Underpaid, Overworked, and Underappreciated — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (May 17, 2022)

Summary

Transcript of the hearing Underpaid, Overworked, and Underappreciated: How the Pandemic Economy Disproportionately Harmed Low-Wage Women Workers, before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, House of Representatives, on May 17, 2022 (Serial No. 117–81). Hon. James E. Clyburn, chairman of the subcommittee, presided over a hybrid hearing in person and via Zoom. Witnesses were Vicki Shabo of Better Life Lab, New America; Cynthia Murray, a Fitting Department Associate at Walmart; C. Nicole Mason of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research; minority witness Mary Katharine Ham; and Yana Rodgers of Rutgers University. The index states that no additional documents were entered into the record.

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“Underpaid, Overworked, and Underappreciated — Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis (May 17, 2022).” Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/chrg-117hhrg47667-5b3de469d7/, SHA-256 f7b74f4cc9195dd567bc1eb06df2827763a5453f1632680a973ee58fb52cb4ce.

Full text

UNDERPAID, OVERWORKED, AND
UNDERAPPRECIATED: HOW THE
PANDEMIC ECONOMY DISPROPORTIONATELY
HARMED LOW-WAGE WOMEN WORKERS

HEARING
BEFORE THE

SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS
CRISIS
OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

MAY 17, 2022

Serial No. 117–81

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform

(
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov

U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47–667 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Ranking Minority
Columbia Member
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts JIM JORDAN, Ohio
JIM COOPER, Tennessee VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia JODY B. HICE, Georgia
RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, Illinois GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
RO KHANNA, California BOB GIBBS, Ohio
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland CLAY HIGGINS, Louisiana
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, New York RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan PETE SESSIONS, Texas
KATIE PORTER, California FRED KELLER, Pennsylvania
CORI BUSH, Missouri ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
SHONTEL M. BROWN, Ohio ANDREW CLYDE, Georgia
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois NANCY MACE, South Carolina
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida
PETER WELCH, Vermont JAKE LATURNER, Kansas
HENRY C. ‘‘HANK’’ JOHNSON, JR., Georgia PAT FALLON, Texas
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland YVETTE HERRELL, New Mexico
JACKIE SPEIER, California BYRON DONALDS, Florida
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois VACANCY
BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
MARK DESAULNIER, California
JIMMY GOMEZ, California
AYANNA PRESSLEY, Massachusetts

RUSS ANELLO, Staff Director
JENNIFER GASPAR, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
DEREK COLLINS, Clerk
CONTACT NUMBER: 202-225-5051
MARK MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina, Chairman
MAXINE WATERS, California STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana, Ranking Minority
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York Member
NYDIA M. VELÁZQUEZ, New York JIM JORDAN, Ohio
BILL FOSTER, Illinois MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee
JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS, New York
RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI, Illinois MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS, Iowa

(II)
C O N T E N T S

Page
Hearing held on May 17, 2022 ............................................................................... 1

WITNESSES

Vicki Shabo, Senior Fellow, Paid Leave Policy and Strategy, Better Life
Lab, New America
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 7
Cynthia Murray, Fitting Department Associate, Walmart
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 9
C. Nicole Mason, President & Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Women’s
Policy Research
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 10
Mary Katharine Ham (Minority Witness), CNN Commentator and Author
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 12
Yana Rodgers, Ph.D., Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations,
Rutgers University
Oral Statement ........................................................................................................ 14
* Written opening statements and the written statements of the witnesses
are available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document Repository
at: docs.house.gov.

INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

No additional documents were entered into the record for this hearing.

(III)
UNDERPAID, OVERWORKED, AND
UNDER-APPRECIATED: HOW THE
PANDEMIC ECONOMY DISPROPORTIONATELY
HARMED LOW-WAGE WOMEN WORKERS

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12:06 p.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom; Hon. James
E. Clyburn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Clyburn, Velázquez, Foster, Raskin,
Krishnamoorthi, Scalise, Jordan, Green, and Miller-Meeks.
Mr. CLYBURN. Today our select subcommittee is holding a hybrid
hearing where members have the option of appearing either in per-
son or remotely via Zoom. Let me make a few reminders about hy-
brid hearings.
For those members appearing in person, you will be able to see
members appearing remotely on the two monitors in front of you.
On one monitor, you will see all the members appearing remotely
at once in what is known in Zoom as gallery view.
On the other monitor, you will see each person speaking during
the hearing when they are speaking, including members who are
appearing remotely.
For those members appearing remotely, you can also see each
person speaking during the hearing, whether they are in person or
remote as long as you have your Zoom set to active speaker view.
If you have any questions about this, please contact committee staff
immediately.
Let me also remind everyone of the House procedures that apply
to hybrid hearings. For members appearing in person, a timer
[audio malfunction].
Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Chairman, are you still on the call?
Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. I also lost audio, so it’s not just you.
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, we can’t hear.
Mr. CLYBURN. OK. Did you hear that?
Mr. SCALISE. I hear that. I don’t see you, but I’m picking up your
audio.
Mr. CLYBURN. Was that the ranking member speaking?
Mr. SCALISE. Yes, this is Ranking Member Scalise.
Mr. CLYBURN. Can you hear me now?
Mr. SCALISE. We can hear you, we just can’t see you.
(1)
2

There we go, I can see you too. Hear you and see you now. Per-
fect.
Mr. CLYBURN. OK. I even see me. OK. Thank you for that.
Now, members who are not recognized should remain muted to
minimize background noise and feedback. I will recognize members
verbally, and members retain the right to seek recognition verbally.
In regular order, members will be recognized in seniority order for
questions.
If you are remote and want to be recognized outside of regular
order, you may identify that in several ways. You may use the chat
function to send the request, you may send an email to the major-
ity staff, or you may unmute your mic to seek recognition.
Obviously, we do not want people talking over each other, so my
preference is that members use the chat function or email to facili-
tate formal, verbal recognition. Committee staff will ensure that I
am made aware of the request, and I will recognize you.
Now, at the request of the House Recording Studio, I will count
down from ten, and the livestream will begin when I get down to
one. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Good afternoon. The committee will come to order. Without objec-
tion, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee
at any time. I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
The coronavirus wreaked havoc on our entire economy and much
of our work force. The harm, while broadly shared, fell dispropor-
tionately on the shoulders of women workers.
Women bear a disproportionate share of the care-giving respon-
sibilities in our country. Many more women than men are the ex-
clusive childcare providers for their households. And in households
where care responsibilities are shared, they are often shared un-
evenly.
As a result, when the pandemic disrupted normal life in 2020,
many working mothers were left unable to balance their jobs with
their increased responsibilities to take care of their children, ailing
parents, and others for whom they had taken on this essential
work.
During the early months of the crisis, women all over the country
are losing their jobs because of a lack of childcare and other care
assistance.
Women working low-wage jobs were hurt particularly hard.
Women in low-wage jobs are more likely to be the sole or primary
breadwinner for their household. This means they often must bal-
ance the burden of making sure their household has enough food
on the table, with the challenge of taking care of children or elderly
parents.
For these women, there is rarely a rainy day fund to fall back
on. Every day’s wages are necessary to make sure that they can
pay their rent and put enough food on the table.
Far too often these workers face the difficult choice of either tak-
ing care of a sick child or going to work, or to try to earn enough
to support their family.
These women also tend to have fewer guarantees of job security
or steady income from week to week. Low-wage jobs tend to have
higher turnover.
Excuse me. Will you please close that door? Thank you.
3

These workers are more likely to get fired, forced out, or volun-
tarily leave because the stress of balancing the job with other obli-
gations is simply too high.
Even when low-wage workers are able to remain on the job, the
precariousness of their employment takes a mental toll.
These jobs are also less likely to provide critical benefits, like
paid family and medical leave, and less scheduling security, or
flexibility, making it more difficult for workers to manage
caregiving responsibilities.
The select subcommittee has conducted a survey of 12 of the Na-
tion’s largest private sector companies that reportedly experienced
significant work force reductions during the crisis, to understand,
among other things, who was laid off, who got promoted, and who
may have been forced to leave the work force by other burdens.
Our analysis found that in 2020, women working in hourly posi-
tions experienced disproportionate harm compared to men working
in hourly positions at the same place of work when it came to
firings, layoffs, voluntary quits, changes in wages, and promotions.
Disproportionate harm exacerbated preexisting gender dispari-
ties, further straining the families who rely on those women’s
wages to make ends meet.
Despite a record-setting 8.3 million jobs added to the work force
since President Biden took office, low-wage working women con-
tinue to face disproportionate challenges to participating in the
work force.
As of February, the female labor force had declined by 1.1 million
workers since the pandemic began. The economy will suffer lasting
consequences if women continue to face obstacles to full employ-
ment participation, too often forcing them to choose between caring
for a family member or going to work.
To build an equitable and thriving economy, we must take fur-
ther action to address underlying disparities and eliminate barriers
to work force participation.
We must ensure working women, especially low-wage women,
can support themselves and their families through times of per-
sonal or economic upheaval while remaining in the work force.
I would like to thank our witnesses for being with us today. I
look forward to hearing more about the challenges facing low-wage,
working women and what can be done to enable them to contribute
to our Nation’s economy to the best of their ability.
I now recognize the ranking member for his opening statement.
Mr. SCALISE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I’d like to also
thank our witnesses who are joining us today.
I think it’s obvious that the COVID lockdown policies that were
adopted harmed parents and kids disproportionately. As more time
passes, we see study after study confirming that tremendous dam-
age was done personally and emotionally and economically by these
lockdown policies, and much of it was entirely unscientific and un-
necessary.
Some states, mostly led by Democrat Governors, stayed in
lockdown for much longer than others, prolonging the pain and ex-
acerbating the damage. I wish we would’ve had this hearing much
earlier on the pandemic so maybe we could’ve learned how to pre-
4

