Economic Security

 From the EDF:

In our previous piece in this series, we looked at the relative absence of women from environmental restoration sectors like transportation and engineering. You might have come away wondering why the gender ratios are so skewed in fields such as construction, where there are approximately 32 male Louisianans working for every one female. 

 From WebMD:

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and is rolling out over the course of four years. Its biggest impact, extending health insurance to approximately 30 million people, doesn’t kick in until 2014.

DeParle said that the biggest criticism of the law that contains the most misinformation is “that it does nothing to control costs.” As an example, she said that Medicare spending per beneficiary is about the lowest it has ever been. Lambrew added that the White House plans to release information Thursday indicating that premium growth has slowed for health insurance.

Another criticism DeParle addressed was the individual mandate, the part of the law that requires everyone to purchase health insurance. The mandate’s legality will be debated during next week’s Supreme Court hearings. “A lot of people think that the so-called individual mandate is a huge new imposition on their liberty based on what they’ve heard from some, when, in fact, for many, most, I suppose, Americans, nothing is going to change,” DeParle said. “They’ll just check a box that says ‘Yes, I have insurance.’” The government will help cover the cost of insurance for those who can’t afford it.

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 From the Chicago Tribune:

Exit polls from Super Tuesday voting showed that one fifth of the those who voted in Ohio were working women; in Virginia, married women made up a third of the electorate. In Oklahoma, more than half of voters were female.

Many women consider themselves independent voters. In the 2010 elections, the Pew Research Center found that among female independent likely voters, the GOP held a 43 percent to 40 percent edge over Democrats. There's an opportunity here for the GOP: If Republicans want to continue picking up as many seats as they did in 2010, they need to focus on winning the independent women's vote, too, not just die-hard Republicans.

Here are five ideasfor wooing independent women voters

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 From TrustLaw:

Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, pointed out women's larger share of poverty. "About 1.2 billion people worldwide--70 percent of them women--live in poverty," Basch said. "In the United States, the poverty rate of women rose to 14.5 percent in 2010, the highest in 17 years, so we have a way to go before gender equity is achieved."

Another disparity is domestic violence. While many higher-income countries have enacted laws, some developing nations still condone wife beating if the woman argues with her husband, refuses to have sex, or burns food.

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 From Bloomberg Business Week:

Female personal care and service workers, which include butlers, valets, house sitters and shoe shiners, earned $1.02 for every $1 their male counterparts made in 2010, according to census data compiled by Bloomberg. That job category, which covers 38,210 full-time workers in the U.S., was the only one of 265 major occupations where the median female salary exceeded the amount paid to men.

The six jobs with the largest gender gap in pay and at least 10,000 men and 10,000 women were in the Wall Street-heavy financial sector: insurance agents, managers, clerks, securities sales agents, personal advisers and other specialists. Advanced- degree professions proved no better predictors of equality. Female doctors made 63 cents for every $1 earned by male physicians and surgeons, the data show. Female chief executives earned 74 cents for every $1 made by male counterparts.

The Census Bureau figures underscore the lack of financial progress made in the generation since women began leaving the home and moving into the workforce in large numbers. While the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression initially hit women less severely, their median earnings still trailed men in 505 of 525 occupations tracked by the federal government.

“We don’t see the pay gap closing,” Ilene H. Lang, president and chief executive officer of Catalyst, a New York- based nonprofit advocacy group, said in a telephone interview. “It’s persistent.”

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