older women

The committee heard (and maybe you will, too, if you watch that video) testimony from Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro, the head of the GAO, who discussed the considerable damage the COVID-19 pandemic has caused to the economy, and the retirement security of future retirees and drills down on the findings of the July 2020 GAO report.

The GAO researchers interviewed 190 women in focus groups pre-pandemic, who described anxiety about retirement security. The majority were 70 to 80 years-old, and 19 were over 80. Among these women, 129 were white, 42 were African-American, five were Hispanic or Latina, three were Asian, two were American Indian or Alaska Native, six were other or mixed races, and three did not report their race.

\nRead: These 7 Social Security myths aren't true - no matter how many times you hear them

Their top five concerns about retirement: inflation increasing cost of goods; reduced Social Security or Medicare benefits; cognitive decline; medical costs; incorrectly estimating future expenses and ability to pay.

And while future expenses were troubling, health care costs was the big scare. The women raised alarms about being able to afford procedures or prescription drugs, which may not be covered or fully covered by their health insurance. Women shared stories of skipping dental exams or vaccinations because they could not afford them.

Importantly, they noted they lacked personal finance education and wish they had it earlier in their lives. They felt confused and misinformed about savings, investing, enrolling in Medicare, and claiming Social Security.

In fact, Social Security and Medicare dominated the discussions, and the fear of losing benefits was the most talked about concern among the women, according to Dodaro.

There were noteworthy racial gaps. \"About 23 percent of households with white respondents and 40 percent of those with African-American respondents reported low retirement confidence, a statistically significant difference,\" according to the researchers.

Burden of caregiving

There's lots of attention paid to the wage gap between men and women and the painful repercussions that chasm has for women's financial futures and this hearing and the GAO report are clear on this. But what was interesting to me is that the report teased out the stunning blow that caregiving, often for a spouse, delivers to older women.

This is an area that is almost taboo to discuss. It's what many women do sometimes by choice, often by default, and it's hard to get a bead on precisely the toll it ultimately takes on their own lives by many measurements.

The report found that in 2019, on average, married women who provided care for a spouse had 15% less in Social Security income than married women who were not spousal caregivers.

They also found that spousal caregivers nearing retirement worked fewer hours and had less in financial assets than married individuals of the same age who did not provide care to a spouse.

Meantime, women who were spousal caregivers toward the end of their careers said their role as caregivers factored into their decision to take time off work or retire early.

What could help women reach financial well-being in retirement

Women typically fall behind men when it comes to financial literacy and saving for retirement - and they're right to be worried about it, as I wrote in this column, How women can do a better job of preparing for retirement.

This is deeply concerning to me. There are, however, actions women can take to gain some control beyond the save more and negotiate harder for salary motivational mantra that experts, even me, urge women to do. Yes, that is all well and good, but there are other big picture and somewhat emotional shifts to consider.

\"Women are particularly likely to focus on helping others but should take care not to give too much money to their children, said Anna Rappaport, chair of the Society of Actuaries Aging and Retirement Strategic Research Program, and author of the report Women and Post-Retirement Risks. \"It is good to help family members, but not if that puts oneself into a difficult situation.\"

She also encouraged women to take the time to understand family finances. Women must plan to manage their money solo one day. That's hard to fathom those happily partnered up, but let's face stark reality.

\"Women should not forget about the need to plan for widowhood and the possible contingency of divorce in their planning,\" Rappaport said. \"Society of Actuaries research indicated that divorce after retirement is one of the shocks that women are not able to recover well from. A whopping 75% of women over age 85 are widowed and only 13% are married.\"

Finally, plan for health care later in life. No one wants to imagine themselves ill and frail, but most of us aren't super woman to the end of our days. I know this first hand as a part-time caregiver for my 91-year old mom, who has dementia. Dad, who had Alzheimer's disease, died in 2008.

\"A plan to manage long-term care is particularly important for women,\" Rappaport said. \"Women on average need long-term care for a longer period than men, and they are less likely to have a spouse to help them. Women often care for other family members and then they are alone. Women at age 65 have an average expected period of disability of 2.83 years compared to 1.50 years for men, and are less likely to have a family caregiver.\"

A footnote: I will be a panelist in this week's WISER's Annual Symposium on Financial Solutions for Women, \"Moving Forward: Building, Expanding and Strengthening Women's Retirement Security.\" This virtual symposium is hosted by the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement and sponsored in part by Dimensional Fund Advisors. Experts will discuss public policy options and educational initiatives that can help women and their families better secure their long-term financial future.

The takeaway from these events and research: there's a convincing","published":1601378340000,"offset":null,"url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-so-many-women-face-poverty-in-their-old-age-2020-09-29","safe":true,"language":"en","app_links":[],"embeds":[],"keywords":[{"name":"article_opinion","score":0},{"name":"business/consumer services","score":0},{"name":"health care","score":0},{"name":"insurance","score":0},{"name":"retirement planning","score":0},{"name":"personal finance","score":0},{"name":"living/lifestyle","score":0},{"name":"labor/personnel issues","score":0},{"name":"health","score":0},{"name":"first_publish_headline|this is why so many women face poverty in their old age","score":0},{"name":"headline|this is why so many women face poverty in their old age","score":0},{"name":"retirement planning","score":0},{"name":"personal finance","score":0},{"name":"living","score":0},{"name":"lifestyle","score":0},{"name":"labor","score":0},{"name":"personnel issues","score":0},{"name":"health","score":0},{"name":"business","score":0},{"name":"consumer services","score":0},{"name":"health care","score":0},{"name":"insurance","score":0}],"favicon_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/dq82ikfq4/image/fetch/s---wv-7GJo--/c_fill,dpr_2,f_auto,h_50,w_50/https://mw4.wsj.net/mw5/content/logos/favicon.ico","provider_name":"MarketWatch","id":"3bc2TFN8R0zmMZT2W1Ryz","lead":null,"contentBlobId":"btVgKw6AJCTQz4AlmE8jn","media":{},"related":[],"favicon_colors":null,"cache_age":86400,"provider_display":"www.marketwatch.com","provider_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com","original_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-so-many-women-face-poverty-in-their-old-age-2020-09-29?reflink=mw_share_twitter","images":[{"width":1320,"caption":null,"size":248103,"url":"https://s.marketwatch.com/public/resources/images/MW-HJ732_elderl_ZG_20190516124153.jpg","height":742},{"width":660,"caption":null,"size":77814,"url":"https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2019/05/16/Photos/ZQ/MW-HJ732_elderl_20190516124153_ZQ.jpg?uuid=8297d25c-77f9-11e9-b17b-9c8e992d421e","height":371},{"width":183,"caption":null,"size":11678,"url":"https://s.marketwatch.com/public/resources/MWimages/MW-HY171_moneyi_MC_20200110114131.jpg","height":122},{"width":183,"caption":null,"size":9976,"url":"https://s.marketwatch.com/public/resources/MWimages/MW-IP729_tesla__MC_20200930113121.jpg","height":122},{"width":183,"caption":null,"size":8461,"url":"https://s.marketwatch.com/public/resources/MWimages/MW-IP129_pickup_MC_20200923103530.jpg","height":122}],"entities":[],"description":"The financial hurdles women confront to attain financial security in retirement can be colossal, as a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing last week validated bluntly. 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It's time to close the racial wage gap for good.
\ngetty

Today is Black Women's Equal Pay Day, and represents how much farther into the current calendar year the average Black woman must work to make the same amount that her white male counterpart made the previous year.