vent some of the unnecessary harm that was inflicted on American
parents and kids.
But nonetheless, I’m glad we’re having it now so that Americans
can see how their policymakers failed them, and hopefully we, as
a country, can do better and not repeat the mistakes that were
made if another public health crisis actually hits.
In my opinion, one of the worst consequences from the pandemic
was the impact that school closures had on kids.
Mr. Chairman, I ask that you please hold a hearing on the topic
of the damage that was done to our young kids by these closures
of schools.
In fact, one of our witnesses, Mary Katharine Ham, is well
versed on this as a CNN contributor but also wrote an opinion
piece that I think would be a must-read for everybody. And the
opinion piece was, Democrats support for school closings comes
back to bite. And we’ll hear from her later.
But multiple studies have been released that compare test scores
of kids, based on how much time they spent with remote learning,
compared to those whose schools provided in-classroom learning.
The numbers are heartbreaking.
And this isn’t new, we’ve talked about this, myself, many of the
other Republicans on this subcommittee have highlighted this over
and over again, pleading that we get our schools open, when we
saw the Biden administration manipulating the science to side with
union bosses against our students.
A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research
found that student pass rates declined dramatically in districts
with fewer days of in-person instruction. The researchers found,
and I quote, passing rates in math declined by 14.2 percentage
points on average. We estimate this decline was 10.1 percentage
points smaller for districts fully in person.
Changes in English language, art scores were smaller, but were
significantly larger in districts with larger populations of students
who are Black, Hispanic, or eligible for free and reduced-price
lunch, close quote.
New evidence also proves exactly what we suggested would hap-
pen, low-income students were hit the hardest by this policy fail-
ure. According to a recent Harvard study, low-income kids had
more remote learning, and high-poverty kids were impacted the
most.
The study found that, quote, within school districts that were re-
mote for most of 2020 and 2021, high-poverty schools experienced
50 percent more achievement loss than low-poverty schools.
In contrast, math achievement gaps did not widen in areas that
remained in person.
A co-author of the Harvard study told a New York Times reporter
that, quote, this will probably be the largest increase in educational
inequity in a generation.
The New York Times article goes on to explain, quote, there are
two main reasons. First, schools with large numbers of poor stu-
dents were more likely to go remote. Why? Many of these schools
are in major cities which tend to be run by Democrat officials, and
Republicans were generally quicker to reopen schools.
5

This is The New York Times article. This isn’t me here. This is
The New York Times article. I’ll say that again. Why? Many of
these schools are in major cities which tend to be run by Demo-
cratic officials, and Republicans were generally quicker to reopen
schools.
High-poverty schools are also more likely to have unionized
teachers, and some unions lobbied for remote schooling. That was
The New York Times.
And finally, The New York Times says, second, low-income stu-
dents tended to face even—to fare even worse when schools went
remote.
So, Mr. Chairman, that was a headline from The New York
Times, which is not exactly a conservative publication. Look at the
devastating impact on our next generation caused by Democrat
leaders joining forces with union bosses to play politics with public
health.
These little kids are probably going to struggle academically for
years to come because of the overbearing and scientifically mis-
guided Democrat lockdown policies. This did not have to happen.
By the summer and fall of 2020, the risks of keeping schools
closed were well documented, as well as the roadmap for how to
reopen them as safely as possible.
Yet even as teachers were prioritized for vaccines, some refused
to return to the classroom and under the Biden administration, the
CDC went so far as to allow high profile union bosses to rewrite
the administration’s school reopening guidance to make it easier to
keep schools closed. We’ve, of course, talked about this at multiple
hearings too.
I want to remind everyone that in the summer of 2020, Repub-
licans, along with Donald Trump and CDC Director Redfield, were
urging schools to reopen. Democrats chose union bosses over chil-
dren. To me, that is unforgivable.
It’s past time for Democrats to take responsibility for the devas-
tation that they caused and finally to start working with us to fix
it.
But instead of holding a hearing on this incredibly important
topic, we are having a hearing today with a thinly veiled agenda
to push for failed inflation-inducing policies like a new minimum
wage and government subsidies for paid leave and childcare at a
time when people are struggling to find workers. And pay is higher
than we’ve seen it in a long time.
Of course not only would these policies worsen inflation, the big-
gest burden on American families right now, but they would also
have zero support for Republicans and even lack of support from
Democrats. There are a number of Democrats who oppose this, be-
cause if this was something that was whole-scale supported, it
would’ve already passed in an overwhelmingly Democrat House,
Senate, with the White House. And it didn’t pass.
Mr. Chairman, I again ask that you please hold a hearing on the
devastating impact of school closures, so that we can learn from
these grave mistakes that were made and finally start holding the
union bosses, and those in the Biden administration who did this,
accountable.
Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.
6

Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the ranking member. We are going to—
I’m really tempted, as you can imagine, to respond, but I’m not
going to respond today. I’m going to move on with this hearing, be-
cause I expect for us to get a lot of good ideas today as of what
to do going forward. I would hope we won’t spend all our time
today talking about yesterday. I’m concerned about tomorrow and
the day after.
And with that, I would like to introduce our distinguished wit-
nesses. Vicki Shabo is a senior fellow for paid leave policy and
strategy at New America’s Better Life Lab, where she works closely
with policymakers, researchers, advocates, and business leaders on
policy design and strategies to advance paid family and medical
leave for workers.
Ms. Shabo has advocated for policies that would advance gender
equity in the workplace for over a decade and has spent years re-
searching and speaking about paid medical and family leave at the
Federal and state levels.
Cynthia Murray is a fitting department advocate—or associate at
Walmart of Laurel, Maryland, where she has worked for 21 years,
while raising two children and a grandchild. Ms. Murray has expe-
rienced firsthand the challenges faced by women in positions pay-
ing low hourly wages, given minimal scheduling flexibility, and
only provided limited benefits.
Ms. Murray is also founding member and board member of
United for Respect which fights every day for dignity and respect
for workers across the country.
Dr. Nicole Mason is president of the Institute for Women’s Policy
Research. Dr. Mason is one of the Nation’s foremost researchers on
issues of women’s work force participation, job security, and eco-
nomic well-being.
One of the few women of color to lead a major D.C. think-tank,
Dr. Mason coined the term ‘‘she-cession’’ at the start of the
coronavirus crisis, to describe the disproportionate impact of the
pandemic’s employment and income losses on women.
Dr. Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a professor at Rutgers Uni-
versity’s labor studies department, where she conducts research on
women’s labor and market status.
Dr. Rodgers also serves as a faculty director for its Center For
Women and Work, which focuses on promoting economic and social
equity for women workers, their families, and their communities.
A scholar with three decades of experience, studying women’s
work and well-being, Dr. Rodgers has consulted for the World
Bank, the United Nations, and the Asian Development Bank, and
served as the president of the International Association For Femi-
nists Economists.
Mary Katharine Ham is a CNN political commentator and co-
host of the parenting podcast, Getting Hammered.
Will the witnesses who are present please stand, and will all the
witnesses please raise your right hands. Do you swear or affirm
that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
You may be seated.
Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the affirma-
tive.
7

Without objection, your written statements will be made part of
the record. Ms. Shabo, you are recognized for five minutes for your
opening statement, and if I’ve messed up your name, you may cor-
rect me.
STATEMENT OF VICKI SHABO, SENIOR FELLOW, PAID LEAVE
POLICY AND STRATEGY, BETTER LIFE LAB, NEW AMERICA
Ms. SHABO. That’s fine. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. My
name is Vicki Shabo, and I’m a senior fellow at New America, and
I want to thank you for holding a hearing on this important topic.
Yesterday we marked 1 million lives lost. Though the economy
is strong overall, millions of families are still in crisis. At the begin-
ning of the pandemic, Congress invested in paid sick time and
childcare, and this made a big difference. But now most relief has
ended, and despite the house Democrats passage of the Build Back
Better Act, Federal policymaking is now stalled.
Inaction poses grave risk with respect to women, work, and care.
Women have borne the brunt of the last two years. For Black,
Latina and immigrant women, the pandemic has been particularly
challenging, and for women who are paid less than $15 an hour,
it has been brutal.
According to research by the National Women’s Law Center,
among low-paid women workers, 41 percent say they have lost or
quit a job. Nearly half report having their hours cut. Nearly 3 in
10 also have caregiving responsibilities for an older or disabled
family member. And yet less than one-fifth low-paid women work-
ers have paid sick time, paid family and medical leave, or even
paid vacation time to care.
The U.S. work force is still missing nearly 1 million women, dis-
proportionately Black and Latina women, and too often work and
care are incompatible, which is why women with caregiving respon-
sibilities were more likely to exit the work force.
Pundits and business leaders often speak of a labor force short-
age, but what we really have is a shortage of policies, practices,
and supports. This deficit forces too many people into impossible
situations at high costs to their economic security and health, to
businesses, and the economy.
So, let me talk briefly about four things we must do, all of which
are not only good for workers and families but also are proven to
boost labor force participation, help businesses, and respond to the
inflationary pressures that we’re hearing so much about these
days.
So, first, paid sick time. To stay safe and healthy at work, people
must have paid sick days. Even the limited temporary intervention
Congress enacted early in the pandemic, through 2020, prevented
an estimated 15,000 cases of COVID per day nationwide.
To be frank, we haven’t seen the private sector step up, large
companies that weren’t covered by that emergency-paid-sick-days
requirement. Some provided COVID-specific paid sick time early
on, but many didn’t, and put hurdles in place that could make
using sick time very difficult.
And as the pandemic has continued, large profitable companies
that offered COVID paid sick leave has cut it back—have cut it
back just as Omicron surged.
8

