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Fifteen percent of women in a new survey said that their family's financial situation is better than before the pandemic — far less than the 28% of men who said this.
That's according to new results from a national survey commissioned by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) and conducted by GQR, shared exclusively with Insider. The NWLC/GQR polling of 3,800 US adults was conducted from February 7 to February 25.
The survey results, including how people's families are doing financially, the pandemic's impact on mental health, and changes to employment, are highlighted in a new report from the National Women's Law Center titled "Resilient But Not Recovered: After Two Years of the COVID-19 Crisis, Women Are Still Struggling."
Julie Vogtman, director of Job Quality and Senior Counsel for the National Women's Law Center and co-author of the report told Insider that things like pay discrimination and "their overrepresentation in low-paying jobs" meant women were "in a precarious position before the pandemic and then really the pandemic ravaged their household finances."
Vogtman and co-author Jasmine Tucker wrote in the NWLC report that women also faced the gender pay gap prior to the pandemic.
"Even before the pandemic began, women experienced poverty at higher rates than men, were overrepresented in low-paid jobs, and suffered from racist and sexist wage gaps," the two authors wrote in the report. "These trends continued during the pandemic and have contributed to women's economic insecurity in this crisis."
The most common reasons women said they were worse off than before the pandemic were their own or a family member's job loss and used up savings, and women were more likely than men to cite those reasons for financial distress.
Tucker, director of research at the National Women's Law Center, told Insider it's not surprising that "women have probably drawn down their savings more than men because they have been out of work longer or they didn't have as many savings to begin with."
In the survey, men who lost or quit a job were more likely than women to say they have since found new work; that was similarly the case between fathers and mothers. Some moms left their jobs during the pandemic due to school and childcare closures, and there's still fewer women in the labor force now than in February 2020.
The economic impact of the pandemic has been even more severe for low-paid women. Fifty-one percent of low-paid women, defined as those making $15 or less, said their family's financial circumstances are worse. That's three times the share of low-paid workers who said they're doing better (17%).
"These women went into the pandemic without adequate savings or other resources to help them weather the storm, and they were more likely to lose their jobs or have their hours cut once the pandemic hit," Tucker said.
"And even if they are now working full time, it's extremely difficult to build up any kind of financial cushion on $15 an hour or less," Tucker added.
Those financial struggles are taking a toll on low-income women, with bills and expenses causing more stress than most other factors:
Tucker said low-paid workers who need to find a new job may take a lower-paying one if their previous job isn't around.
"What are you going to do? You have to put food on the table. You have to pay the rent," Tucker said. "We don't have these eviction moratoriums. We don't have stimulus checks still coming. Even though people still are experiencing financial hardship."
Vogtman said government measures like the now-expired advance child tax credit payments, stimulus checks, and extended unemployment benefits "helped women a great deal."
"Our survey in fact shows that those benefits were really important in helping women afford the necessities, but it also shows that now is not the time to cut off the child tax credit, for example," Vogtman said.
Parents have previously shared with Insider how the monthly child tax credit payments helped them and their families. One parent told Insider, "Without these payments, I won't eat so my kids can."
The poll asked respondents what policies they support, and 72% said they support ensuring "all families can access the full Child Tax Credit and continue payments that gave families up to $300 per child monthly."
