A Gendered Budget

When budget cuts come down, they tend to cut occupations of care. What the government considers to be “unnecessary costs” can be rephrased as “things women can be forced to do for free.” Because of this, the cuts have a far greater impact on women.

The service cuts and jobs lost often fall in occupations of community and social services, for which 60% of the work force is women; and office occupations, of which 83% of the work force is women.

If we take a glance at the jobs associated with these fields, we will find that these are undervalued, gendered, feminized roles. Teachers, nurses, caretakers, and homemakers will find their jobs increasingly difficult (if they even exist) with these cuts.

Women are bearing the economic brunt of policy. The undervaluing our society puts on women’s work leads to devastating cuts to social programs that not only harm people today but impact generations to come. This is happening in Washington state with this new round of budget cuts, and we must fight back before areas of care and knowledge are lost to our state.

There is a $2.6 billion shortfall of expected revenue this year for Washington state, and this shortfall is being balanced by cuts to the state’s budget. These cuts are aimed directly at our “social services” such as healthcare, education, disability access, and housing.

Women, and “women’s work” have persistently been undervalued in the US workforce since colonial
times. Women were denied the vote for over a century, and denied the opportunity for work and self-support long after that.
There is systematic undervaluing and exploitation of women’s labor when female labor still on average earns 77 cents on the dollar of male labor. If labor has been hard hit by the economic turmoil these past few years, then we need to recognize that female labor was already in a worse position in 2006 than male labor is now in 2010.

THE CUTS

Healthcare:
• Reduce two healthcare programs, which together provide service for approximately 85,000 people.
• Eliminate early intervention and direct client services for 2,500 HIV and HIV-vulnerable clients.
• Reduce eligibility for the Apple Health program, eliminating healthcare coverage for 16,000 low-income children.
• Suspend the non-medical maternity
support program, which serves more than 50,000 high-risk pregnant women with childbirth
education and nutrition services.

Social Services
• Eliminate outpatient services for addiction treatment for more than 3,600 low-income adults.
• Limit new subsidies for childcare from 3,800 cases per month to 1,400 cases per month.
• Reduce family preservation services,
which help keep children at risk of abuse safely in their own homes, by 50%, or funding for 2,400 families.

K-12 Education
• Eliminate the kindergarten through 4th grade staffing enhancement,
a statewide program that reduces class size in the early grades.
• Suspend levy equalization assistance,
a program that provides extra support to districts with a lower than average property tax base.
• Suspend the student achievement program, which provides smaller class sizes for students and professional
development for teachers.
• Suspend all-day kindergarten, a program that serves students in schools with the highest poverty levels.