The Hummingbirds

Floating fast in the 21st century American economy

January is for New Years’ resolutions. As a person, I quite like this. I use the end of the year to take stock of what passed, what I accomplished, what I want to do next. If you follow me on instagram, you’ll know that this is aided by a massive wall calendar I keep.

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But as an economist, one whose career is built on designing and assessing public policy but is still a human woman, I find January frustrating, borderline offensive. Let me explain.

The Stall

Women and men are not economically equal. Men have higher hourly wages, larger annual incomes, and more in retirement savings. Men are more likely to own their own business or be in the C-suite of a company. These things have always been true, but here’s the bigger problem: since 2000, women have made little progress in closing the gap with men by almost any measure.

For the first time in over a century, a generation of women has seen relatively little economic progress.

It’s easiest to see in labor force participation. Labor force participation is just the decision to work:

• People who participate in the labor force work or are looking for work.

• People not in the labor force ain’t working and ain’t looking, like a retiree.

And the labor force participation rate is the share of a population that’s in the labor force.

In 1950, the labor force participation rate for women age 25-54 was around 35%. After five decades of more women joining the workforce, it reached 77% by 2000. And then it fell, rose, fell, and rose again for the next quarter century. In August of last year it notched a new historic high before falling again. The years of gains came to a halt.

Figure: Labor Force Participation of Women Age 25-54

And for the record, other countries that are rich like the US do not follow this pattern of stall, I explain in this post:

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A similar story happened with the gender pay gap—women’s earnings as a share of men’s earnings. In the early 1980s, it was 62 cents for every male dollar. By 2000 it hit 80 cents. We are still at 82 cents today.

This is The Stall. The latter half of the 20th century saw sweeping gains in women’s economic power and position in the US—how much they worked, how much they earned, the careers they took, the ceilings they broke—but since around 2000, women have made hardly any gains at all on the big measures.

You could certainly nitpick The Stall, and say it’s not as flat if you look at, maybe, certain segments of the population or women in specific jobs. But even in the most generous lens, women’s progress this century is “mostly flat” instead of “flat.” No one is winning any awards here.

What has happened?

This is why January and New Years Resolutions bother me. Policy has failed women, but their energy is redirected inward. I call it…

The Empowerment Trap

Empowerment is agency, a sense of control. Empowered women: run their own lives, decide what career to pursue, if and when to marry, if and when to have children. Empowered women can have whatever they want, if they go for it.

But there is an underside to empowerment. If you have control over your choices, then you have similar control over your problems—both in making them and solving them. You don’t need help, you just need to be better.

This logic is pervasive—and pernicious.

Think about it. Say women followed the advice. They leaned in, made their husbands do more, asked for raises and promotions, practiced self-care, made time for relationships, snuck in some workouts, tried meditating, drank less, were vulnerable when they needed to be and brave when they could be, read more, got pap smears and mammograms exactly when they were supposed to, and remembered to practice gratitude.

You know what they still wouldn’t have? Paid leave.

You know what they’d still have instead? A yawning pay gap.

Because the reason for The Stall isn’t some collective failure of women to try hard or make the right choices, it’s…

Policy Failure

The US has never pursued an agenda to give women equal economic footing to men, and it shows.

The labor market is an unregulated mess—no paid sick days, paid medical leave, paid family leave, scheduling notification requirements, right to work part-time or request flexible arrangements. Keep in mind: in the US, you can still be fired for calling in sick.

The price of child care has risen more over the last 30 years than the price of food, energy, health care, and even prescription drugs. It is often more expensive than in-state tuition or typical mortgages. And that price is only ever going to keep going up.

Women’s obstetric health policy is deadly in its failings, with maternal mortality spiking in the pandemic. On top of that, it’s expensive. Even for women with private insurance, labor and delivery incurs thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.

And while Congress will pour hundreds of billions into creating more manufacturing jobs, they are seemingly unconcerned with stagnant pay among—and shortages of—teachers, nurses, and childcare workers: three of the most heavily female occupations.

These aren’t hurdles, they’re barriers. There’s no jumping over them, no moving around them. They keep women in place.

Hummingbirds

Without basic public policy to support them in the economy, women can’t move forward. This is as far as we can go on our own. So we just flutter here, with furious effort to support our families, communities, and the economy and yet suspended in the air.

Women today are hummingbirds—constantly in motion, moving fiercely, just to stay in place. Not frozen but vigorously floating, fighting to stay still.

You know who needs a big reset and an aggressive set of New Years resolutions?

Congress.

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