Working women will keep Tennessee strong
Half of Tennessee families depend on a female breadwinner, yet over 40%t of female-headed families in our state live in poverty. Women in Tennessee are paid less than men on average and are twice as likely as men to hold a lowwage job.
Much of our country’s economic growth over the last 40 years is due to the increasing number of working women, but Tennessee has been relatively slow to adopt policies that allow women to fully participate in the workforce.
Our organizations, A Better Balance and Thinktennessee, published a new policy brief this month that highlights many of the serious barriers preventing Tennessee women from achieving economic security for themselves and their families.
These barriers include a lack of workplace pregnancy accommodations, insufficient access to paid leave to care for oneself and loved ones, a shortage of affordable child care, and a persistent gender wage gap that pays women less than men for comparable work. These economic obstacles are even greater for working mothers and women of color in our state.
A Better Balance operates a free and confidential legal helpline, and we hear from women every day who are faced with the impossible choice between earning a paycheck to support their family and caring for themselves and their loved ones. Forced to take unpaid leave after giving birth to her daughter, a Nashville pharmacist and her family struggled to make ends meet.
Pregnant women across the state describe risking their health after being denied temporary, reasonable job accommodations at work. And far too many parents watch their bank accounts dwindle as they try to cover the cost of child care. Stories like these are all too common in our state, and they underscore the urgent need for greater protections for working women.
In Tennessee, we talk about how government doesn’t create jobs but fosters the right environment for job creation. Supporting working women and families is a no-brainer for boosting our state’s economy.
Policies like paid family and medical leave and reasonable pregnancy accommodations attract and keep women active in the workforce, benefiting families’ bottom line and spurring major economic growth. As our brief points out, these pro-family policies could add almost nine percent, or $34 billion, to our state’s GDP by 2025.
But today, Tennessee women are much less likely than men to be employed--our labor force participation gap is larger than in 42 other states.
Several of Tennessee’s peer states, including Kentucky, South Carolina, and Alabama, have recently taken key steps forward, such as investing in highquality early education programs and guaranteeing pregnant workers a clear right to reasonable accommodations at work.
These measures often passed with bipartisan support and backing from the business community. For example, the Louisville, KY Metro Chamber of Commerce praised Kentucky’s pregnancy accommodations law, which passed earlier this year, for being “probusiness, pro-workforce legislation.”
To be sure, in Tennessee there have been steps in the right direction, some initial measures to provide greater support to working women and their families. Nashville’s paid family leave program for municipal employees, established in 2017, was an important first step toward giving all Tennessee families the ability to balance work and caregiving. But much more can be done at the state and local levels.
In order to compete as an attractive place to invest, work, and do business, Tennessee must follow the lead of our peer states and take concrete action to support women in the workforce.
Elizabeth Gedmark is senior staff attorney and director of the Southern office for A Better Balance. Twitter: @Abetterbalance
Shanna Singh Hughey is president of Thinktennessee. Twitter: @Thinktn