A recession or ‘she-cession?’ COVID-19 pandemic sets back women’s economic stability and progress

suffered COVID-related job losses. In September 2020 alone, roughly 865,000 women left the workforce, compared with 216,000 men — four times as many women as men. If we don’t respond to these trends, 25 years of progress toward women’s participation in the workplace will be undone and will fundamentally undermine women’s economic mobility.

Women business owners have also been disproportionately affected. According to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey, those who ranked their business’s overall health as “somewhat or very good” plummeted 13 points last year (compared to a five-point drop by male business owners during the same time).

But these percentages represent far more than numbers. There are real women — mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, and friends — behind each of these statistics, many of whom are responsible for the wellbeing of their families. They deserve better.

Moving forward, it’s clear we need to face the ongoing challenges of the pandemic’s disproportionate devastation on women with both data and determination. The time has arrived to create meaningful change through initiatives that generate sustainable impact in economic mobility, leadership, health and well-being, and freedom from violence, the four pillars of the Women’s Fund Miami-Dade.

This is the year for us to link arms with our community partners and lead the way forward. We’re simply stronger together. Collectively, we need to turn the page on the ramifications of COVID-19 and its influence on gender inequality in the labor force. When women are strong, families are strong, communities are strong, the economy is strong, the country is strong and the world is strong.

We call on our fellow business leaders and politicians to reverse the disproportionate effects of the pandemic by working together to develop solutions for recovery and rebuilding. Together, we’ll make Miami-Dade County a place for women not merely to survive, but to thrive.

With advocacy, investment and impact, we’ll realize our vision of living in a world where power and possibility are not limited by gender.

Gloria Romero Roses is board chair and Arathi Ramappa is board vice chair of The Women’s Fund Miami Dade.

So it seems the church is shrinking. The mosque and synagogue, too, for that matter. Not that this is breaking news. It has long been known that the numbers of Americans who belong to religious organizations are dwindling.

But last week, that decline hit a milestone. For the first time since Gallup began tracking religious membership back in 1937, it has dropped below half. Back then, 73 percent of us belonged to some house of worship. Today, just 48 percent do.

Experts cite multiple reasons for the slippage, including the Catholic Church’s many sex scandals, growing distrust of institutions in general and a modern disinclination to be pigeonholed into any single theological tradition.

While there is surely merit to all those observations, it seems likely that where Christianity — more specifically, the white, evangelical church — is concerned, there is also another explanation for the disappearance of the missing congregants:

They were driven away.

Consider it a byproduct of the rise, a little over 40 years ago, of the so-called religious right as a political force. Suddenly, Jesus of Nazareth, the itinerant rabbi whose life, death and life have inspired believers for two millennia, was adopted as a mascot of Republican conservatism.

Granted, the 1980s was hardly the first time — or the last — people allowed their politics to be informed by their faith. As the lives and ministries of Jim Wallis, Jeremiah Wright, William Barber II and Martin Luther King, Jr. amply attest, the progressive left has often done the same thing.

No, the difference 40 years ago wasn’t the fact of faith in politics, but the substance of it.

We went from “feed my sheep” to cutbacks in school lunch programs. From “love ye one another” to ignoring AIDS because it was “only” killing gays. From “woe unto you who are rich” to tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle-down leftovers for everyone else. From compassion for “the least of these” to condemnation of mythical welfare queens and other lazy and undeserving poor.

It was a faith less of joy than of perpetual outrage, less of hope than of abiding fear. Which means that ultimately, it was not faith at all, only the degradation thereof. It reached its sorry nadir when the religious right made common cause with the 45th president. He broke commandments like glass, but they didn’t care. He was a biblical illiterate, but they didn’t notice. Indeed, this year at CPAC, when his people rolled him out in the form of a literal golden idol, they lined up to take pictures.

And really, if you were a person seeking God, seeking the comfort of faith, the solace and sustenance of faith, would you be drawn to that? Fat chance.

Small wonder the church is shrinking. And yet, even when they feel let down by the church, seekers don’t stop seeking. Note that Gallup also reports that, depending upon how you word the question, as many as 87 percent of us still profess belief in God.

That’s a minor miracle. You might even call it good news. And it speaks to the challenge — and opportunity — facing every preacher watching a congregation dwindle.

Faith can shape politics, yes. But when politics start shaping faith, maybe you’ve lost your way. When you find yourself preaching exclusion and rejection in the name of Him who said, “Come unto me,” maybe it’s time to recalibrate. Or even repent. Maybe that’s what the people who used to fill those pews are waiting for. Because, yes, the church is shrinking.

But they know that God is not.