New report says millions of women at risk of falling into poverty, economic ruin

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NBC News – Although in recent decades women have made historic advances in nearly all areas of American public life, a staggering number of women across the country are still teetering on the verge of poverty and economic disaster, a new report released Sunday shows.

The report, co-authored by NBC News special anchor Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, takes a wide-angle snapshot of a national economic crisis — seen through the eyes of women. The key findings paint a portrait of an estimated 42 million women — and 28 million dependent children — saddled with financial hardship.

“These are not women who are wondering if they can ‘have it all,'” Shriver wrote in her introduction to the report. “These are women who are already doing it all — working hard, providing, parenting, and care-giving. They’re doing it all, yet they and their families can’t prosper, and that’s weighing the U.S. economy down.”

Amid an apparent boom in female empowerment and participation — a time in which women earn the majority of secondary degrees and represent more than half of the country’s voters — the report says that millions of women are still struggling on the margins of American society, bruised by the recent recession and the day-to-day trials of family finances.

Women make up close to two-thirds of minimum-wage workers in the country — and upwards of 70 percent of those low-wage workers receive no paid sick days whatsoever, according to the report.

“These are people who are trying to survive on minimum wage, which is not a living wage,” Shriver said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “The number one thing that would make the most difference to them is getting sick days,” she added.

All the while, some 40 percent of all American households with children below the age of 18 include mothers who are either the only or primary source of income — with the average earnings of full-time female workers still just 77 percent of the average earnings of their male colleagues, the report reads.

The authors also presented the results of a survey of 3,500 adults across America that offers a glimpse into the on-the-ground realities of contemporary womanhood. Republican and Democratic pollsters worked together to “write a statistical narrative” of the women who “are an essential part of our nation’s fabric and economy,” the report says.

Among the chief findings from survey respondents who are low-income females:

• 75 percent wish they had devoted more time and energy to education and career — relative to 58 percent of the general population.
• 73 percent wish they had made better financial decisions over the course of their lives — and so did 65 percent of the total survey group.
• Low-income women are more likely than men to regret tying the knot when they did — 52 percent versus 33 percent.
• And nearly one-third of low-income women with children wish they had postponed having children — or had fewer of them.

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