And now with another wave rolling through and more predicted
to follow, Amazon announced that it is eliminating COVID emer-
gency paid sick time entirely, leaving workers with just five days
per year, for all COVID and non-COVID purposes.
And these workers are lucky. About half of service sector workers
don’t have any paid sick days at all.
We can’t answer an endemic new normal without paid sick days
as a public health mitigation and preventive health strategy. This
isn’t a nice-to-have, this is a must-do.
Second, paid family and medical leave. The pandemic also
showed that access to paid leave for more serious personal or fam-
ily health issues, or to allow parents to care for a new child, is es-
sential. Paid leave has important economic and health benefits for
workers, children, people in need of care, and families, as well as
benefits for business.
And again, here the market, the private sector, has fallen short.
Just 23 percent of private sector workers have paid family leave
through their jobs, and the highest paid workers are seven times
more likely to have paid family leave than the lowest paid. But
even 60 percent of the highest paid don’t have paid family leave.
For workers in the service sector, there’s a significant unmet
need. Only half of all service sector workers and just 37 percent of
Black service sector workers took a leave that they needed. The in-
ability to pay bills, the risks of losing jobs and health insurance
loomed large.
A national paid leave policy is long overdue. It helps families af-
ford the income shock of missed weeks of work, which is especially
important in a period of high inflation. It saves lives, support jobs,
yields cost savings, and boosts the economy.
Next, childcare. Workers’ loss of access to childcare was perhaps
the most acute barrier to work for parents during the pandemic.
McKinsey reports that 45 percent of women who left the work force
cited childcare as one of the reasons, compared to 14 percent of
men.
And even before the pandemic, access to childcare was chal-
lenging. About half of the population lived in childcare deserts, and
now it’s even worse, with 9 to 10 percent of childcare program
spaces having been lost.
Cost is also a significant barrier, and for low-income families
with children under five, childcare expenses are 35 percent of their
income.
The cost of childcare inflation exceeded annual inflation by four
percent in 2020. Doing nothing on childcare at this moment is un-
acceptable. It’s essentially telling tens of thousands of childcare
providers, millions of parents, and millions of workers who lost jobs
in this sector that their work and their interests don’t matter.
It’s depriving businesses of workers, and it’s depriving the econ-
omy of a source of strength.
And briefly, scheduling predictably and flexibility in notice.
Knowing when, where, and for how long one will work is key to
planning our lives.
Yet too many service sector workers, especially people of color,
face short notice about shifts, canceled shifts, expectation of on-call
work, and more.
9

Shift Project research shows that the pandemic did nothing to
improve these practices.
So in conclusion, more than any other moment in modern his-
tory, the coronavirus crisis has revealed the ways in which our cur-
rent practices, systems, and policies fail workers, families, busi-
nesses, and the economy.
Inequalities by gender, race, and income have widened, particu-
larly when it comes to people’s ability to work and care. The cur-
rent moment of gridlock and inaction is untenable in the short-
term and will cause significant harm and danger and loss in the
longer term. And we can’t wait another moment for change. Thank
you, and I look forward to answering your questions.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much.
We will now hear from Ms. Murray.
Ms. Murray, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA MURRAY, FITTING DEPARTMENT
ASSOCIATE, WALMART
Ms. MURRAY. Good afternoon, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Mem-
ber Scalise, and members of the House Subcommittee on the
Coronavirus Crisis. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Cynthia Murray, and I have been a Walmart asso-
ciate for 21 years. I work at a store not far from where you’re sit-
ting today, just 20 miles away in Laurel, Maryland.
I’m here today on behalf of all retail workers who have been on
the front lines keeping our country running during this pandemic.
In the beginning, we were dubbed essential but treated as expend-
able.
Since the onset of the pandemic two years ago, large corporations
like Walmart and Amazon have made historic profits at our ex-
pense, at the expense of our health, our families’ health, and in
many cases, our lives.
In return, we’ve seen little to no increase in wages, had to fight
for basic protections, and are still dealing with inadequate paid
leave and unpredictable scheduling that affects our work-life bal-
ance.
It took two decades at Walmart before I made even $15 an hour.
Even though I risked my safety and my son’s safety day in and day
out to keep my store running, Walmart is the largest private em-
ployer of American women and people of color in the country. And
our fight for dignity has been going on since well before the pan-
demic.
As a founding member of United for Respect, I’ve been a huge
part of our fight for respect at work since our founding in 2010.
Next month, I will bring a resolution to Walmart shareholders that
will create a first-ever National Pandemic Advisory Task Force at
Walmart, made up of associates like me.
I’m doing this because we can’t afford to wait for change. My fel-
low workers are suffering. Workers like Janikka Perry, who was a
Walmart associate in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Janikka clocked in for her shift on January 16. She felt sick that
day but knew that calling in would likely result in retaliation, or
worse, termination. Janikka finished her shift feeling ill and then
went into the bathroom.
10

Paramedics found her unconscious on Walmart’s bathroom floor
two hours later. She was pronounced dead that night. She was only
38 years old.
And Walmart isn’t the only company sacrificing people for profit.
At Amazon, the COVID–19 pandemic resulted in rapid growth, ex-
pansion in profits, but it’s been a very different story for the work-
ers who made that success possible.
Workers battled illness, injuries, and unpredictable schedules.
Thousands of workers contracted COVID–19, and many tragically
passed away.
Amazon was accused of concealing cases from workers and
health agencies and retaliating against employees that advocated
for their safety.
Amazon workers work in a high-tech sweatshop. Workers like
Courtenay Brown and Daniel O., from the moment customers click
the purchase button until the second the product reaches their
home, Amazon workers like Daniel and Courtenay are monitored,
timed, and punished if they don’t meet super human standards for
fulfilling orders.
These dangerous practices create high levels of stress, anxiety,
and depression among workers, and injuries that are more frequent
and more severe than at competing businesses.
Daniel will make history this month by presenting a resolution
to Amazon shareholders to end the punishing quotas and surveil-
lance that drive Amazon’s injuries.
I’m also testifying for workers at PetSmart, owned by the private
equity firm BC Partners, workers like Isabella Burrows who strug-
gles on just $14 an hour and knows the emotional difficulty of try-
ing to take care of sick animals while the store is understaffed.
Isabella just wants to receive the support, policies, and pay she
needs to succeed at her job she loves.
I’m urging you today to act on behalf of workers like myself, like
Janikka, like Courtenay, like Daniel, and like Isabella.
We are looking to you to move crucial policies that give us the
time off, the dignity we deserve, like the Healthy Families Act, the
Part-Time Worker Bill of Rights, and the Schedules That Work Act,
just a few to name.
Thank you again for your time.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much, Ms. Murray.
We will now hear from Dr. Mason.
Dr. Mason, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. C. NICOLE MASON, PRESIDENT & CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN’S POLICY RE-
SEARCH
Ms. MASON. Good afternoon, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Mem-
ber Scalise, and members of the subcommittee.
My name is Dr. C. Nicole Mason, and I’m the President of the
Institute for Women’s Policy Research, an economic think tank fo-
cused on women’s economic security and understanding women’s
labor force participation.
I thank you for the invitation to testify today about the long-term
impact on the pandemic on women and how we might chart a path
forward toward a full and equitable recovery for those most im-
11

pacted by job and income losses; specifically, women of color and
lower-wage workers.
I ask that my written testimony be submitted for the record.
Two years ago this month, the national unemployment rate was
13.3 percent, and the number of unemployed persons was 21 mil-
lion. For women, the unemployment rate was 17.8 percent.
During the early months of the pandemic, women lost four times
as many jobs as men, triggering a she-cession, an economic down-
turn defined by income and job losses in sectors dominated by
women—service, leisure and hospitality, education, and healthcare.
To put this in perspective, at the start of 2020, we were cele-
brating the gains made by women in the work force. At that time,
women made up 51 percent of the labor force. This is no longer the
case.
In April 2022—2022, 180,000 women left the labor force, com-
pared to 131,000 men, and there are still close to 1 million fewer
women than men working or actively seeking a new job in Feb-
ruary 2020.
While the national unemployment rate has dropped significantly
to 3.6 percent, the unemployment rate for Black and Latina women
is still 1.8 and 1.4 times higher than the unemployment rate of
White women.
The pandemic has also exacerbated and deepened many of the
existing inequalities and disparities in our society—health, income,
racial—and exposed the many—that many of our systems are fail-
ing women and families.
Prior to the pandemic, many women, especially those in the
hardest-hit sectors, did not have health insurance, paid family and
sick leave, job security, predictable scheduling, or flexibility. Many
women had to choose between their pay or coming to work sick, or
fear losing their job for taking care of themselves or their loved
ones.
Now, two years into the pandemic in terms of women’s mental
health and economic well-being, one in four women report their
families are worse off financially than they were a year ago, and
almost one half are either very worried or somewhat worried about
whether or not their total family income is enough to pay their
bills.
Now, as women begin to return to the work force, we are seeing
disparities between the policies women need to succeed and what
is being offered by employers. In a recent IWPR survey of women
workers and the future of work, we found there is a gap between
the women—the benefits women desire, such as paid leave, health
insurance, and fair compensation, and what—what employers cur-
rently offer.
For women reentering the work force, a living wage and health
insurance are the top two desired benefits, followed by retirement
benefits and job security. Paid vacation, family and sick leave are
also top consideration. But at least one in three women workers
say they lack these critical benefits, including paid leave, health in-
surance, or job security. And more than 75 percent of women sur-
veyed said these benefits in particular are very important, or im-
portant when considering future job opportunities.
12