On average, Black women typically make just 62 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, according to Equal Pay Today. Parental status also impacts the wage gap, with Black mothers making just 50 cents to every dollar a white father makes. The pandemic and social unrest about racial injustice have amplified existing inequities in America.

\"Caregiving duties are falling on women across the board, and Black women are more likely to be family breadwinners and also single mothers,\" says Chandra Thomas Whitfield, journalist and podcast host of \" In The Gap.\" \"This year's Black Women's Equal Pay Day is especially unique, because we are either working from home or, if you're an essential worker, trying to figure out childcare. At the same time, r esearch shows that women and minorities tend to be the first fired and last rehired during an economic downturn, so it will be even harder for Black women to catch up.\"

So why are Black women already starting from so far behind? Here is what some of the research tells us:

Black women are strapped with student loans. Blacks in the U.S. are among those most likely to earn a postsecondary degree, and roughly 64 percent of Black students earning bachelor's degrees are women. This may be a positive, but there is a financial impact.

\"We're among the most educated, yet we're getting paid less and we're also straddled with debt from student loans,\" says Thomas Whitfield. \"Even the money we make is not our money, because we have to give it back to loans.\"

Black women shoulder the majority of work and caregiving duties. A whopping 80% of Black women are the primary breadwinners for their household, and about two-thirds head households alone. Black women also make up a disproportionate amount of the labor force, and small businesses founded by Black women have grown by 164% since 2007.

\"There is this concept of 'the strong Black woman' and a societal pressure to work harder, go to school, and take care of kids and parents and everyone all the time,\" says Thomas Whitfield. \"Black women have never not worked. Black women are unique in that we were brought to this country as laborers ourselves, and our role was to bear more laborers. So Black women have not only contributed to the American economy by working, but also by birthing more laborers who also worked for free, for centuries.\"

Bias is a real barrier in the workplace. One example of racial bias in the workplace is that Black applicants who use white-sounding names on resumes are more than twice as likely to be called for an interview.

\"There needs to be a point of grace that allows hiring managers to think beyond what a candidate may look or even sound like,\" says Talisa Lavarry, author of the new book Confessions from Your Token Black Colleague. \"When it comes to minorities, our characteristics are oftentimes different from what most hiring managers typically gravitate towards. If managers are not intentionally challenging themselves to be inclusive, their subconscious idea of an ideal candidate is more than likely laced in bias. It all plays a role in the systemic racism that prevents a lot of Black women in particular from even coming close to checking all of the boxes. It's beyond time for companies to acknowledge the unique struggles that we face and make reasonable accommodations and investments in creating welcoming, equitable and sustainable work environments that we can all thrive within.\"

Minorities make up the majority of essential workers. Women and minorities make up the majority of the frontline and essential workers. Essential workers are also more likely to live below or just at the federal poverty line, and to live with other frontline workers, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data in the country's 100 largest cities.

The racial wealth gap is real. A white household headed by a person with only a high school diploma has nearly 10 times the wealth of a Black household headed by a person with the same degree. One reason? Buying a home has been a traditional path to accumulating wealth, yet research shows Blacks may be denied mortgages twice as often as whites.

\"It's hard for [Black women] to admit that we are at a deficit, from our home life to the lack of economic resources to the lack of educational opportunities,\" says Lavarry. \"There are so many layers to this, many of us are born into generational poverty. When we want to make something of ourselves, there are countless barriers that we have to find a way to overcome, not to mention the overwhelming risks that we have to take.\"

The financial inequality experienced by Black women is harmful to our economy, our families, and our society. \"I hope this moment in history, as we see a renewed interest in the Black Lives Matter Movement, can be a turning point for people to not judge or debate, but just to listen to what people are going through,\" says Thomas Whitfield. \"We want to be able to take care of ourselves and be financially independent. I wish employers understood that if you compensate workers fairly, you will get so much more out of your employees. We have to start somewhere.\"

...

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It was weighing on her - the prospect of starting a dream job in the middle of a pandemic, alone, her husband away 100 hours of the week helping fight COVID-19 inside a hospital infected by it. Her two boys were at home, without a teacher, with assignments, walking in on her work calls, interrupting her, passing her sticky notes, requesting - no, demanding - her attention every hour they were awake.

\"If you come in, I will lose my job,\" she told her 6-year-old in desperation, trying to keep him away.

Her husband was the hero. He was saving lives. She was the terrible mom - \"the worst mom ever,\" her sons told her - and the terrible worker.

In three months, Ellu Nasser watched as her white-knuckled grip on the labor force slackened. She drank more, before giving it up altogether in March. She told the dream job at a major consulting firm that her family responsibilities would get in the way of her work performance, so she couldn't begin June 1, their agreed start date. She slinked back to the part-time gig she had consulting on climate change. And then in June, she gave that up, too.

For exactly one day, the relief was overwhelming. Then, worry.

\"I kept wondering, 'How long will the personal choices I made around COVID-19 hurt me permanently?'\" said Nasser, 42. \"I would like to be working for 25 more years. That's a joy for me. My work is not separate from who I am as a person.\"

Nasser was a stay-at-home mom for the first time in her life. She was collateral damage in what has become America's first female recession.

For the first time since they began a consistent upward climb in the labor force in the 1970s, women are now suffering the repercussions of a system that still treats them unequally. Men are still the primary breadwinners. Women are still the primary low-income workers, the ones whose jobs disappeared when coronavirus spread. Mothers in 2020's pandemic have reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers to care for children in a nation that hasn't created a strong caregiving foundation.

When the economy crumbled, women fell - hard.

This year, female unemployment reached double digits for the first time since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking women's joblessness. White women haven't been such a small share of the population with a job since the late 1970s. And women of color, who are more likely to be sole breadwinners and low-income workers, are suffering acutely. The unemployment rate for Latinas was 15.3 percent in June. For Black women, it was 14 percent. For White men: 9 percent.

All the while, women continue to earn less than men, with White women making 79 cents on the White male dollar, Black women making 62 cents, Native American women making 57 cents and Latinas making 54 cents.

What women in America are living now is the consequence of years of occupational segregation that kept them out of managerial positions, stuck in low-paying jobs with few safeguards like paid sick leave. When a third of the female workforce - the grocery clerks, home health aides and social workers - became \"essential workers\" this year, they were faced with difficult decisions about preserving their health or keeping their jobs. The rest found themselves more likely to be in positions that vanished overnight, like the housekeepers and the retail clerks, or on the margins, in the jobs at risk of never coming back.

