Women workers in California are feeling the impact of COVID-19 more than men, according to an attorney with the Center for WorkLife Law.
“Women are disproportionately in jobs that are seeing layoffs like hospitality and service work,” said Liz Morris, an attorney and deputy director of the Center for WorkLife Law. “Women do a disproportionate amount of family caregiving. When schools closed, that impacted women far more than it impacted men.”
After setting up a coronavirus helpline, the non-profit has received some 1,000 calls from parents, workers, and pregnant employees seeking legal advice.
“Everyone calls our helpline because they're scared of getting sick at work but one of the reasons that women, in particular, call is because of conflicts between their family responsibilities and doing their job,” Morris told the Southern California Record. “Caregiving issues arise and the infrastructure that used to be in place that allowed women to go to their paying jobs has disappeared or is largely absent now.”
Just this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new COVID-19 restrictions that placed 28 counties in the purple zone effective Nov. 17, according to a statement online.
Purple tier restrictions include limiting indoor retailers and malls to 25% capacity while closing food courts, for instance.
As of Nov. 18, there were 1,047,789 coronavirus cases and 18,360 fatalities statewide, according to the California coronavirus dashboard.
When women are pushed out of jobs mid-career, Morris said it’s harder for them to regain ground when they try to make a come back whereas, for men, there's no interruption to their advancement.
“Unfortunately, it has lasting negative impacts on their advancement and on their pay,” she said. “They're never able to get quite back to the position they would have been in if they hadn't left the workforce.”
Although the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which was passed in March, provides some protection, it is limited in scope.
“The major shortcoming of the law is that it excludes millions of people,” Morris said in an interview. “The Department of Labor has narrowed its exclusion of healthcare workers as a result of a lawsuit that was filed in the Southern District of New York but for those who are covered, we have seen it working on our legal helpline.”
One of the benefits of the FFCRA is that workers are granted 10 extra weeks of paid parental leave but the limitation is that it only applies to employees of businesses with 500 or fewer employees.
“The FFCRA exempts healthcare workers and exempts people at larger companies,” Morris said. “But under the FFCRA, an employer can choose to give partially paid job-protected leave to healthcare worker and then seek a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, which is a part of the law that the federal government is funding to reimburse employers for wages that they paid to employees who are out on leave.”
Morris advises women to know their legal rights.
“Oftentimes, people with caregiving responsibilities, particularly mothers, will be overlooked or called back last when folks are being brought back to work based on the assumptions that she has children to take care but of course those women also have to provide financially for their families regardless of sex discrimination,” she said.