Prior to the pandemic, we did see some progress in terms of the
enactment of policy—workplace—workforce policies that helped to
facilitate women’s participation in our economy at the state and
local level, but the pandemic all but wiped out those gains.
It also bought into sharp relief the fundamental needs of women
in today’s work force, comprehensive paid leave and childcare poli-
cies, so women can take care of their families and pursue their edu-
cation and/or professional careers.
In this moment, we have an opportunity to address these issues
head-on. We can advance policies and programs, many that have
been mentioned by my—by the other witnesses, at the Federal and
state levels and in our workplaces to support women’s reentry into
the work force and their career advancement. We can also fix the
systems that weren’t working for women, families, and workers be-
fore the pandemic, while creating the post-pandemic policies and
structures to build a fair and equitable economy for all.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much, Dr. Mason.
We will now hear from Ms. Ham.
Ms. Ham, you are recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN COMMENTATOR
AND AUTHOR
Ms. HAM. I am here as a couple of things. I’m a mom of three
girls. I am a commentator and public figure, and I’m someone who
watched, wrote about, and worked with a generation of parents,
particularly moms, as they fought tooth and nail for months on end
to get access to one of the most basic legally required public goods
there is: School.
In 2020, American mothers were called upon to parent in crisis.
One day in March, I was a newly married working mom of two
with a first grader in my local public school. By Friday of that
same week, the school we walked half a mile to was closed. It did
not reopen its doors for more than a year.
My life changed. My career shifted. I was one of the lucky ones.
One of the reasons I’m interested in this issue is because I know
it was harder for other people. Had this happened when I was a
single mom, I don’t know what I would have done.
Sometimes people don’t believe me when I tell them the schools
were closed for a year. If you didn’t see it up close, it seems absurd,
impossible even, but more than 6 million students in this country,
mostly concentrated in America’s bluest metro areas and their sub-
urbs, where I live, were deprived of in-person instruction for more
than a year. They got the worst of it, but some 30 percent of Amer-
ican students missed more than four months of school. That’s an-
other 15 million kids. Imagine how many moms.
The length and breadth of school closings are important to re-
member because, as you might imagine, functioning schools are
pretty important to the participation of moms in the workplace.
You guys have mentioned all the inequities. I have no quibble with
them at all.
According to a Brookings publication, between February and Au-
gust 2020, mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost 2.2
million jobs, compared to 870,000 among fathers. In the month of
13

September 2020 alone, 1 million people left the work force, and 80
percent of them were women.
The month is not a coincidence. September 2020 was the month
that women had to make or break. They had to make the decision
whether they were going to stay home with their kids when schools
did not open or go back to work.
Their jobs—this pandemic had a way of exacerbating many of the
issues we had before the pandemic, as my fellow panelists have
pointed out. Women did more caregiving and housekeeping at the
home. They did more once they had to be Zoom butlers for their
children.
Childcare was expensive and hard to come by for young children
before the pandemic. It became worse as daycares closed in many
states and large cities obliterated the one stable source for older
children as schools shut down for the foreseeable future.
This remains important because those schools, particularly the
ones who shut down for the longest periods of time, remain incred-
ibly unstable and not reliable as a source of putting your kid in an
educational space due to quarantines and all sorts of other things.
Normalcy has not returned.
While private schools functioned with safety and success just
blocks from shuttered public schools, children most in need of both
structure and education public schools formerly offered languished
in virtual school. You heard about some of the results of that, and
I will not belabor them. But the bad effects are compounding as
those kids who missed most school have both emotional and aca-
demic tolls that make school harder on students, teachers, and par-
ents alike. It did not have to happen, and we need to account for
it.
In American cities, while children weren’t getting an education,
their moms were. They learned about teachers unions, that their
first priority wasn’t necessarily students. They learned how to
FOIA. They learned that, if they asked for the public good that
unions and school boards claim to value, they’d be accused of being
racist, no matter how diverse their coalition was, or wanting to sac-
rifice children. They learned occasionally Federal law enforcement
might look into them for the sin of attending and speaking at
school board meetings. One Alexandria, Virginia school board offi-
cial asked parents if they’d like their children to be alive or edu-
cated.
A friend of mine who advocated for children with disabilities to
get their legally required aides was told by a school official she just
wanted her brunches back.
Some moms learned they could be swing voters, something they
never imagined, which certainly fueled the win of Republican Gov-
ernor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia, who made concentrated appeals
to frustrated parents.
The political part of this is not—I don’t intend to use it as a ca-
jole, but it’s important to understand because there is a trust issue
here. Democrats have lost a 15-to 20-point lead on the issue of edu-
cation in the last two years that existed perennially for 20 years
before that, because of alignment with teachers unions and because
of support for vast spending on education. But it’s gone.
14

And so, when we talk about structural change to help moms, we
have to account for the fact that they were failed dramatically by
bureaucratic debacles, politics, in the public good closest to their
homes and most important to them. Many of them have looked
elsewhere for solutions.
And I would just say, if we want to make structural change that
makes life easier for working moms—and we should—we should
note that 5 trillion has been out the door, and still the most per-
sistent structural change is that these folks don’t have a public
school to send their kids to, in many cases, on a reliable basis.
If we wanted to come up with creative solutions and apply them
to this generational problem, we need to earn that trust back by
acknowledging it.
Mr. CLYBURN. Well, thank you very much.
Ms. HAM. Sure.
Mr. CLYBURN. The chair now recognizes Dr. Rodgers for five min-
utes.
STATEMENT OF DR. YANA VAN DER MEULEN RODGERS, PRO-
FESSOR OF LABOR STUDIES AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS,
FACULTY DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR WOMEN AND WORK, ON
BEHALF OF RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Ms. RODGERS. Thank you.
Chair Clyburn, Ranking Member Scalise, and distinguished
members of the committee, thank you for this invitation to address
the issue of low-income women’s experiences and gender disparities
in the pandemic economy. As a labor economist, I’ve spent the past
three decades studying women and work, and I now serve as the
faculty director of a university research center that focuses on
women and work.
In terms of women’s work during the pandemic, we’ve already
heard some of the statistics from Dr. Mason. Women were more se-
verely hit in terms of higher unemployment rates, and disparities
were even worse for women of color.
The gender wage gap overall remained about the same, but gen-
der pay inequities worsened for Hispanic and Black women during
the pandemic. Women were also disproportionately represented
among frontline workers. Overall, 64 percent of frontline workers
during the pandemic were women. And frontline workers were
overrepresented by Black workers and Hispanic workers. And, as
we heard from Cynthia Murray, they experienced a number of
hardships. They were also more—less likely to be covered by health
insurance, and they earned less on average than those working in
nonessential industries, meaning their safety nets were especially
weak if they were to contract COVID.
Men and women both allocated more time toward childcare and
household chores during the pandemic, but the research does show
overwhelmingly that women’s workloads increased relatively more.
At the national level, in the spring of 2021, about 6.5 million
families with children reported experiencing childcare disruptions,
and research by my center at Rutgers shows that, specifically in
New Jersey, 21 percent of low-income parents indicated that they
had to cut their work hours because of childcare disruptions. And
another 23 percent indicated that someone left or lost their job as
15

a result of childcare—the childcare crisis. That was low-income
parents. These percentages were much lower for high-income fami-
lies; only about 7 or 8 percent indicated these kind of losses.
Now, as Chairman Clyburn said, we do need to look forward at
a host of policies that can support low-income workers, and first is
that the Federal Government can help to incentivize employers to
provide employment policies in the private sector that support and
retain women, especially in the area of work-life balance, but also
to develop resources, remove bias, and eliminate sexual harass-
ment.
In addition, the government needs to work with employers to do
more to help workers with unstable schedules. Scheduling insta-
bility leads to economic hardship because of limited opportunity for
career growth and fluctuating paychecks. There is also evidence
that scheduling practices have a role in perpetuating racial in-
equality.
The public sector needs to do a lot to support low-wage working
parents. First and foremost is to develop national legislation that
values care. Priorities for strengthening the care infrastructure in-
clude providing paid family leave and paid sick leave, creating uni-
versal free childcare and long-term eldercare, boosting pay inequity
and job creation in nursing, and improving working conditions and
pay for paid care providers. Investing in the care infrastructure can
grow employment and reduce women’s unpaid work burdens.
In addition, one of the most important policy levers for helping
low-income workers is the minimum wage. Women are more clus-
tered than men in low-wage jobs, so raising the minimum wage
will help to close the overall male-female wage gap, as well as the
racial and ethnic wage gaps. The Federal minimum wage is just
$7.25 per hour, which is not considered a living wage in most parts
of the country. A number of states and localities have raised their
minimum wages, and it’s time for the Federal Government to fol-
low suit.
The research shows that minimum wage hikes do not lead to big
layoffs or to higher inflation. So overall, in summary, the best way
for the government to shore up a supportive work environment in
the future is to develop national legislation that values care, raise
the minimum wage, and incentivize employers to adopt workplace
policies that recognize the domestic responsibilities of their employ-
ees.
Thank you.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much, Dr. Rodgers. And thanks
to all of you for your statements today.
And we will now move into a period of questions. And the chair
recognizes himself for five minutes, and I think I will get to a ques-
tion. But I must make a statement.
Today is May 17. It may not mean anything to anybody in the
room but me, but it was 68 years ago today—I remember exactly
where I was—when the Supreme Court handed down its 1954
Brown decision. Sixty-eight years ago today.
Now, I could spend the rest of my life talking about what hap-
pened before Brown, and all of us can spend the rest of our lives
talking about what happened before COVID–19, or we can spend
a little time trying to figure out how best to move forward from
16