Together, the losses threaten decades of steady, hard-won progress.

Nasser felt her loss most on the days when the constant run of doing dishes and cleaning up meals made it feel like her life was on hold. For the fall, she's patched together some homeschooling with a retired teacher for her kindergartener and a handful of other kids from her Austin neighborhood. Her 9-year-old will return to private school.

Having a child care option is what helped her say \"yes\" when the call came in late July re-offering the position she passed up in June. She acknowledges again and again that she is luckier than most. She was able to make the difficult decision to leave the workplace - and then return - because her husband earns more than she does and they could afford to send their kids somewhere. Many women won't have that this year.

\"It's a simultaneous feeling of guilt that we are able to do it,\" she said, \"and sadness that this is the situation we were in.\"

The fall-out

In 1958, women made up less than a third of the U.S. labor force. It took them 30 more years to reach 45 percent, a pace of growth through the late 20th century that helped usher in the \"most significant change in labor markets during the past century,\" wrote Harvard economist Claudia Goldin.

Women's gains in the labor market helped create an economy that, according to some estimates, is $2 trillion larger than it would have been if women's participation levels remained where they were in 1970, when it really started to skyrocket.

For the past several decades, though, the gender split in the labor force has largely evened out. Then came 2009, a recession that hurt predominantly male-dominated jobs such as construction and manufacturing. Women overtook men as more than half of the labor force for the first time in history. It has happened again only one other time: In December 2019, when coronavirus was still but a distant headline in China, women surpassed men at 50.04 percent of the labor force.

It was a fleeting breakthrough.

Nearly 11 million jobs held by women disappeared from February to May, erasing a decade of job gains by women in the labor force.

In June, women regained 2.9 million positions, but those jobs, which are largely in the hospitality field, remain insecure as coronavirus' continued spread forces new closures.

\n
We don't recognize women's roles and so we never ask, 'Do women benefit?'
\nHeather McCulloch, founder and executive director of Closing the Women's Wealth Gap\n

Depending on the length of this recession and when an effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 is developed, there is a real possibility many jobs lost by women will never come back, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

As it stands, about 8 percent of women who have been laid off have zero chance of being called back to the workforce compared to 6.4 percent of men, according to an analysis by EPI. Another 4 percent expect to be called back but likely will not.

Those jobs at risk are anticipated to be in fields vulnerable to social distancing, positions like the one Cristina Aguirre Sevillano has held since she emigrated from Cuba a decade ago.

Aguirre, a housekeeper at Miami Beach's Fontainebleau hotel, is already in a tenuous position: She was laid off from her full-time job in March, but when the resort reopened in June, limited work resumed. She's been called back just a handful of times. Unemployment insurance has been predictably unreliable in one of the states worst at administering it. And even the job she took sorting fruit at a warehouse in Miami to patch together some work over the spring turned out to be a mistake.

On her seventh day sorting through crates, she went home with a fever. She couldn't breathe well. That time, it was coronavirus incarnate that cost her a job.

Aguirre, 50, recovered, but \"this has been the worst year we've had to endure,\" she said. Her 23-year-old daughter, who lives with her, has also been laid off from a hotel job, and her husband is home recovering from a workplace injury. \"I had never experienced something like this in the little time I've been in this country.\"

She's now wrestling with the idea that her reliable job, the one she clung to for 10 years while her pay inched up to $15.17 an hour - good by Florida standards - could suddenly go away completely. It's a terrifying prospect for any low-wage worker, but particularly an immigrant.

\"My English isn't good,\" she said in Spanish, implying her true question: Who would take her at even remotely the same pay?

