The Kansas State Fair kicked off with a debate between two candidates for governor. During the debate Republican Derek Schmidt was asked if Kansas is better off today than it was under former Governor Sam Brownback. Schmidt refused to answer the question.
As a state are we better off? Yes. And I think most Kansans would agree.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t still progress to be made.
Statistically, our economy has improved over the past four and a half years since Brownback left office. But even as the economy has strengthened, much of the improvement has been concentrated in certain areas of the workforce.
Notably, Kansas has major shortages of “pink collar” occupations like teachers, nurses, and childcare workers. These workers have left their professions in droves after bearing too much of the burden of the state’s pandemic response.
Long working hours, inadequate professional support, serious staff shortages, and high COVID-19 infection and death rates among frontline workers, especially during the pandemic’s early stages, have left a mark.
But to blame the pandemic alone would be a mistake. COVID revealed the cracks in our already strained human infrastructure. A system that was built on the labor — paid and unpaid — of Kansas women.
“Caring professions” like nurses, teachers, and childcare workers have long been paid significantly less than male-dominated technical and managerial professions.
Workers in these caring occupations have been undervalued primary because they are mostly women. Their status as essential workers throughout the pandemic finally laid that bare for all to see.
But the pandemic didn’t cause the problem.
According to a recent report from United WE, in 2019, Kansas women were less likely to be employed and more likely to be underemployed or not part of the labor force at all. The statewide gender pay gap has also widened over the past five years and one-third of women workers earn less than $25,000 per year.
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that salaries in the top occupations for women are also lower in Kansas than in the rest of the country, while the top occupations for men are comparable.
According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce nearly 1 million women nationwide are still missing from the workforce, mostly due to unreliable childcare and elder care options.
During the debate both Kelly and Schmidt acknowledged Kansas’ serious childcare crisis — there is too large a demand for services and too few options, resulting in rising costs that price many women out of the workforce.
Over the past year there here has been some action at the state level that compensated some of these caring professionals by giving bonuses to workers and offering their employers state funds for retention incentives.