whatever mistakes may have been made, whoever may have made
them, or we can spend a lot of time assigning blame.
I would hope that, after listening to these statements here today,
that we can come up with some recommendations that this com-
mittee can hopefully get the entire Congress to respond to so that
we can do something about going forward. I was attending triple-
shift school—not double shift, but triple shift—when that decision
came down. But I have not spent all my life worrying about that.
I’m trying to see what we can do going forward.
And so I’m going to ask this question. Ms. Murray, you work at
a Wal-Mart. You shared with us some dramatic—two dramatic sit-
uations involving your fellow employees.
What would you suggest we do going forward?
Ms. MURRAY. We need quite a few things to move forward. One,
we need to put in place for workers to have paid sick time off. We
need to stop pushing workers to come to work sick because they get
penalized for missing a day. That is one thing that we need—we
need definitely in our country right now.
We need better healthcare for workers that work the hours that
they work, and childcare. We need to do a whole lot better for our
working mothers that have to take time off when they’re sick, and
then they become sick.
So, our policies overall have to change with our companies. Our
companies have to stop pointing out our workers. Our pay has to
become better for each and every one of us.
Thank you.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you.
Ms. Shabo, would you have some answers to the problems just
expressed by Ms. Murray?
Ms. SHABO. Absolutely. I mean, the situations that Ms. Murray
described are horrible, and they’re not unique. And we know that,
when workers have access to paid sick time, they are more likely
to take themselves out of the work force for a shorter period of
time. They’re more likely to get healthcare that they need in an
acute way. They’re more likely to get preventive healthcare. People
are healthier. Contagions spreads less.
As I said, even the limited temporary policy that Congress put
in place on a bipartisan basis at the beginning of this pandemic
prevented 15,000 cases of COVID per day nationwide. And, if that
policy had been expanded to businesses of all sizes, if the Depart-
ment of Labor had enforced it, if the regulations that had been
written had not been circumscribed, we would have been in a much
different place.
And, if workers had had paid sick time without being penalized,
we could have had a shorter pandemic, which would have actually
produced better results for the country overall.
Mr. CLYBURN. So——
Ms. SHABO. We also do need child—I mean, childcare is a huge
problem. It’s something we have to do something about. It’s some-
thing we needed to do before. Paid family and medical leave has
long been an issue. Fair schedules, entirely beneficial to workers
and to businesses, and yet we keep perpetuating these policies that
hold people back.
17

Mr. CLYBURN. Dr. Mason, I’m interested in what your research
may have found regarding this issue.
Ms. MASON. Much of our research supports what Vicki has said
about the impact of the lack of paid sick leave on workers and the
need for us to have and pass paid sick and family leave at the Fed-
eral level.
What we’ve found during the pandemic and some other of my col-
leagues pointed out that, because of the lack of childcare, because
of the overrepresentation of women of color in the hardest hit sec-
tors, what—they suffered disproportionately during the pandemic.
And so, when we look at policies that we will need, it’s paid sick
and family leave, it’s health insurance, but it’s also raising the
minimum wage, because you noted yourself that, before the pan-
demic and during the pandemic, many of these women were hang-
ing on by a thread economically, and the pandemic exacerbated
their economic vulnerability.
So, in this moment, we’ve learned so much over the last two
years, and we have an obligation to workers and to families to get
it right this time around and create policies that are equitable, fair,
and that move us toward our goal—I believe our shared goal of eco-
nomic prosperity for all.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much.
The chair now recognizes—I think the ranking member—Mr.
Jordan, you are now recognized.
Mr. JORDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. CLYBURN. I’m going to give you six minutes.
Mr. JORDAN. That’s fine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Ham, has the Biden administration—has the Biden adminis-
tration done anything right?
Ms. HAM. On the issue of schools, they have——
Mr. JORDAN. Well, I’m saying in general.
Ms. HAM. In general?
Mr. JORDAN. I mean, seven out of ten Americans think the coun-
try—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen wrong track numbers this high.
Seven out of ten of our fellow citizens think——
Ms. HAM. I mean——
Mr. JORDAN [continuing]. this country is on the wrong track.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. they’re pretty bad, which is one of the rea-
sons I speak about this issue and bring the political part of it to
bear, because great confidence has been lost in this particular de-
mographic, with really good reason.
Mr. JORDAN. Yep. You’re——
Ms. HAM. In order to improve one’s political fortunes, one needs
to recognize that that happened.
Mr. JORDAN. Now, you said you’re a mom with, I think, two chil-
dren. Is that right?
Ms. HAM. Three kids.
Mr. JORDAN. Three kids? Mom with three kids. Everything costs
more? Everything costs more today?
Ms. HAM. Yes, that’s correct.
Mr. JORDAN. Clothes cost more for your kids, food costs more, gas
to take them to soccer practice, band practice, whatever your kids
are involved in. That probably costs more, too, right?
Ms. HAM. That’s correct.
18

Mr. JORDAN. Yes. And, if you’re a mom who needs baby formula,
that costs more, too, if you can even find it. I mean, everything
costs more, right?
Ms. HAM. It—yes. If you can find it, which is another grave issue
for many moms. And I would say, on the of issue of the—of eco-
nomic issues and inflation, just like with the school stuff, the rea-
son I care about these things is because, if it is hurting me, I know
that it is hurting other people——
Mr. JORDAN. Yes.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. far more, because I have some amazing
things in my employment. I have some flexibility. I don’t have some
of the things that you guys have mentioned, but I have some flexi-
bility. I have abilities to work around this. I have the ability to
teach my kids at home. I opened up my home to other people’s fam-
ilies who did not have that ability——
Mr. JORDAN. Yep.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. because I knew that these trends were
hurting other people who did not have the resources I had far
worse than they were hurting me. And I deeply want those to be
acknowledged and dealt with before we move to the solution, be-
cause the problem must be acknowledged before we move to the so-
lution.
Mr. JORDAN. Well said. And let’s talk about some of those people
who were directly impacted in a much worse way than you.
Everything costs more today. They kept your kids out of school,
I think you said for a year. But more than—for more than 6 million
students in the country, mostly concentrated in America’s bluest
metro areas—I’m reading from your testimony—they were deprived
of in-person instruction for more than a year. They got the worst
of it.
But some 30 percent of American students missed four months.
That’s another 15—21 million kids missed 30 percent or more of
their education.
So, everything costs more. They kept your kids out of school. And
here is the thing that gets me. If you are a mom who showed up
at a school board meeting to speak out against some of the things
that were being done to your son or daughter, you might have been
targeted by the Justice Department. I mean, I think you mentioned
in your opening testimony, the election in Virginia, Mr. Youngkin,
it was a huge issue last fall. But I’ve never seen anything like this.
We had whistleblowers come forward, over two dozen cases
where this threat tag designation that Mr. Garland put in place,
this apparatus and process he put in place. So, they keep your kids
out of school. Everything now costs more for a mom, for a dad. And,
if you go show up at a school board meeting to speak out against
some of the things they’re doing with your kids’ education, oh, my
goodness, you may get investigated by the FBI. Such a deal for the
tax-paying moms of this country.
Ms. HAM. Yes, it’s a problem, because—and, again, the reason I
talk about this as often as I do is because a lot of families were
hurt who have far more—fewer resources than I do. And, when
they had the temerity to go before their public servants and ask
for the public good, to which they are entitled and for which they
paid the same amount of taxes, even when it did not exist, they
19

were pilloried, and, in fact, sometimes targeted by Federal law en-
forcement, which is a very, very big deal.
Mr. JORDAN. Now, Ms. Ham, you’re a journalist, right?
Ms. HAM. Yes, I am.
Mr. JORDAN. And who do you work for?
Ms. HAM. CNN.
Mr. JORDAN. You work for CNN?
Ms. HAM. And I freelance various other places. I’ve written for
The Atlantic and——
Mr. JORDAN. So, I just want to walk you through real quick, be-
cause I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. September 29,
the last year, the National School Board Association sends a letter
to the Biden administration saying, Use domestic terrorism acts
and laws and statutes, the PATRIOT Act, to go after moms and
dads.
Five days later, the Attorney General of the United States issues
a memorandum where he actually puts in place a process—an ap-
paratus to do just that. He sets up a—what he called a dedicated
line of threat communication, what I would call a snitch line, so
people could snitch on their fellow citizens who were showing up
at these school board meetings.
And then, 16 days after that, the F—and he sends that memo-
randum, by the way, to every U.S. attorney in the country. And
then, 16 days later, the FBI sends out an email to FBI agents
around the Nation. And, as I said, we learned from whistleblowers
that they used that apparatus to go after moms and dads.
So, from September 29th to October 20th, they put this in place.
First thing I always say is I’ve never seen the Federal Government
move that fast on anything. But, when it comes to chilling moms’
and dads’ speech, oh, my goodness, they can operate at record
speed. That is frightening.
And as a journalist, I would think—and as a mom, you would say
the same. Is that correct?
Ms. HAM. Yes. And, by the way, the sort of exodus from the Na-
tional School Board Association by local school boards shows—and
some——
Mr. JORDAN. And——
Ms. HAM [continuing]. State school boards shows that——
Mr. JORDAN. State of Ohio got out of it.
Ms. HAM. Yes. Shows that this was a—this was a misstep, and
it became very public. And it is a betrayal of parents, who have the
right to speak to their public servants—and, by the way, we’re
barred from doing so for much of the pandemic because they were
not allowed to be in person, just like their children were not al-
lowed to be in person.
And I also, as a free-speech enthusiast, would love—love for peo-
ple—parents who disagree with me to speak——
Mr. JORDAN. Sure.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. vociferously——
Mr. JORDAN. That’s called America. That’s called the First
Amendment.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. at all of these meetings as well. So, look,
it’s a problem. I think it, again, goes to the trust problem. And one
of the reasons that parents will look with a highly skeptical eye on
20