Cristina Aguirre Sevillano was laid off at the start of the pandemic. Since then, she's been sick with coronavirus, ","published":1596387600000,"offset":null,"url":"https://19thnews.org/2020/08/americas-first-female-recession/","safe":true,"language":"en","app_links":[],"embeds":[],"keywords":[],"favicon_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/dq82ikfq4/image/fetch/s--F3dtIsvq--/c_fill,dpr_2,f_auto,h_50,w_50/https://19thnews.org/wp-content/themes/the-19th/static/img/favicon/light/android-chrome-512x512.png","provider_name":"The 19th","id":"NKpIz0FKPobGfh-2LECJz","lead":null,"contentBlobId":"q3xqFrahBd_DxTWAsggdc","media":{},"related":[],"favicon_colors":null,"cache_age":72630,"provider_display":"19thnews.org","provider_url":"https://19thnews.org","original_url":"https://19thnews.org/2020/08/americas-first-female-recession/","images":[{"width":2560,"caption":null,"size":479487,"url":"https://19thnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ellu_3-scaled.jpg","height":1707},{"width":2500,"caption":null,"size":1285268,"url":"https://19thnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-19th-Mara-7-of-10.jpg","height":1667},{"width":1600,"caption":null,"size":231266,"url":"https://19thnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-19th-Cristina-8-of-10_edited-e1596306408269.jpg","height":1067},{"width":1600,"caption":null,"size":310258,"url":"https://19thnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/200730_Diana_03-scaled-e1596230330560.jpg","height":1067},{"width":1800,"caption":null,"size":193549,"url":"https://19thnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/6b97c218-3d14-4d2a-8952-1405492ead04-1-1800x1200-c-default.jpg","height":1200}],"entities":[],"description":"It was weighing on her - the prospect of starting a dream job in the middle of a pandemic, alone, her husband away 100 hours of the week helping fight COVID-19 inside a hospital infected by it.","title":"America's first female recession","type":"html","authors":[]}}},{"_links":{"self":{"href":"/cards/bo6EHLP5CQlNf2q8NYZP6"}},"summary":{"description":"Prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, many have recently been forced to re-examine their financial situations. 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Prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, many families around the world have recently been forced to re-examine their financial situations. Most had to prioritize financial survival in the immediate future. Others have also taken a closer look at their long-term financial strategies. Many workers, especially women, are at risk of not achieving a financially secure retirement. This was an issue of concern prior to the pandemic which has now been magnified.
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Despite progress in recent decades, women around the world continue to be at greater risk of not achieving a financially secure retirement when compared with men. Why? The first reason is biological: statistically women tend to live longer than men. The second reason is financial: women's lower pay and time out of the workforce due to caregiving and parenting can contribute negatively to women's long-term financial security. Third, there are legal issues: for example, in more than sixty countries the retirement age is lower for women than for men resulting in women's fewer years of pension contributions.
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Even though women's long-term financial security has improved over the years, the coronavirus pandemic - which has also been called a *Shecession* (highlighting the negative economic impacts of this recession particularly on women) - is likely to further widen the gender retirement gap. Here is why.
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A retirement warning sign. (Photo by: Loop Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
\nUniversal Images Group via Getty Images
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To be clear, the long-term implications of the pandemic and recession on retirement security are not yet fully understood. However, the financial vulnerabilities among women workers are increasingly becoming more evident. While women's employment risk profiles vary widely from sector to sector and country to country, Citigroup estimates that there are 220 million women employed in sectors that are potentially vulnerable to the coronavirus slowdown. Moreover, 31 million women face potential job loss, compared to 13 million men. Layoffs, furloughs, or extended periods of time working from home have required many parents to balance job responsibilities with home schooling children and caregiving of coronavirus-impacted loved ones.
\nHigh risk frontline workers and impacted sectors
The reason why more women are expected to lose their jobs is because they are more likely to work in hard-hit sectors, especially the service sector: in human health and social work, women represent more than 70% of workers; in education women make up more than 60% of workers; in arts, entertainment, accommodation and food services the workforce is more than 50% female according to the International Labour Organization'sMonitor Covid 19 and The World of Work.
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How does this impact pensions? Earnings are a key determinant of workers' pension eligibility. Here, a prevalent gender pay gap (which exists in all countries) already puts women at a disadvantage: worldwide, the average woman's annual income is $11,500, versus $21,500 for a man according to the World Economic Forum which estimates that it will take 257 years to close the gender gap. Take the example of Germany where women in most occupations receive 21% less salaries than their male colleagues. This contributes significantly to German women's lower pensions which are on average 46% of pensions received by German men.
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Lower earnings-related pension income is one of the key factors for higher poverty rates among women than men in old age. In fact, among the 37 high-income countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), at 46% Germany has the highest gender-pension gap compared to an OECD average of 25% notes the Bertelsmann Foundation. This also translates into a disproportionate share of poor elderly people being women: older women are at greater risk of poverty than older men in all OECD countries except Chile where risks are nearly equal. According to *OECD's 2019 Pensions at a Glance*report, the average old-age poverty rates for women and men in the OECD are 15.7% and 10.3% respectively.
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Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, not only were many of the women-dominated sectors the first ones to close down and furlough or lay-off workers, but they are also likely to be the last ones to fully operate again. In other words, many women are likely to re-join the labor force at a later stage than men - further delaying any earning-based income contributions to their pension funds.
\nThe childcare conundrum
When women contribute less to their pensions and savings this can lead to financial hardship in retirement. Another reason why a post COVID-19 return to work by women is expected to be slower than men is also partially due to increased care responsibilities that happen to disproportionately be taken up by women. Prior to the pandemic, women spent three times more on unpaid care and domestic work than men which - over a lifetime - translates to a total of four more years than men.
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Germany's Hans-Böckler Foundation which studied the immediate impacts of the coronavirus pandemic confirms that 27% of mothers surveyed had reduced their working hours since the onset of the pandemic, compared to 16% of fathers - leading to further reductions in income and potential pension contributions for women. Indeed among surveyed couples who felt that care responsibilities were equally distributed in their family prior to the pandemic, two months into the pandemic only 60% were able to affirm that they now take equally shared turns. Similarly, UBS Global Wealth Management's surveyed 1,825 high-net-worth investors in the United States and learnt that as a result of pandemic lockdowns, most women took the lead on domestic duties, such as homeschooling (64%) and childcare (60%). New research by Ipsos and in consultation with UN Women confirms that across 18 countries surveyed in May 2020, women are indeed taking on more responsibilities for household chores as well as care of children and family during the pandemic.
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Giving birth or caring for children is vital for societies. As women are more likely to take time out of work to care for children, this can reduce a woman's working life, her pension contribution records, and the earnings used to compute pension entitlements.
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To reward parents and make up for any childcare-related losses in pension contribution records and earnings, some countries introduced care credits. Such care credits are particularly common in public defined benefit pension schemes.
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Yet of the 91 economies studied by the World Bank Group's *Women, Business and the Law* program that had mandatory contributory pension schemes in 2012, only 54 provided some form of care credit. In 2019, overall there were 85 economies globally that did not account for the periods that women take-off for care - including maternity leave- in the calculation of their pension benefits. Of the OECD high-income countries, Australia and the United States do, for example, not provide care credits according to the *Women, Business and the Law* database.
\nLife expectancies and retirement ages
