The State of Women's Finances

.... if you are a woman or someone who cares about one you should read these articles. plk


For the more than 1 million women who will go to the bankruptcy courts this year, there is no more important pending federal legislation than the bankruptcy bill.

Bankruptcy: The New Women's Issue

As a result of the bankruptcy legislation that was recently passed in the Senate (S.256) a
disproportionate number of women vs. men will bear the brunt of higher costs, more restrictions and less protection from creditor abuses. Women are now the largest demographic group in bankruptcy, outnumbering men by about 150,000 per year. More than a million women will find their way to the bankruptcy courts this year--more women than will graduate from four-year colleges, receive a diagnosis of cancer, or even file for divorce. The rapid rise of women in bankruptcy illustrates a shocking decline in the financial health of women who should be succeeding in our economy.
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by Prof. Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School


Asset poverty among women is twice as pervasive as income poverty among women.

A Woman's (Net) Worth

While the widening wealth gap between rich and poor has garnered much attention, the wealth gap between men and women is equally astounding. Single women have about half the net worth of single men. In just about every category of wealth-holding, from personal savings accounts to retirement accounts, single women hold half the value of their male counterparts. The differences between non-homeowners are even larger: female renters hold about a quarter of what male renters hold. And never-married women have the lowest level of net worth of all types of households.

Read More by Javier Silva


The work / family conflict faced by working mothers is not an accident or an inevitable cultural evolution: it's an outcome of bad policy.


Who Pays for Today's Families?

We've all heard quite enough by now of the Lawrence Summers debacle at Harvard. He hypothesized that that the lack of progress for women in the sciences is attributable to either women's innate abilities (or lack thereof); the "general clash between people's legitimate family desires" and employers' demand for long hours, or--less likely in his view--discrimination. Controversy aside, what's indisputable is that caring labor is critical for the reproduction of our society; somebody has to do it and somebody has to pay for that time. Unfortunately, public policy failures have meant that women with children are the ones paying the most.
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and finally..

From child care centers to elementary classrooms, women heed the call to educate the next generation of citizens. The problem is that their pocketbooks are the thinner for it.

The Wage Penalty of Our Earliest Educators

Nowhere is the educator wage penalty more egregious than in early childhood care and education. Reams of rigorous scientific studies have all shown that those first few years of a child's life are critical for cognitive, social and behavioral development. And yet America's child care providers, nearly 100 percent female, are at the bottom of the pay scale. At an average wage of $8.37 per hour and $10.67 for pre-school teachers, early educators are among the least-well paid workers in our economy.
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by Tamara Draut & Julia Busch
by Heather Boushey, Guest Columnist and CEPR Economist