DELAURO LEADS PANEL DISCUSSION ON WOMEN’S ECONOMIC SECURITY

New Haven, CT — Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-3) led a panel discussion this morning at Quinnipiac University on the challenges women face in achieving economic security in America today. Participants included Teresa Younger, Director of the Connecticut General Assembly's Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW), Joyce Jacobson, Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University and author of The Economics of Gender, and Jen Sacco, Assistant Professor of Political Science and head of the women's studies program at Quinnipiac.

"For the first time ever, one-half of American workers are women," said Congresswoman DeLauro, "Two-thirds of women are either the sole bread-winner or co-breadwinner in their family. And yet, particularly in the current economy, the economic security of women lags behind that of her husband, sons, and brothers Half of women are in jobs without retirement plans. They are one third more likely to be in sub-prime mortgages. Two thirds of seniors living in poverty are women. And even as women face all the same difficulties as men in this economy, they have to get by, and often support the families alone, making only 77 cents on the dollar."

According to the National Committee for Pay Equity, women lose on between $400,000 and $2 million on average over the course of a lifetime because of this paycheck disparity. To remedy this continuing pay discrimination in America, forty-nine years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, Congresswoman DeLauro has introduced and championed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which stiffens penalties for gender-based discrimination. It has passed the House of Representatives twice, most recently in 2009.

Congresswoman DeLauro is also the author and chief sponsor of the Healthy Families Act, which, like the ground-breaking law passed in Connecticut in 2011, would ensure every worker in America can take a paid day off when she or a family member is sick. At the moment, nearly four in ten workers in the U.S. lack even a single paid sick day. 145 other nations, including 19 of the top 20 most economically competitive countries in the world – the exception being the United States -- guarantee some form of paid sick days to workers.

In addition, Congresswoman DeLauro has worked to break down barriers and create more opportunities for women in non-traditional jobs. At the moment, over half of working women are clustered in only 25 of 504 occupational categories, most of which are among the lower-paying professions in the United States. Women working in retail or clerical jobs could make as much as 20 or 30 percent more by moving into fields like information technology, construction, and green jobs.

As such, the Women & Workforce Investment for Nontraditional Jobs Act, or Women WIN Jobs Act – co-introduced with Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado --improves and expands the 17-year old Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) program at the Department of Labor to help recruit, prepare, place and retain women in all kinds of high-demand, high-wage nontraditional jobs.