Pension-benefits are also a function of life expectancies, and it is well known that women generally live longer than men. Due to inherent biological advantages but also differences in behavior and life style, women across the world on average live six to eight years longer than men (with n","published":null,"offset":null,"url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenniethammer/2020/07/11/coronavirus-likely-to-widen-gender-gap-in-retirement/","safe":true,"language":"en","app_links":[],"embeds":[],"keywords":[{"name":"pensions","score":0},{"name":"retirement","score":0},{"name":"coronavirus","score":0},{"name":"covid-19","score":0},{"name":"united nations","score":0},{"name":"oecd","score":0},{"name":"gender equality","score":0},{"name":"life expectancy","score":0}],"favicon_url":"https://res.cloudinary.com/dq82ikfq4/image/fetch/s--nsDqE7VR--/c_fill,dpr_2,f_auto,h_50,w_50/https://i.forbesimg.com/48X48-F.png","provider_name":"Forbes","id":"bo6EHLP5CQlNf2q8NYZP6","lead":null,"contentBlobId":"eDns4QbxIv_uD27fycnQh","media":{},"related":[],"favicon_colors":null,"cache_age":86400,"provider_display":"www.forbes.com","provider_url":"https://www.forbes.com","original_url":"https://www.forbes.com/sites/carmenniethammer/2020/07/11/coronavirus-likely-to-widen-gender-gap-in-retirement/#461aa1086abe","images":[{"width":1199,"caption":null,"size":50571,"url":"https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/fit-in/1200x0/filters%3Aformat%28jpg%29/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F566440699%2F0x0.jpg%3FcropX1%3D0%26cropX2%3D3383%26cropY1%3D534%26cropY2%3D2437","height":675},{"width":748,"caption":" A retirement warning sign. 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As Congress continues to debate about the coronavirus stimulus package, roughly 35% of women who've lost income due to the pandemic say they can't live a month without the federal government's $600 weekly unemployment boost that expires on July 31, according to a new study released by The Ascent, a personal finance hub under the investing company The Motley Fool.
\n
In its survey of nearly 2,000 Americans who have experienced some level of income loss due to the pandemic, The Ascent found that women are being hit the hardest financially by Covid-19. Among its survey participants, 28% of women said they have lost all of their income as a result of the pandemic, compared to 20% of men. Additionally, 49% of women said it would take them at least six months to get back to their pre-pandemic financial state, compared to 44% of men.
\n
While the pandemic is negatively impacting millions of Americans, the disproportionate effect it's having on women can easily be linked to women being over-represented in low-wage jobs and women feeling the brunt of coronavirus job losses.
\n
Between February and April, women lost more than 12.1 million jobs as a result of the pandemic and only a third of those jobs returned in May and June, according to data from the National Women's Law Center. When comparing the unemployment rate for women versus men, women ages 20 and over have an unemployment rate of 11.2% compared to men over 20 with an unemployment rate of 10.1%. In June, according to the NWLC, the unemployment rate for women was 1.3 times higher than the highest unemployment rate women faced during the Great Recession and the subsequent recovery years.
\n
\"Since the pandemic has hit, women have lost the majority of the jobs that the economy has shed, and that is still the case even after the gains we saw [in June],\" Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at NWLC told CNBC Make It earlier this month.
\n
To help individuals cope with the pandemic's impact, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS Act) Monday night. The $1 trillion bill includes an extra $200 per weekin unemployment insurance through September, a decrease from the $600 weekly unemployment insurance that individuals received in the earlier CARES Act. The bill also proposes a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks for individuals earning up to $75,000 per year in 2019 and a $2,400 check for couples earning $150,000. Similar to the first round of checks, these payments will be reduced by $5 for every $100 in income, phasing out completely at $99,000 for individuals and $198,000 for couples.
\n
Democrats and Republicans are expected to continue negotiations on the bill into August, with experts saying that once the bill is passed it could take weeks, or maybe even months, before Americans receive their check.
\n
Matt Frankel, Certified Financial Planner at The Ascent says that with millions of Americans being financially impacted by the pandemic it's important for individuals to know of the smart money decisions they can implement now to make ends meet.
\n
He tells CNBC Make It that if you're fearful of not being able to pay your bills without the $600 unemployment boost then one of the first things you should do is call your mortgage lender, auto lender, credit card company and any other lender you owe money to to see if they will let you freeze your payments for a certain amount of time.
\n
\"While it's not legally required,\" he says, \"most auto lenders, credit card lenders and pretty much all other lenders are being very accommodating to people who have experienced income disruption because it's really in nobody's best interest to have to foreclose or collect on a loan.\"
\n
In addition to calling your lender, Frankel says if you need additional help you should look into getting an interest-free credit card to use for necessary payments. And, if you're a self-employed worker, he says you should look into government assistance programs provided by the Small Business Administration.
\n
As an absolute last resort, Frankel says you can turn to your retirement account for financial assistance. While he says pulling from your retirement is \"obviously better than losing your car or not being able to buy groceries,\" he still believes that you should \"exhaust the other options first.\"
\nCNBC Make It is NOW STREAMING on Peacock. Find our original programming in the Channels section. **Don't miss:** **Senate HEALS Act includes another $1,200 stimulus check-here's who would qualify**
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\n
American women are facing a much bigger retirement crisis than men. They are likely to earn less during their working lives, and then to live longer after they retire. And if they take on extra unpaid responsibilities instead of paid work, such as looking after children, elderly parents, or - most financially devastating of all - a sick or disabled spouse, the problem gets even bigger.
\n
So reveals a recent study from the National Institute for Retirement Security, a think tank.
\n
And it raises the issue of what people can do about it-both as individuals, taking responsibility for their own retirements, and together through public policy.
\n
\"Older women receive approximately 80 percent of the retirement income that older men receive,\" report researchers Tyler Bond, Joelle Saad-Lessler and Christian Weller.
\n
The 20% gap between men and women's average retirement income, says the NIRS, is about the same as the 'gender pay gap' during working years.
\n
The gap really gets worse in later retirement, as more women become widows, they note.
\n
\"Women experience a steep decline in income past 80,\" they write. \"Women age 80 and older are much more likely to be widows... Health care costs and long-term care costs in retirement are challenging for most people, but can be more so for women, who bear these costs for longer and may have already spent down assets if their spouse predeceases them.\"
\n
This isn't new. \"Women with husbands who are 2.5 years older should expect to be the sole breadwinner of their households for over a decade,\" says Diane Garnick at TIAA.
\n
Sandra Gilpatrick, a financial planner in Boston who specializes in helping female clients, says many women are caught in a vicious circle. \"Women are still the primary care givers to both their older parents and to young children,\" she says. \"Trying to balance a job with care giving obligations is a losing workforce proposition.\"
\n
If women work fewer hours, they earn less money and miss out on promotions. They also have less money available to sock into their 401(k) or equivalent. Oh, and if they earn less money over their careers they'll also get a smaller Social Security check, she adds.
\n
Labor economists note the gender pay gap has multiple causes, such as career and life choices, in addition to direct sexual discrimination. Regardless, it's there and the effects on retirement can be severe.
\n
Women earn less than men, on average, during their careers. Women who take time out to raise children lose years of working credits toward Social Security and possibly other pension plans. And women who work part time, such as while raising children or after children go to school, may be ineligible for participation in a company's 401(k) plan or equivalent. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to be working part time, the NIRS researchers point out.
\n
All of this adds up.
\n
In total, the researchers argue, 27% of American women over 65 are poor or \"near poor,\" compared with 20% of American men.
\n
On the other hand, say researchers, women who get and stay married, and those who have children young or not at all, are far less likely to face a retirement crisis than their peers.
\n
So too, are those who choose public-sector careers, such as teaching, that come with solid final salary pension plans (though the funding issues in many of those plans may raise concerns for the future).
\n
\"Women in a first marriage, especially one in which both spouses work and both spouses save, have the best retirement outcomes,\" says the NIRS. \"Married older Americans, both men and women, fare better in retirement than any group of non-married older Americans, whether divorced, widowed or never-married.\"
\n
Just 13% of married women over 65 are poor or \"near poor,\" they report.
\n
The figure among divorcées over 65? Try 35%.
\n
(Meanwhile the rates of poverty, and near poverty, for the over 65s who've never married are more than 40%. And that's true for men as well as women.)
\n
But what is to be done?
\n
There are clear public policy measures that would be likely to help, such as eliminating unfair pay disparities, and providing more taxpayer support for child care costs so more young mothers could go back to work earlier. Public policy measures that helped the retirement crisis across the board would benefit both sexes.
\nRead: In this COVID climate, should I just retire?
More companies offering paternity leave is another social or public policy change that could move the dial, notes Gilpatrick. \"What I would love to see happen is men taking paternity leave! Having more men take advantage of their workplace paternity benefit will help ease the burden on working women.\"
\n
But while we are waiting for these things to happen, there are practical things individuals, particularly individual women, can do right now to help their situation, advisers point out.
\n
Gilpatrick highlights two: Spousal IRAs for stay at home moms, and long-term care insurance.
\n