the next solution coming down the pike for them is because this
very basic service was taken away from them.
Mr. JORDAN. Yep.
Ms. HAM. And it was taken away from them in such a way that
it was very hard to address. They were left with, as you guys note,
very few safety nets in some cases. And they remain rightly skep-
tical that their local government or the Federal Government in
some cases is going to be able to step in and solve these problems.
So, I think it’s very important to look to the future. And one of
the things we need to recognize is that, in the present, many of
America’s metro area schools remain unstable for the very women
we’re talking about——
Mr. JORDAN. Yep.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. because their children have to quarantine
teen for 10 days because they saw a person at a soccer field that
had COVID.
Mr. JORDAN. I’m out of time, but I just want to get one more
question in if I could, Ms. Ham.
Do you support school choice?
Ms. HAM. I do.
Mr. JORDAN. God bless you. I do, too. And I don’t think—I don’t
think Americans should vote for any candidate for any office if
they’re not in favor of letting moms and dads decide where their
son or daughter is going to get the best education. That’s so funda-
mental.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you, Ms. Ham.
Mr. CLYBURN. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. Just keep
on living. You’ll see how fast the government can work. It worked
real fast before 1954.
With that, the chair recognizes Ms. Velázquez——
Mr. JORDAN. We’ll deal with that later.
Mr. CLYBURN [continuing]. For five minutes.
Ms. VELÁZQUEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Mason, women of color are overrepresented in the hospitality
and service sectors, which tend to feature lower pay and fewer ben-
efits. And these jobs saw some of the largest—saw some of the larg-
est dropoffs in employment during the pandemic.
Dr. Mason, what kinds of challenges have women of color, par-
ticularly those who work in low-wage jobs, faced in participating in
the work force during the pandemic?
Ms. MASON. So, thank you so much for this wonderful question,
and I also want to say that I appreciate Ms. Ham’s invocation of
her experience as a mother and navigating the pandemic. I do want
to say that I am, too, a mother, a single mother of 12.5-year-old
twins.
And the caregiving challenges for me was exacerbated by school
closures. And I understood that it was really important in this mo-
ment for us to really take the pandemic and its impact on—you
know, on the public health really, really seriously. And, for many
women of color, I was very fortunate to be able to work remotely.
For many of the workers that we’ve been talking about today, that
was not the case.
Many women of color, lower-wage workers, because of the lack of
paid sick and family leave and the fact that, in order to get paid,
21

you have to show up physically to a location, had to drop out of the
work force. And a lot of the conversation and narrative around who
was able to drop off—out of the work force left these women out
of that conversation.
But, in truth, Black and Latina women, because of caretaking re-
sponsibilities and demands, the lack of paid sick and family leave,
were more likely than other women to exit the work force.
And, as I said, many of these issues around workplace flexibility,
lack of paid sick leave, the high cost—high and exorbitant costs of
childcare, were issues for many women of color in the work force,
lower-wage workers. And the pandemic just exacerbated those chal-
lenges and that reality for many women.
And, when we look at the—even the policies that were passed to
stem the pandemic, many workers—immigrant workers and lower-
wage workers who worked at companies who were excluded from
providing paid sick leave, were women of color.
So, you know, I just want to say, in this moment, as we are
thinking about how we move forward, thinking about a comprehen-
sive package of policies that will improve the working conditions,
wages of lower-wage workers is what we need. The blame game
and looking at who is to blame for what happened during the pan-
demic is counterproductive and doesn’t get us to where we need to
be.
Ms. VELÁZQUEZ. Thank you.
Ms. MASON. All right.
Ms. VELÁZQUEZ. Thank you.
Ms. Shabo, while policies like paid leave will benefit women
greatly, these type of low-wages jobs are the least likely to provide
access to these benefits.
How have differences in access to benefits like paid leave im-
pacted the experiences of different segments of women workers?
Ms. SHABO. Thank you for the question, Ms. Velázquez.
We know from states that have paid family and medical leave
programs in place—and there are now 11 of them, plus D.C.—Dela-
ware just passed this past week, which is very exciting—we know
from states like California that are going on nearly 20 years of ex-
perience that women are better able to stay employed. They have
wages that go up over time.
The program has been particularly beneficial to Latina women,
who are able to take a longer leave, which means that they’re able
to care for their new children. We know that women who are care-
givers to older people or disabled adults are able to come back to
work.
These are prowork policies that support women. They support
families and the people who need care. They support businesses.
And, in fact, businesses in New York, your state, and New Jersey
became more favorable toward paid leave policies—public paid
leave policies during the pandemic. These are our win-win policies
for workers, businesses, families, and the economy overall.
And if I could just say one—one thing about this school closure.
I just want to point out that, actually, Democrats’ HEROES Act,
which was passed in July 2020, included $5 billion to upgrade
schools for HVAC and ventilation. If that had passed with Repub-
lican support that it needed, we would have been past the school
22

closure issue much faster. We would have gotten kids back to
school.
But I agree with Dr. Mason. And I’m a mother as well. We can’t
have kids be in schools that are unsafe.
But I want to pivot toward the future, and I really appreciate the
question, Ms. Velázquez.
Ms. VELÁZQUEZ. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is up, but I just
would like to add that, coming the midterm election, no one in this
country should support any candidate who really talk about and
support replacement theory.
I yield back.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you, Ms. Velázquez.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Green for five minutes.
Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Scalise, and I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today.
The committee today is titled to have us discuss and focus our
remarks and questions on the pandemic’s economy’s impact on low-
wage working women. And I’m going to do just that. I’m going to
speak about the No. 1 impact on low-income families across the
board in our country.
The most important pressing economic issue facing American
workers is inflation. Some of us have been warning that the mas-
sive amount of Federal spending pumped into the economy would
lead to sustained inflation. I warned the fed chair in this room
about this back in 2020.
Yet, in 2021, Democrats rammed through $2 trillion spending
package on a party line vote. And, unsurprisingly, United States is
witnessing the highest inflation in four decades. Inflation is crush-
ing the budgets of working families, who are now struggling to af-
ford everyday expenses. In April, the consumer price index was 8.3
percent over the previous year. Think about that.
Prices are going up by over eight percent across the board on
many of the most common household goods. Rent has increased 11
percent in the past year, disproportionately hurting low-income
Americans. High gas prices are causing pain at the pump, with the
average price of gallon of a gas up nearly 50 percent in the past
year.
According to the Joint Economic Committee, inflation costs
American households an average of $569 each month. That’s nearly
$7,000 a year.
Parents go to the grocery store and find that food prices keep
going up. That assumes that what they are looking for, such as
baby formula, is even in stock.
Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a donor to the Democrat Party
and liberal causes, warned that—and I quote—‘‘this administration
tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already overheated
inflationary economy, and only Manchin saved them from them-
selves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least afflu-
ent,’’ end quote.
Bezos is right about inflation being a tax on the least affluent.
Working Americans are bearing the brunt of Bidinflation, and each
passing day makes it more and more difficult for them to afford ev-
eryday expenses. Working mothers have been especially hard-hit as
23

they try to provide for their children while their paychecks are
eaten up by inflation.
The Biden administration has stubbornly chosen to ignore this
reality. First, they said that inflation was transitory. Again, I re-
member asking the fed chair in this room. That’s exactly what they
said. It’s transitory.
As it became obvious that inflation wasn’t going away, President
Biden tried to cast the blame everywhere else to avoid responsi-
bility for a crisis that his policies have created in the past year.
Meanwhile, inflation continues to rise, costing Americans hundreds
of dollars every single month, and eating away at the value of their
savings.
In conclusion, massive infusions of cash within this economy
have actually taken almost $7,000 a year out of the pockets of the
poorest among us. This is the legacy of the past year, and it is aca-
demic truth.
Let me ask a question to Ms. Ham in the little bit of time that
I have left.
What do you think are some of the impacts of this inflation on
the working moms and, you know, folks that are—what we would
call less affluent in our society?
Ms. HAM. Well, again, speaking—you read out all the numbers,
and the numbers are very stark. And I’m sure that every single
person here has felt them when you go to the grocery store.
It’s not rocket science, and, again, I know that I have abilities
and resources and flexibilities that other families do not have. And,
if we are hurting, then other people are hurting so much worse.
And the idea that the solution to all of this always is more tril-
lions of dollars, I think, is misguided, because we have put our-
selves in a situation with the 5 trillion already out the door, and
yet somehow couldn’t get schools back open. Strangely, as I said,
public schools all over the country, public schools in Europe, public
schools in Scandinavia, in Britain, they all opened. The counterfac-
tual exists where you could safely reopen.
That is not to say March 2020, right? This is not a reckless pur-
suit. But to note that the costs to children, particularly those who
were already at a disadvantage, and their families would be great-
er and terrible from a year of closed school—the idea that that is
improper to look at, to acknowledge, the idea that that is somehow
only in the past when a generation of gains for minority students
have been wiped out and then some, they will be dealing with this
for the foreseeable future.
And my thought is, given that the 5 trillion couldn’t handle open-
ing schools properly, maybe we should concentrate on those issues,
because the Federal Government is not that great at doing a bunch
of things well.
Mr. CLYBURN. The lady’s time has expired.
The chair recognizes Mr. Raskin for five minutes.
Mr. RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The right to make your own reproductive decisions about your
own body is a basic human right, but the GOP has been advocating
for decades to take that right away from American women. And
now we know that, after packing the Supreme Court with right-
wing ideologs, they are about to get their way. If Justice Alito’s
24

