We Asked Working Women—And They Told Us

by Donna Jablonski, Sep 7, 2006

What Working Women Worry About 

Today’s working women are concerned.

Pay isn’t keeping up with the cost of living. Health insurance is unaffordable—and one family illness can mean poverty. Retirement security is disappearing. Many working women feel they’re working just to pay for child care. They still face unequal pay and discrimination. And every day they watch the rich get richer and corporations and CEOs take more than their fair share of the pie.

More than 26,000 women shared their concerns by taking the 2006 AFL-CIO Ask a Working Woman survey in June-August. Their responses and comments, compiled in the AFL-CIO 2006 Ask a Working Woman Survey Report released today, paint a troubling picture of the struggles of today’s working women.

Working women worry about basic economic issues such as pay not keeping up with rising costs, inability to afford health insurance and lack of retirement security. Affordable health care is the top concern of women who responded to the survey—97 percent of them, across age and race lines, say they are worried about the rising costs of quality health care. But the list of concerns is long: job exporting, higher education costs, continuing discrimination on the job, lack of control over work hours and more.

Concerns about jobs lacking benefits, expressed by 78 percent of respondents, are well-justified. One-third or more of survey-takers say their jobs do not provide retirement benefits or prescription coverage. Nearly a third say they do not have paid sick leave. Well more than half say they do not have equal pay or control over their work hours. And nearly two-thirds say they are not provided paid family leave.

Working women’s worries are not only for themselves—93 percent of those taking the survey say they are concerned for the next generation of workers as well.

In this election year, the survey shows working women believe good legislation can make a difference in their lives. Sixty-five percent of women taking the survey label legislation to make health care affordable first or second on a list of measures that would improve their lives. Laws to improve health care and retirement security are the top two priorities of women of all races and ethnicities. While white, Latina and Asian American women rank legislation to help them out with child care as their third priority, African American women give that ranking to laws to challenge discrimination and Native American women name support for equal pay as their third priority.

Again and again, working women taking the Ask a Working Woman survey express outrage about companies cutting their pay and benefits while CEOs get huge pay and retirement packages. Many call for laws to hold corporations and their CEOs accountable for their treatment of workers.

When asked to choose their top two legislative priorities, 48 percent of survey respondents selected laws to limit CEO pay when workers are being laid off or losing benefits. Forty-seven percent chose laws to protect employee pay and retirement benefits when a company goes into bankruptcy.

Politicians, take note: Regardless of race, age or scholarship, nearly all the women who took the survey share two characteristics: 96 percent are registered to vote and 96 percent say they will vote in November’s elections.