A spousal IRA is simple. It lets you sock away up to $6,000 a year in pretax money for your retirement, even if you're not working but your spouse is.
\nRead: A spousal IRA may be the best gift for your nonworking husband or wife
Long-term care insurance, notes Gilpatrick, is especially important for women.
\n
\"Most long term care needs are at the end of life,\" she says. \"So who will be there to help if you outlive your spouse? Also, being a caregiver takes both an emotional and physical toll. Wives who may be expected to care for their husbands can see their own health rapidly devolve. I worry most about women who are a decade plus younger than their husbands without long term care planning.\"
\n
Meanwhile, if women face a bigger retirement challenge than men they need to invest at least as aggressively for long-term accumulation, if not more so. Instead, the reverse is true.
\n
A remarkable study by Mass Mutual, the insurance company, a few years back found that women overall admitted they were less confident about making financial plans and less confident about handling investments. The gender gaps were simply amazing. For example, women who had college degrees still felt less confident about investing their retirement savings than guys who had dropped out of high school. Men with degrees were twice as likely to feel comfortable handling their retirement investments as women with degrees.
\n
Women are also much more likely to be worried about stock market volatility and investment \"risks,\" the study found. The overall result was that, basically, women tended to be underinvested in stocks by a wide margin. Men were 26% more likely to invest their savings for growth. TIAA found similar results. Men were more likely to invest in stocks and mutual funds. Women typically held more cash.
\n
This-like the roots of the gender pay gap-is another hot academic topic. Are women more likely to be risk-averse due to nature or nurture? You can find studies arguing either way. But, once again, it doesn't really matter when it comes to retirement planning.
\nRead: Why your Social Security could feel like a lot less next year
Holding cash or bonds isn't going to get most people to their retirement goals. Avoiding the stock market because you don't understand volatility is just leaving money on the table, regardless of your sex or anything else. The investment returns from so-called \"risky\" or volatile assets, such as stocks and real-estate investment trusts, beat the alternative into a cocked hat over any reasonable stretch of time.
\n
The gap is so big that even if you bought a global stock index at the worst moments in the past 20 years-just before the crashes of 2000-3 and 2007-9-and held on, you would be better off today than if you would held your money in short-term, \"safe\" bonds. Even the worst long-term returns from stocks beat \"safe\" investments.
\n
Ironically, studies have also found that women tend to make better investors than men over time because they are less prone to overconfidence, and they are less likely to trade needlessly.
\n
An intriguing experiment found that one of the fastest ways to improve the investing performance of men and women was to get them to participate in a stock trading game for a few weeks. Researchers found that by the end women were more confident, and men were less overconfident. Both ended up better off.
\nRead: Your bucket list crashed and burned - now what?
\"What I do see from my professional experience is when women can receive financial education about concepts like inflation eating away at low risk assets and learn about risk assets in an appropriate long term allocation, they are more willing to take on the diversified portfolio,\" says Gilpatrick. \"I like to educate my clients, as it helps to give them a good level of comfort and confidence to invest in a diversified portfolio. 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\n
My first job at the age of 12 was selling newspapers door to door in my neighborhood. By 16, I was working in a food court, and by 20, I had landed my first professional job at a local nonprofit organization. I have participated in the workforce and earned a steady paycheck for nearly my entire life. I worked out of necessity and for survival, which is true for many women in the workforce.
\n
Recent data released from the Department of Labor show that for the first time in 10 years, women make up more than half (50.04%) of the workforce. Many have celebrated this milestone as proof that women are inching toward equality in the workplace. After all, a hallmark of women's equality in America has always been increased labor force participation.
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For women in today's economy, however, increased employment also carries an increased burden. Women earn less, have less flexibility in terms of their work schedules to meet caretaking demands, and are more likely to experience discrimination based on gender or sexual harassment than their male counterparts in the workforce.
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In this election cycle, candidates must do more to speak to policies that improve women's economic security and well-being.
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Across the board, women earn less than men in nearly every occupation for which there is available data. If we do nothing, women will not reach economic parity with men until 2059. For women of color, it will take more than a century: 2130 for black women and 2224 for Hispanic women. This means women will have to work longer or hold multiple jobs to make ends meet and to care for their families.
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Women carry more burdens at home
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Increased employment among women has not translated into less work at home. Many women in the workforce are still primarily responsible for the lion's share of housework and caretaking responsibilities compared with men.
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A new study by Oxfam America-Institute for Women's Policy Research finds that women in the United States spend 37% more time on household and care work than their male counterparts, limiting career choices and economic mobility, and affecting their overall health and well-being. Black and Hispanic women spend nearly twice as much time on unpaid housework and caretaking demands as their male counterparts.
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**Talking it out:**Learning to discuss complicate d issues ahead of the election
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**We want to hear from you:** Be a part of the solution to finding solutions. Tell us here.
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Much has been made about our strong economy as measured by how well the stock market performs and low unemployment. There's no doubt the increase in workforce participation among women will help bolster this narrative. However, it does not mean that women are more economically secure.
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For many families, and especially for women, a strong economy is not about how well the stock market performs, the number of jobs added to the economy each month or the record low unemployment rate. It's about whether they can pay their bills, put food on the table and have some semblance of work-life balance.
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In today's economy, working and middle-class families continue to struggle with rising housing and health care costs, stagnant wages and a shift to a technology-driven economy fueled by automation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. These trends have a disproportionate impact on women.
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Economy doesn't work for everyone
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In economic upturns and times of strength, prosperity is usually shared. This has not happened in this administration. Gains have been funneled back into the pockets of those who have the most.
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According to the Census Bureau, income inequality is the highest it has ever been since it began tracking it more than five decades ago. And although the nation's median household income topped $63,000 for the first time in 2018, after adjusting for inflation, it's roughly the same as it was 20 years ago.
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In short, not everyone is doing well, particularly women and lower-wage workers.
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In a strong economy, we should be investing in programs and policies that will raise wages, create economic stability and certainty ease the load for working and middle-class families. These policies include: requiring paid sick and family medical leave, doing more to close the gender wage gap, raising the minimum wage and lowering health care costs. For working women, affordable high-quality child care is a priority that hasn't gotten much traction in election year policy debates.
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If we do more to accelerate closing the wage gap, we can cut poverty in half for working women in every state. Providing paid sick and family medical leave for a larger number of workers means people won't lose their jobs or income if they are sick or have to care for a child or family member who is ill.
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Related to health care, whether it is \"Medicare for All,\" Obamacare or a plan that is able to accommodate private insurance, families cannot continue to absorb the out-of-control costs associated with a broken health system.
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Platitudes, promises and grandiose plans won't cut it this election cycle. Both parties have to do more to convince voters, especially women, they can deliver an economy that benefits all, and not just the few at the top.
\nC. Nicole Mason, Ph.D., is president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research.
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\n
It's a harsh reality of modern retirement planning: Women live on average five years longer than men, yet they accumulate less for retirement. According to the 2019 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Workplace Benefits Report, women come to retirement with $70,000 less than men.
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Are women worse savers? Hardly. According to research from Vanguard, women participate in retirement plans in greater numbers than men. The difference in savings boils down to wages.