narrow majority holds and the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v.
Wade and abolishes the constitutional right to privacy, access to
safe and legal abortion will be abolished or dramatically curtailed
in more than 20 states immediately.
But our colleagues say in Congress that abortion is murder, and
they want a nationwide law making it a crime for women to have
abortions anywhere in the country.
So, these bans will be terribly painful for women who work in
low-wage jobs. And, Ms. Mason, I want to ask you that—what
would a nationwide Republican law against abortion in the United
States do to affect women’s ability to participate in the economy?
Ms. MASON. Thank you so much for this question. It’s actually
a real travesty, the impending Supreme Court decision, and will
have a devastating impact on women workers, especially workers
of color.
IWPR did a study this time last year, and we found that, as a
result of state-level abortion restrictions, not even thinking about
the recent Supreme Court decision, states—state and local econo-
mies and women workers would lose $105 billion annually because
of these restrictions. And, with the impending Supreme Court deci-
sion, we know that those costs will be exacerbated.
And, when we talk about the losses—the economic losses to
women, we’re talking about lost wages, lost productivity, and espe-
cially without paid sick and family leave as well as healthcare in-
surance, the costs to these workers are exponential, including the—
potentially the loss of jobs.
And so, when I think about this ban and put it in context, what
I want to point out for sure is that many of the states, Mississippi
included, are—have been and historically been hostile to not only
women, but women of color and people of color.
Mississippi ranks low—the lowest, or among the lowest states on
every social indicator of well-being for women. This ban before the
Supreme Court, as well as the other states that are considering
similar laws, are all states that have not taken care and concern
around women’s economic security, and this bill or these bans just,
again, will have a devastating impact on women’s economic secu-
rity, but also families’ economic well-being overall.
Mr. RASKIN. Thank you for that.
You know, the same people who want to brand women in United
States as criminals for exercising what is today, at least for a few
more weeks, a constitutional right have consistently voted against
paid family leave policies.
So, Ms. Rodgers, what will be the effect on women in the work-
place if they have neither reproductive choice in the full panoply
of healthcare that women enjoy today, nor paid family leave poli-
cies available to them?
Ms. RODGERS. I agree very strongly with what Dr. Mason just
said, that there is no gender equality in the workplace without paid
family leave, without access to affordable childcare, and without
full access to reproductive health services, including access to safe
abortion.
And there is now a large body of very rigorous empirical evidence
showing that access to abortion services affects positively women’s
investment in their education, women’s attachment to the labor
25

force. It also reduces their likelihood of living in poverty as a result
of being denied an abortion. And access to these services reduces
their likelihood of raising children in poverty if women are denied
an abortion.
There is even evidence at the macroeconomic level showing that
abortion rights and liberalizing abortion laws also positively im-
proves GDP per capita. There is as much as an 11 percent increase
in women’s labor supply when we have a reduction in abortion re-
strictions, which could lead to an increase in GDP per capita of up
to seven percent.
Mr. RASKIN. Well, thank you for that.
Mr. Chairman, I just want do say that, when you look around
the world, giving women control over their own reproduction and
fertility is the key to ending poverty, and we’re moving in exactly
the wrong direction today.
I yield back.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank the gentleman for yielding back.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Miller-Meeks for five minutes.
Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And, first, I’d like to thank all of our witnesses for coming before
the committee to testify today.
And I think that we’re all concerned with the impact that the
COVID–19 pandemic lockdowns and school closures have had on
children and parents alike. And, unlike some of what I’ve heard in
this room today, there is not a blame game, but the reason you
have to look back, as I can tell you, being a physician, a nurse, a
24-year military veteran, and a director of the Department of Pub-
lic Health, if you don’t—if you don’t do a review of what you’ve
done, that sets the precedent.
And, since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, I have written
extensively—and even being sworn into Congress—written exten-
sively and talked about the adverse consequences of locking down
a society, that the pandemic was life versus life. It was never life
versus the economy. And, if we don’t want to recognize that, the
precedent going forward for the next pandemic is that we do ex-
actly the same thing.
Just last week, The New York Times reported on the high cost
of school closures. Thank goodness they finally recognized that
there was a cost of school closures on our most vulnerable popu-
lation. They found it was very clear that remote schooling was not
good for learning and that schools with large numbers of poor stu-
dents were more likely to go remote.
They even link this finding to the fact that students typically live
in cities run by Democrat officials, and even the World Health Or-
ganization last year said we should not continue locking down
schools, that childhood poverty had increased by over 15 percent
because of our response to the pandemic, and it would be decades
until we recovered that loss.
Our great Governor, Governor Reynolds in the state of Iowa,
with the concert and approval of our legislature—and I was a state
senator at that time—decided in the fall—the end of the summer,
fall of 2020, we would reopen Iowa schools to in-person learning
and had no adverse consequences or effects.
26

Ms. Ham, can you talk how disproportionately low-income stu-
dents and parents have suffered from prolonged school closures?
Ms. HAM. I mean, it’s becoming painfully obvious in these studies
of learning loss during this time. And this is the kind of thing—
again, to your point and to your point, made eloquently, Represent-
ative Clyburn, about Brown v. Board, we do not fix things by not
talking about this grave error, right, which was the pre-Brown v.
Board era of schooling in American society, right?
We should never put that in the rearview mirror forever, because
it then causes us to make the same mistakes in the future, which
is a great reason for you to bring it up in this hearing.
The same goes for this, where we have made grave errors. And,
as I said, these are not in the past. Schools remain destabilized.
And the kids and the parents who have to deal with this learning
loss, in Chicago in particular—I believe it was in Cook County, one
county board member—a Democrat obviously—it’s Cook County—
said, like, in the last 18 months, that they’ve had two years of
learning loss among those kids.
They will have to wrestle with that, and their parents, many of
them single parents, will have to be doing the tutoring, finding the
tutoring, floundering to get them back up to speed.
And my suggestion is simply that, when we are talking about so-
lutions, let’s concentrate a whole lot of it on clawing back what we
gave away during the last two years, which were consistent and
very good gains for minority students in places where they really
needed help.
And we gave it away for no reason, because, after a very short
period of time, the facts made clear that you could have kids in
school safely and that it was, in fact, a safer place than many other
places, because it did—it only reflected community spread and, in
fact, was insulated from it a bit with other mitigations.
Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. And we talked a lot about the lack of child
nutrition—nutrition when schools closed, with child abuse because
mandatory reporters were not in school to see children.
We also—when I came into Congress and my first markup in
Education and Labor happened to reveal that there was over $60
billion that was allocated to schools that was not spent, and even
after the ERF package COVID relief was passed for schools to re-
open and teachers put at the top front of the line to get vaccina-
tions, still schools remained closed.
So, we also note that, once schools reopened, some harmful poli-
cies have remained in place, such as forcing our children to be
masked.
I recently introduced a resolution to express disapproval of the
requirements in the Head Start programs to wear masks in the
classroom. Three and four-year-olds continuing to wear masks, de-
spite being very obvious now and research showing now on the neg-
ative impacts, the speech impediments on children having to wear
masks in school.
So, Ms. Ham, we only have a few short minutes. Can you discuss
the impact that masking in schools has had on our children?
Ms. HAM. Yes. I think there is a broader point here, which is
that, you know, the experts say don’t look backward, we need to
spend more money on these problems in the ways that we have
27

proscribed. But the experts were wrong about sending kids back to
school and whether it would be dangerous. And they told you that
putting your kid on a screen for six hours a day would be an awe-
some idea and everything would work out fine, even though we
knew from years of study that that probably wasn’t a great idea.
They told you that covering your kids’ face with a mask was the
safe thing to do, and it was totally worth any of the interaction and
socializing and speech therapy that they would lose as a result. In
many cases, it wasn’t, particularly for children with disabilities
who suffered the worst from some of these mitigation processes.
Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Thank you.
I yield back my time.
Mr. CLYBURN. There is a vote on, and we have to vote.
So, we would like to go to Mr. Foster for five minutes, and I’m
going to try to get to Mr. Krishnamoorthi before we have to go vote.
Mr. FOSTER. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
One of the biggest factors pulling women out of the work force
during the pandemic was needing to care for ill or loved ones or
children learning from home.
The bipartisan Families First Coronavirus Response Act required
employers to provide paid sick and family leave to certain employ-
ees that were—are affected by their coronavirus. Although the
coronavirus is still circulating, that provision expired at the end of
2020.
Last year, I introduced the Pandemic Leave Extension Act, which
would extend FFCRA’s paid leave requirement until the end of the
public health emergency.
Ms. Shabo, how would widespread access to paid family and
medical leave for coronavirus-related issues make a difference for
women workers?
Ms. SHABO. Mr. Foster, thank you so much for your leadership
and for your question.
So, the FFCRA was a good first step. It prevented 400 cases per
day per state, or more than 15,000 cases per day nationwide. And
it was limited, as you know. It did not affect workers in larger
businesses who had trouble.
If we were to bring back FFCRA, even if it’s in its original form,
it would have a significant effect on the spread of illnesses through
workplace, particularly as masks have been removed, particularly
as large companies are no longer telling people that there has been
a spread in their workplace, particularly as they’re rolling back, as
Amazon has, all of their emergency paid sick leave. So, it would be
tremendous.
In addition, if we still covered childcare leave, when workers do
have children who are being asked to quarantine or stay home or
when schools do have outbreaks, it would allow parents to main-
tain their jobs and take care of their children.
FFCRA was tremendous. It was helpful to employers. Actually,
more employers filed for FFCRA tax credit relief than filed for
some of the other employer retention tax credits and others.
So, this was an important first step. It was bipartisan, and I ap-
plaud Congress for that. And it’s a real travesty, a misstep, and
shortsighted that it expired, and in particular that the requirement
expired. But now there is not even tax credits available either.
28

