AAUW Dialog

Budgeting is hard. From the fist-time job holder or the family of four to the country as a whole, all of us must weigh our choices and make difficult decisions. In the economic recession that we are starting to recover from, we have had to decide how to invest in our futures while we pay for the past.

Imagine for a moment that you had $10,000 a year less to work with. Here’s a wake-up call: families with a female wage earner are confronted with this issue every day. Many other factors also affect whether families have food on the table, and economic security today — much less tomorrow or in retirement — is a distant hope.

Budgeting can be especially hard for recent college graduates, who enter the workforce with an average of more than $20,000 in debt, an amount that has nearly doubled from 1996 to 2008. This debt is burdensome enough to alter many career paths — from dreams to reality — and causes about 14 percent of young graduates to postpone marriage, 30 percent to hold off on buying a car, 21 percent to delay having children, and 38 percent to defer buying a home. And since women earn less on average than their male counterparts, even when they have the same degree and the same job, that loan burden is even higher. In fact, the wage gap is firmly in place from the moment women graduate from college and grows even wider 10 years out.

The wage gap persists over the course of a career, and budgeting doesn’t always get easier. In Virginia, where I live, the average wage gap of about $12,000 a year could help a family afford 108 more weeks of food bills, 7 more months of mortgage and utilities payments, 14 more months of rent, more than 3 years of family health insurance premiums, and almost 4,500 additional gallons of gas. Talk about stretching budgets! That wage gap, over a 35-year working life, amounts to about $210,000 — money that is missing from family budgets throughout the years and from women’s retirement accounts.

The recent recession has been particularly difficult for single women. With unemployment and underemployment rates higher than the national average, and worse for single women of color, many single women have found it hard to stay afloat. For women who have caregiving responsibilities, family decisions are more difficult than ever. Without paid sick days, many parents often have to decide whether to forgo wages to stay home with a sick child. A recent New York Times article examined how few services are available to families who need help affording and arranging childcare. These problems make it even harder for families struggling with the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks of making ends meet.

The good news is that there are solutions to help with the burdens families bear. We can start by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act and reducing the insidious workplace discrimination that results in pay inequity. And with the passage of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, fewer students will need to seek out riskier and more expensive private loans. For parents and caregivers, the Healthy Families Act will make unpaid sick days a thing of the past.

So, the next time you sit down to make your monthly budget, think about how different your life could be with these basic changes:  another tank of gas, another bag of groceries, and another $100 for your 401(k). It can happen; pick up the phone and ask your representative or senators where they stand on these issues.