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First, there's the gender pay gap. Despite having more education than men, women still only earn 80% of what their male counterparts do.
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Women also get penalized for motherhood, suffering around a 4% decline in wages for each child they have, according to think tank Third Way. Men, on the other hand, experience a \"daddy bonus,\" seeing their wages rise about 6% with each child.
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And because women are more likely to be caregivers, both for their children and elderly relatives, according to the Merrill Lynch survey, they are also more likely to take breaks from their careers, work part-time or participate in the gig economy. What they gain in flexibility, they also lose in access to employer-sponsored retirement plans.
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In short, women must finance more years of living expenses, health care and long-term care, but they've got less money to do it with.
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\"Awareness of the issues is the single most important first step to addressing the issues,\" said Catherine Collinson, president and CEO of the Transamerica Institute and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. \"There are many things women can do [for their retirements] that are within reach.\"
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Experts recommend these four steps.
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At the beginning of your career, saving for retirement on top of food, rent, insurance and possibly student loan debt seems beyond daunting. But it's one of the most effective things you can do for the future. The earlier you start, the less you need to save, because compounding does a lot of the work for you.
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Financial planners like Maria Bruno, head of U.S. wealth planning research with Vanguard, recommend putting aside 15% of your pretax salary for retirement. Can't swing 15%? Start small and build up. A little retirement savings is always better than nothing.
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\"Retirement savings isn't all or nothing,\" insisted Bruno. \"Maybe at first you take advantage of your company's match so you only save 3%; then you increase your savings by 1% a year. By the time you're 30, you'll be at that 15% level.\"
\nMore from Invest in You:
The secret to financial success: Paying off debt
These 3 steps will help you track where your money is going in 2020
How much you need to save every month to earn $60K a year in interest alone for retirement
Also, in the early years, be particularly mindful of your salary negotiations. Your early salary is the foundation for future earnings, so it behooves you to learn the art of negotiation.
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\"Know your worth and don't settle for the first offer,\" said Judith Ward, senior financial planner with T. Rowe Price Associates. \"Do some research on your industry and position and be knowledgeable going into a salary negotiation.\"
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No one likes to budget, but it's the clearest way to get a handle on your money. Being aware of where your money goes each month can help you identify which areas to cut back on and how much you can redirect toward retirement.
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\"You need to get smart about what your spending is,\" said Stacy Francis, a certified financial planner and president and CEO of Francis Financial. \"What you earn is important, but what you spend is even more important,\"
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There are a number of apps like mint.com and YNAB (You Need A Budget) to simplify budgeting. A simple spreadsheet works, too. When you've figured out where to trim and how much to allocate to retirement, automate your savings. Many companies do this for employees through auto-enrollment features, but you can automate additional savings on top of that yourself.
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\"I say take [retirement savings] off the top and that forces you to live within your means with the remaining amount,\" said Bruno.
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Who says 65 is the magic retirement age?
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\"The whole retirement thing is really outdated,\" said Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, a wealth psychology expert and founder of KBK Wealth Connection. \"There's an upside to living longer and that's that you can have a really vibrant life well beyond 65.\"
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Aside from staying engaged, working longer also lets you build up a bigger nest egg and maximize your Social Security.
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\"To think that you can work for 30 or 40 years and have enough money to fund retirement for 30 or 40 years doesn't add up mathematically,\" said Collinson of Transamerica. \"We all need to think about extending our work lives.\"
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More Americans are getting on board with delayed retirement. Pew Research reports that 29% of baby boomers age 65 to 72 are either in the workforce or looking for work, a much higher percentage than older generations were when they were that age.
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\"It doesn't mean you have to continue to work the way you did before,\" insisted Collinson. \"You might shift from full-time to part-time, maybe seasonally. The idea is, you continue to work but with more freedom and flexibility.\"
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The gig economy allows people to take on part-time or project-based work to bring in additional income.
\nDisclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in .
While Social Security makes up 40% of the average person's retirement income, for women it plays a bigger role. Because it's such a valuable source of retirement income, it's important to maximize this benefit.
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You are eligible to receive Social Security at age 62, but you'll get dinged for each month you collect before your normal retirement age, which for anyone born after 1960 is 67 years old. By the same token, you get a bonus of about 8% a year for waiting until age 70.
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\"For most women it pays to wait til age 70,\" said Francis. \"If you start collecting at age 70, you could be collecting for the next 20 or 25 years at a higher rate.\"
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To be sure, retirement is a heavy lift for most people. For women it's compounded by lower wages, caregiving responsibilities, breaks from the workforce and greater longevity. While you may not be able to solve all these societal issues on your own, there's a lot you can do to shore up your own retirement security.
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\n
Evan McGonagill, 31, had a very different vision of her life.
\n
She imagined that she'd be living in Philadelphia, where she was building a career in university library archives. She planned to climb the ladder in her field and then perhaps go to graduate school.
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But a visit to her mother's house in Boston changed all of that.
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\"[My mother] had always been the record keeper in the family. She had done everything with our finances,\" said McGonagill. \"But when I visited...I was knee-deep in papers in two rooms. It was just a sea of scrambled records.\"
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McGonagill didn't know that her mother, who is in her 70s, had been suffering from major neurocognitive disorder, a precursor to Alzheimer's. Her mother had been forgetting to pay bills. Debt collectors and scammers were calling.
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McGonagill decided to live with her mother for a few months to get her on track. A few months turned into several when her parents had to divorce, sell their house and move into different apartments.
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The end of the caregiving never came. It's been two years since McGonagill moved in with her mom in a Brighton, Mass. apartment, and her father's health is now fading, too. She schleps them both to appointments and manages her mother's medications and the household.
\n
McGonagill let her job grant expire and didn't seek further employment in Philadelphia. She's held a rotating set of odd, flexible gigs while her parents' insurance-thankfully-paid for their medical and assistive care. In turn, McGonagill has had to put her career on the backburner.
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\"I've never had a moment to get myself to set up in a different professional network,\" McGonagill told Know Your Value. \"I've been in survival mode for two years, putting out fires constantly, moving my mom from the house to an apartment, hiring someone else to help. It's been full-time.\"
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McGonagill's situation is very common. Northwestern University found that up to 80 percent of older adults are cared for at home by family. More than half of caregivers are also employed.
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And according to the National Alliance on Caregiving, 60 percent of caregivers are women, but the proportion of men who caregive (40 percent) is rapidly growing.
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Get the knowyourvalue newsletter.
\n
Since 1993, the U.S. has mandated that employers must grant 12 weeks of unpaid family leave. However, this protection only affects companies with 50 employees or more (so, 60 percent of the workforce) and the majority of caretakers cannot afford to take this time off. Six states - Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Washington state and Washington D.C. - currently mandate some paid family leave.
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Meanwhile, 43 million Americans work as unpaid family caregivers, according to the AARP. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that 8.5 million caregivers are caring for a high-needs adult, meaning the adult has dementia and/or they need help with two or more daily self-care activities, such as bathing or dressing.