Mr. FOSTER. Yes. So—but it’s fair to characterize it as a
probusiness piece of legislation——
Ms. SHABO. Absolutely.
Mr. FOSTER [continuing]. In its effect?
Ms. SHABO. When workers have access to paid sick time, they’re
more likely to stay home, which means a shorter period of spread
through their workplaces.
Actually, Ms. Mason’s institution, IWPR, did a study of the
H1N1 flu several years ago and found that the period of illnesses
or contagion within workplaces was shorter. And, you know, we
can’t miss—misread the steps here. People need access to paid sick
time.
And businesses need to know that their workers are healthy,
that they’re not coming to work at lower productivity, and that ev-
eryone is working as they should.
Mr. FOSTER. Thank you.
I’d like to speak for a moment about the macroeconomic effects
of this. Women’s incomplete work force participation has economic
consequences for everybody. Studies show that the labor market
disparities cost our country trillions of dollars of potential GDP, let
alone the impact on families—individual families’ well-being. And
this places the United States at a global competitive disadvantage,
and it’s left the United States ranking second to last in growth for
women’s work force participation among the OECD countries.
The pandemic has just exacerbated that trend. If labor force par-
ticipation for American women was at rate similar to those of Can-
ada, Germany, or the U.K. during the pandemic, the United States
would have saved an estimated $97 billion of GDP losses.
Now, so, Dr. Rodgers, could you explain how low female labor
force participation and over a million women leaving the labor force
during the pandemic impacts our economic growth?
Ms. RODGERS. That is such an excellent question.
One of the fundamental inputs into economic growth is the input
of workers. We need both physical capital as well as human capital.
And it’s both the number of workers as well as their education that
matters.
So, when women are withdrawing from the labor force because
of constraints that they face, that is indeed a—puts a damper on
economic growth, and there is a number of studies that have shown
what you’ve just alluded to, that women’s labor force participation,
when that gap with men closes, gender inequality is reduced, and
economic growth is promoted.
And we’ve also seen literature showing that, when laws are
changed and companies are more inclusive, when women have
greater rights around the world, including in the U.S., that also
promotes economic growth.
One study that I did looked specifically at laws surrounding sex-
ual orientation as well as gender identity, and we found that one
additional right supporting inclusion in the economy contributes to
an increase in GDP per capita of $2,065 on average. These are
large effects, and gender equality does matter for the macro-econ-
omy.
Mr. FOSTER. Thank you. And I guess I can’t let your reference
to both human and physical capital slide without mentioning—giv-
29

ing a shout-out to the Cobb-Douglas production function. One of
the fundamental macroeconomic papers of I guess all time, and au-
thored—coauthored by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois.
Ms. RODGERS. Absolutely.
Mr. FOSTER. I yield back.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much, Mr. Foster.
The chair now recognizes Mr. Krishnamoorthi for five minutes.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Ham, I’d like to turn your attention to an article that we
found in The Federalist dated April 10, 2018. It’s entitled ‘‘Equal
Pay Day Hypes’’—I’m sorry—‘‘Equal Pay Day Hype Ignores the
Facts and Women’s Feelings About the Workplace.’’
I have this article in front of me. And I just want to draw your
attention to page four of this article.
And, here, you say, quote, ‘‘Women are far more willing to give
up higher pay for more comfortable work requirements.’’
You wrote that as part of this piece, correct?
Ms. HAM. Yes. The piece is about how, when you do the calcula-
tions of equal pay day in such a way that does not take into ac-
count people’s desires for what their workplace looks like, you end
up not accounting for the fact that women desire the ability——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. Correct. I’m just—I want to turn our at-
tention to this statement. Women are far more—this is what you
said: Women are far more willing to give up higher pay for more
comfortable work requirements.
And, you know, I’m just thinking about Ms. Murray, who has tes-
tified today, who spent over 20 years working at Wal-Mart, and to
this day brings home just over $16 per hour.
Do you really believe, Ms. Ham, that Ms. Murray doesn’t get
paid a living wage or higher than $16 per hour because she chooses
not to be paid more?
Ms. HAM. No, I do not believe that. The——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. And do you believe that she chooses——
Ms. HAM. The poll that—may I—may I——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI [continuing]. Comfortable work require-
ments over being paid more?
Ms. HAM. No. The poll—what I’m referring to in that article,
which you clearly read, is polling on what women want in a work-
place, which I think is important to all of us, and one of the things
they do want—and one of the things that, by the way, we’ve taken
out of the pandemic and can increase, to you guys’ points, is more
workplace flexibility.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. I’m looking at this——
Ms. HAM. I am not casting——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. I’m looking at this article.
Ms. HAM [continuing]. Aspersions on any particular worker at
all.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. There is no poll. There is no polling that
this is citing here for this very broad statement. I don’t see any ci-
tation whatsoever to any polling data.
Ms. HAM. The New York Times and others have——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. In fact, there is data that underlies that
very broad statement.
30

Ms. Murray, I want to ask you a very simple question. You are
paid $16 per hour. You’ve worked 20 years at Wal-Mart. Do you
feel like you’ve chosen to get paid less than your male counter-
parts?
Ms. MURRAY. No, not at all. And a lot of male workers get paid
more than the women do at Wal-Mart.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. For doing the same job?
Ms. MURRAY. Yes. And we’ve asked Wal-Mart to be opened about
how they pay—how the pay rate is for men and women, and of
course they will not show us that.
But, no, I don’t choose to get paid less than men, and I don’t stay
at Wal-Mart because it’s a comfortable position. It’s not. I stay
there now because I feel workers need a voice across the country,
and the only way that’s going to happen is through other workers,
like me and other workers that speak up and speak out.
And that’s why I’m asking for workers to be put on boards of big
companies, workers that work inside stores, so that they under-
stand what these workers go through, because they just ignore us.
They don’t come in and really truly look and see what’s happening.
So, the only way we can make these changes is to ask your work-
ers that are on the front line. We are deemed essential workers.
Treat us like that.
We do not need just the 40 cents a year raise. That does nothing
for any worker in the country.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. So, let me—let me turn to Dr. Rodgers for
a second.
With regard to this statement, women are far more willing to
give up higher pay for more comfortable work requirements, what
is your opinion about that statement? And let’s just say that there
is polling that shows that some people make tradeoffs——
Ms. HAM. Of course they do.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. Is this an accurate——
Ms. HAM. Of course they do.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. Is this—is this an——
Mr. CLYBURN. Excuse me.
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. But is this an accurate——
Mr. CLYBURN. Ms. Ham?
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI [continuing]. Statement to describe the en-
tire—entirety of the situation with regard to women?
Ms. RODGERS. No, absolutely not. It’s not a willingness to give up
pay. Women face a whole structure of constraints forcing them to
make decisions and difficult choices. And especially low-wage
women or low-income women are not willing to give up pay in
order to be able to care for their children. These are constraints
they face.
Ms. Ham has mentioned several times that education is a public
good that we need to be investing in, but I want to emphasize that
health is also an incredibly important public good, and we need to
invest in health.
That means investing in HVAC systems in schools and improving
the health at schools when they are open. It also means investing
in our paid care workers, investing in our nurses, investing in per-
sonal protective equipment, which, as you probably remember, was
in scarce supply at the beginning of pandemic.
31

So, we really need to invest in health as well as education in
order to achieve gender equality.
Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much——
Mr. KRISHNAMOORTHI. Thank you.
Mr. CLYBURN [continuing]. Dr. Rodgers, and thank you Mr.
Krishnamoorthi.
We are just a few moments before we have to go to the floor to
vote, and I want to thank all of our witnesses here today for being
here.
And of course I’m going to truncate my closing statement here
today to say that every one of you that testified today expressed
some kind of research that has been done. And we came to this
hearing because of surveys, questionnaires, and getting information
from, I think, about 20 employers, about who got laid off and why.
Now, we can spend the rest of our lives analyzing—in fact, I
think when I was coming along, we used to call it the paralysis of
analysis. At some point in time, we’ve got to stop analyzing and
start making recommendations as to what we do going forward.
For some reason, we want to keep studying the issue.
We don’t need to study these issues anymore. We know what the
problems are. We want your good minds to help us find some solu-
tions, and solutions are what we’re looking for with these hearings.
So, I want to thank you all for being here today. And, to the ex-
tent that we got some solutions, we’re going to try to act upon
them.
But let me just close with our standard statement.
Without objection, all members will have five legislative days
within which to submit additional written questions for the wit-
nesses to the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for
their response.
With that, this meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:48 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
Æ

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