This map shows every state where women are more likely to live in poverty than men
Wait… hold up. Every state is colored in. That can’t be right… right?
Unfortunately, the map is accurate. And it’s especially problematic for millennial women, who are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher than millennial men, but who are consistently earning less living and living in poverty more.
SLAMS THE REBLOG BUTTON
“But women earn more degrees” and still get paid less, so eat my whole ass
Something I see a lot of people missing in the reblogs: KIDS KIDS KIDS THIS IS LIKE 92% ABOUT KIDS
Yeah, there’s other factors too, but “women don’t ask for raises” and “pink-collar jobs aren’t valued” are smaller factors than the simple fact that caring for your own children is mandatory for women and optional for men.
Here’s the life story of, I’m going to say, about half the women I’ve ever worked with:
- Had children. Possibly voluntarily, possibly through lack of contraception education and/or funds.
- Broke off relations with the father. Frequently this was for a reason that was not a choice on her part, like he abused her or went to prison or just plain disappeared.
- Kept the kids. Even if it was an amicable split, she likely has weekday custody and is the one who takes charge of the vast majority of their needs.
- Dad may or may not pay child support, but even if he does, the average child support is $2550/year and the average cost of raising a child in a low-income family is $8610/year.
- The mother can’t afford paid childcare, but she has some friends/family members who watch her kids, but they can’t commit to a consistent schedule, which means she can only work limited hours and has to take a lot of unplanned time off.
- This drastically limits both which jobs she can take and how much she can earn from those jobs, and completely locks her into poverty until the youngest child is old enough to be home alone. But by then she’ll have an unimpressive resume of assorted part-time gigs, plus likely health problems from 15 years of eating junk and barely sleeping, so it’s not a fabulous career launch point.
There’s lots of factors in why women get paid less than men, but lack of childcare is hugely, gigantically more important than stuff like “women don’t speak up enough in meetings,” or even stuff like “female neurosurgeons make less than male neurosurgeons.”
Look at the originally cited paper. There is NO DIAGRAM corresponding to the picture shown above. None. None of the diagrams even have pink in them!
Graphs present in the linked paper:
Map 4.1. Poverty & Opportunity Composite Index. This is a heat map showing various states’ relative rankings in the Poverty & Opportunity index. RELATIVE rankings. The states are sorted by index rank and coloured in thirds. This is incredibly misleading, as it means the graph itself says absolutely nothing about poverty or opportunity for women, beyond things like “There is more opportunity in Colorado than in Texas”
Map 4.2. Percent of Women with Health Insurance, 2013. This is on a different subject than the pink map above, and could not be the source.
Map 4.3. Where States Stand on Adopting the Medicaid Expansion, 2015. This is on a different subject than the pink map above, and could not be the source.
Map 4.4. Percent of Women with a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher, 2013. This is on a different subject than the pink map above, and could not be the source.
Map 4.5. Women’s Business Ownership, 2007. This is a heat map with the same fatal flaw as Map 4.1
Map 4.6. Percent of Women Above Poverty, 2013. This is a heat map with the same fatal flaw as Map 4.1 This is made even worse by the fact that the graph does not actually show the percentage values. It could be that the worst-rated state has a female poverty rate of 0.2% and the best-rated state is 0.1%. Without more data we cannot conclude anything
THESE ARE THE ONLY MAPS OCCURRING IN THE STUDY CITED AS A SOURCE FOR THIS IMAGE. All of these maps are misleadingly framed. None of these maps say anything about men.
It is possible that some of the textual data in the study supports the map. I’m not reading through however many pages of this. But the image, right there on mic dot com, says “Source: Institute Women’s Policy Research”
The absolute best case scenario is that the graph is supported by the data but created by mic dot com. However, in this case, Mic is lying about the source of the graph, for no good reason. Presumably for clickbait, but I said good reason.
At worst, this is an outright fabrication, or in the parlance of our times: Fake News.
You should not believe such untrustworthy reporting.
P.S. Remember: even if this graph was 100% true and supported by evidence, it’s not telling you much. Remember: the poverty line is defined as 40% of median pay. This doesn’t measure peoples’ well-being at all; it’s an indirect measure of the inequality between the lower classes and the lower-middle classes. By this wacky definition, many women could be “in poverty” while still doing alright. As well, the homeless are overwhelmingly men, so any stats that show that women are more hard done by across the board, that don’t at bare minimum lampshade the homeless issue, should not be trusted.
uh
- Broke off relations with the father. Frequently this was for a reason that was not a choice on her part, like he abused her or went to prison or just plain disappeared.
“Men go to prison - women hardest hit.”
and
- Kept the kids. Even if it was an amicable split, she likely has weekday custody and is the one who takes charge of the vast majority of their needs.
“Men less likely to be allowed to keep their children - women hardest hit.”
I couldn’t write more obvious MRA talking points if I was actively trying.
Not that you’re wrong but man
I think there’s a decent counterargument to the latter: Men and women tend to both think women should get the kids. The 80/20 split of who gets the children looks bad only until you find out that when men contest custody, they win more than half the time.
I only looked this up once and am amenable to having these numbers refuted or my mind otherwise changed, but until then I’m gonna believe that that’s just gender roles in action.
1) this is actually a relatively recent gender role
2) survivor bias. men don’t even bother contesting custody if they don’t have a great case.