By Jemma Stephenson
A report released last week recommended equal pay protections, improved funding for child care and better workforce training to address wage and work gaps faced by women in Alabama.
The report from the Alabama Workforce and Wage Gap Task Force, created by the Alabama Legislature last year, found that women in the state made just 67 cents for every dollar a man earns.
“Black women and Hispanic women are paid even less, making only 52 cents and 41 cents, respectively, for every dollar a white man earns,” the report said.
The report also found that just 52% of working-age women in Alabama are in the workforce. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, about 56% of working-age women were in the workforce nationwide in 2020.
“Women face considerable barriers to completing workforce training programs, entering the workforce, and staying employed,” the report said. “Among the leading challenges are transportation, health care, childcare, and wage disparities.”
To strengthen equal pay protections, the report recommended prohibiting employers and third parties from asking about pay history. The report said salary history can perpetuate pay gaps based on past discrimination.
“Employers’ reliance on salary history to make hiring and compensation decisions is particularly harmful for women, as the practice can unintentionally relegate women to lower pay based on prior discrimination,” the report said.
The report found that salary history bans benefit women and people of color the most, and recommended implementing policies that would incentivize equal pay audits.
To better develop the workforce pipeline for women and girls, the report recommended adding a representative to the Alabama Workforce Council to focus on gender dynamics in the workplace.
Furthermore, the report recommends increasing funding for apprenticeships and “earn and learn” pathways.
“Most people in Alabama – women especially – do not have the financial security to take time away from lower paying jobs to complete a training or certifications that would increase their wages in the long term,” the report said.
The report also recommended increasing funding for programs that expose girls to STEM and prepare them for those jobs. Tech Trek Camp, hosted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville has been successful at convincing girls that math, science and spatial learning is learned and “not innate,” the report said. Additionally, the Worlds of Work Expo has showcased careers to young people.
“Furthermore, increasing the number and availability of STEM camps for adolescent girls is a relatively small investment with potential for great impact,” the report said. “For reference, the cost of such a camp for 65 girls is around $50,000.”
The report said that increasing funding for workforce navigators and career coaches would also increase the number students and jobseekers that could be “supported, trained and employed.”
“Closing the pay and workforce participation gap could yield radical gains to the tune of an estimated 59,000 new jobs, $15 billion in new income deployed in Alabama businesses, and a boost to our state’s economy by up to $22 billion,” Melanie Bridgeforth, the chair of the group and president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Alabama, said in a statement released with the report Friday. “While the task force has dissolved, we are hopeful that continued collaboration with lawmakers will move these recommendations forward.”
Attempts to reach Bridgeforth for comment Monday were unsuccessful.
Addressing child care
The report also recommends using all available federal funding to support high-quality and affordable child care. About 90% of child care providers are women, making an average salary of just under $21,000 a year. Rhoda Mann, executive director of VOICES for Alabama’s Children, said that the bonuses given to childcare employees during the coronavirus pandemic came out to around $12,000 a year. The bonuses aimed to retain child care workers.
“Child care isn’t always thought of as a workforce issue,” Mann said. “But I think that’s one thing we really learned during COVID, when first responders and others had to work, they were having difficulty finding child care, because child care providers had to cut back from what they were able to provide in the way of capacity to nearly half and they were already struggling to make ends meet, and so this just put an extra burden on our child care providers.”
Mann said that she doesn’t know of any data related to retention of childcare workers but pointed to the VOICES map which depicts childcare deserts in Alabama.
“A far as retention of child care providers, all we know, is what we’re hearing from providers themselves, they are very worried and very concerned that when these dollars run out that they won’t be able to retain their employees, because they can go to McDonald’s or to Home Depot or someplace like that and make more an hour doing a job that doesn’t require the education that they already have,” Mann said.
“It’s sad to think that we’re paying them as glorified babysitters, rather than the skilled professionals that they are,” she said.
Mann said that if the state were to replace those funds, it would come out to over $100 million.
The report also recommended looking into tax credits to increase the affordability of child care in Alabama.
Mann said that VOICES is supportive of tax credits, but they don’t know exactly what those would look like yet.
There isn’t a single clear answer to help the child care shortage in Alabama, said Mann.
“We don’t have all the answers,” she said. “Nobody really has all the answers.”
