Utah Women Continue to Take Economic Beating
by DAISY THOMAS
Utah’s unemployment hit 12.6% in the leisure/hospitality industries, jobs majority held by women. 100% of jobs lost in the United States in December 2020 were women’s jobs, the majority of which were within those same leisure/hospitality industries. The Covid-19 Pandemic is a major factor in these losses, given travel restrictions and requests or mandates to stay home.
We already know women bear the brunt of sacrifices within the economic sector; whether it be lack of support within white collar industries of law, sexism in medicine, or exclusion within STEM fields, exploitation within the blue and pink collar industries, or the wage enslavement of the incarcerated, women continue to be fodder for abusive systems of oppression, all while also needing to be the primary caretakers and caregivers in their families.
Women must (re)claim their economic power and demand not only the total halt of our decreasing fundamental human rights, but a clear path forward that creates economic empowering opportunities for women and minorities, non-binary, and non-gender conforming folks. Jobs are lost all the time, but seeing a 100% loss for women workers is hard to continue to deny that controlling our financial prospects is anything other than systemic sexism. “Women are the most influential decision-makers in the home, business and all sectors of society – and a gender-balanced team enables teams to connect the dots that deliver real financial results from a business perspective,” according to Dorothy Dowling, Chief Marketing Officer for BWH Hotel Group.