The Colorado Sun – ‘Colorado women earn 81 cents on every dollar earned by men, and child care costs are making it worse’

Colorado women earn 81 cents on every dollar earned by men, and child care costs are making it worse

National and state women’s advocacy groups are calling for changes in child care, job discrimination, maternal health care

THE COLORADO SUN
By Jennifer Brown

Colorado women working full time are making 80.9 cents on the dollar compared to men, and compounded by other inequalities over the course of a career, that adds up to a retirement income that falls short.

 

Older women in Colorado had only 65% of the retirement savings and 69% of the Social Security benefits compared with men, according to new data from the Women’s Foundation of Colorado and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

 

More Black women rely on Medicaid, which paid for 60% of births for Black mothers. The state-federal insurance program for people who are disabled or have low incomes funded one-third of all births in Colorado in 2023.

 

The combination of inequities in health care, wages, job opportunities and child care accumulates over a lifetime, said Emily Maistrellis, the national institute’s director of the status of women in the states.

 

“This isn’t just about the wage gap,” she said. “Women are more likely to leave the labor force to care for young children. Or they sacrifice a sizable portion of their incomes to pay for child care. We have also heard about women, particularly women of color, who are facing a maternal health crisis, across the country.”

 

For women who have to take time off work to deal with pregnancy or birth complications, or for premature newborns, the economic complications are intensified, she said. “Women have less economic security in their retirement years because of how discrimination and systemic racism plays out across those very facets of their lives over the life course,” Maistrellis said.