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The same study found that caregiving is rarely short-term; 70 percent of caregivers surveyed had been in their positions already between two and 10 years. About half of caregivers do so out of obligation, be it cultural or due to specific family issues. Caregivers are likelier than non-caregivers to suffer from anxiety, depression, social isolation and financial loss.
\n
As a result, \"there are a lot self-identification problems,\" said C. Grace Whiting, president and CEO of the National Alliance on Caregiving. \"What the research has said is people resist self-identifying as caregivers because it's more like a second job than a true vocation. There's a concern that the caregiving relationship is going to take over your life and replace other identities you have that are important to you. Then of course, there's the existential worry that your family member is dying.\"
\n
In Vermont, Cathy McWilliam, 59, has been a caretaker for multiple elder members of her family for seven years. A hairstylist, McWilliam always imagined opening a salon of her own after her kids left the house. Her caregiving schedule, however, meant that she needed to continue her track of freelancing with a flexible schedule.
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\"I'm self-employed, and I can control my own thing,\" McWilliam said. \"But I always thought I'd have my own building and the whole dream.\"
\n
McWilliam said that she has suffered mentally and physically from being on-call 24-7 for her mother, who has dementia.
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\"I wake up with heart palpitations, panic attacks, arrhythmia,\" said McWilliam. \"I'm more forgetful.\"
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Until the RAISE Family Caregiving Act passed in 2018, there was no official federal language around unpaid family caregiving. Priorities of the act include improving financial security and workplace issues for families, respite care options, and family planning throughout the U.S.
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However, the law is in its infancy. The data is difficult to collect, according to the NASEM study, due to murky definitions of caregiving and a lack of official metrics. Caregivers are still not officially recognized by the U.S. health care system, thereby denying them rights to resources or information about the dependent.
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According to Whiting, the lack of education and cultural discussion around caretaking means that many people are often caught financially and logistically unprepared.
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\"I'd love to see us get to a place where we talk about caregiving as a normal part of our lives,\" said Whiting. \"Having conversations early and often about what does it look like, asking 'If you're 80, mom, what do you want your life to look like?' People are uncomfortable talking about it at first, but the more you talk about it the more it's destigmatized.\"
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In the meantime, more companies are open to remote, flexible employees. Sue Bhatia founded the staffing agency Rose International, which places thousands of contingency workers -or project-based workers - into jobs, ranging from $12 to $300 an hour. Rose International connects employers with potential contingency workers and negotiates their rates and flexibility. Women make up 65 percent of her workforce.
\n
\"There is a huge demand for skilled workers,\" Bhatia said. \"Because of this huge demand, employers are willing to work with people who have a good skill set and soft skill set, it's hard to find people who are eager to change and learn, so employers are more flexible in that regard. People can relate to a lot of these caregiving situations, and because of that, they're flexible. Humanization is happening\"
\n
Bhatia said she placed one IT employee who had to take her mother to chemotherapy treatment frequently. This woman would bring her laptop and work while her mother underwent the treatments, Bhatia said.
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\"As long as the person's good, it's in everybody's interest to be flexible,\" said Bhatia. \"Mostly people who contingent workers are experienced. They're there because their skill set is unique and hard to find...Anyone who is a self-learner and can learn things themselves, take a couple of courses online - there are ways to gather skill sets. especially if people are ready to take responsibility for their own career.\"
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Mary Pembleton is a rare person who made full-time caregiving work as a job. She was studying nursing when her grandfather fell ill. Due to his veteran status, Pembleton was able to get paid as a full-time caregiver for him, while also staying home with her children. After he passed away four years later, Pembleton started pursuing a writing career. She published a story about caregiving in the New York Times.
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\"I'm a natural caregiver and I love it, so it actually worked out quite well,\" said Pembleton.
\n
Pembleton suggested carving out time for yourself and your own family in order to get through the harder times. Whiting said that caretakers should turn to support groups in hospitals, through specific agencies like the Cancer Society, or online. Exercise self-care, and a positive attitude wherever possible, Whiting said.
\n
\"Make sure you have plenty to celebrate as a family, so that when you have a tough day, you can withdraw a happy memory from the emotional bank so to speak, so you can say 'this is a really hard day but I love my mom and we've done happy things recently,\" Whiting said
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Whiting also argued that there is a very bright side to caregiving that we often ignore.
\n
\"There's so much out there about the challenges of caregiving, you just think 'that's a drag.' There's a richness there, of being able to celebrate someone and take care of someone you love...to be there with someone through these difficult situations,\" Whiting said. \"It's not just the drudgery of it. There's a compelling human need to caregive.\"
\n
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\n
The Story
\n
We're one year out from the 2020 election, and millennial women have mixed emotions.
\n
How do you know?
\n
We asked them. Last month, theSkimm surveyed 1,067 millennial women (aka ages 23-38) to get an idea of where their heads are at going into 2020.
\n
And...where are their heads at?
\n
They're feeling both hopeful and anxious. Two-thirds are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the US. Since the 2016 election, things have been, uh, fraught.
\n
Oh I hadn't noticed.
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Sure sure. The encouraging news is, in the last few years, 29% of millennial women say they've had a meaningful convo with someone who has different political views. Progress. But on the flip side, 30% have stopped following or blocked someone on social media over politics.
\n
Damn you, Facebook.
\n
Still, millennial women are overall ready to hit the polls. Nearly eight in 10 feel at least somewhat informed and 65% say they plan to vote in the 2020 election. But a little more than a third say they're not certain they'll show up.
\n
Really, why?
\n
A few reasons. Some think their vote won't make a difference (psst: it will). Some don't feel informed enough to fill out a ballot ( we can help with that). Others aren't amped about who they have to choose from. That said, if the election were held today, they have an idea of the decision they'd make.
\n
Don't leave me hanging.
\n
Millennial women would vote for the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate by a 2-1 margin. But the majority of those who like to party with the GOP would vote for President Trump.
\n
What about the Dems?
\n
There's no clear frontrunner. But they have some favorites: First, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), then Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and followed by former VP Joe Biden. But they're not necessarily voting in 2020 primaries based on who they think can win the general election. Just 20% of millennial women say electability is the most important quality in a candidate. Instead, they're voting based on trustworthiness, ability to work across the aisle, and where the candidates stand on the issues.
\n
Was wondering when you were going to get to the issues.
\n
This is where millennial women don't exactly see eye-to-eye based on their party affiliation. For Republican-leaning millennial women, national security and the economy keep them up at night. For Dem-leaning, it's health care, personal safety (think: gun and school safety laws), and the environment.
\n
All of which means...what?
\n
Some of these issues could make or break a candidate. For example, among millennial women who say healthcare is important, 41% say it's a deal breaker if a candidate feels differently from them about lowering the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs.
\n
theSkimm
\n
The data shows that as we get closer to the election, millennial women feel more informed. And that's crucial for getting out the vote. Because those who say they feel in the know are more certain about casting a ballot next November. So read up.
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Survey Methodology: This SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted October 1‐4, 2019, among a national sample of 11,228 adults, including 1,067 millennial women (23‐38 year‐olds). The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 2 percentage points. Among millennial women, the modeled error estimate is plus or minus 4 percentage points. Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.
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Top concerns for older women

Burden of caregiving

What could help women reach financial well-being in retirement

The fall-out

Women carry more burdens at home

Economy doesn't work for everyone

The Story

How do you know?

And...where are their heads at?

Oh I hadn't noticed.

Damn you, Facebook.

Really, why?

Don't leave me hanging.

What about the Dems?

Was wondering when you were going to get to the issues.

All of which means...what?

theSkimm