SALT LAKE CITY – As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, new research has shown that Utah women face more exhaustion than they feel hope. It occurs as incomes have fallen and hours have increased in some industries.
Data from the Utah Women & Leadership Project was recently released because the pandemic has been stealing for more than a year and has brought death, economic crises and mental health problems for residents.
“We need to do specific things in our communities to increase hope and reduce (feel) burned,” said Susan Madsen, founder and director of UWLP. “Because our exhaustion is greater than our hope now.”
A total of 3,542 women in Utah responded to the survey, exceeding the initial target of 2,000 respondents. Tuesday’s report is the first of several upcoming briefings on the impact of the pandemic on women living in the state of Beehive.
The research aims to assess where Utah is in comparison to national trends that have shown that women in America have suffered disproportionate effects of the pandemic compared to men and, as a result, have been forced to leave the workforce in greater numbers. big; the phenomenon has been dubbed the pink recession.
While Madsen expected Utah to follow national trends, she said it is important to study certain areas and get information about what is happening in local communities.
“Knowing exactly where we are in the state of Utah is much better than knowing in general what is happening (in the country),” she explained.
While Utah reflected some of the same trends observed nationally, the state stood out in other areas.
“We are the same in many ways, but we are different in other ways,” Madsen said, pointing to the great economy that Beehive State has supported.
The data differed by industry, showing that the percentage of women who reported a drop in wages was the lowest for those working in construction, at 5.1%. About 13.6% of construction workers said their hours had increased.
Other industries were adversely affected, with 25% of those in the hotel and tourism industry reporting that their wages fell and 4.4% reporting that their hours had risen. A total of 27% of the manufacturing industry reported that their incomes decreased and 12% said that their hours increased.
“Because a decrease in salary and an increase in working hours could lead to more mental and emotional stress, these data were summarized together,” the researchers explained in the summary.
On average, those working in food services recorded a decrease in income, but also an increase in working hours, with about 26% reporting a decrease in income and 29% reporting an increase in hours.
“Regarding the emotions that could result from lower incomes and increased working hours, respondents indicated the feeling of exhaustion at levels higher than the levels of hope in all sectors of activity, except trade, transport and utilities, where they are equal ”. the researchers wrote. “Women in Utah as a whole have reported being burned and, at the same time, have ‘some’ hope for the future.”
Child care
Many women between the ages of 30 and 49 have reported leaving the workforce to care for children who have been unable to attend school or day care due to the pandemic. Madsen said companies tend to be wary of addressing childcare issues, but noted that addressing these barriers does not necessarily mean building a day care facility on site.
Even connecting employees to childcare resources can help address these issues and allow women who want to work to be able to re-enter their careers.
“Successful companies will shake things up and have already done so, and some of the best companies are really implementing these (flexible) policies,” Madsen said. “Find out what your employees need, do some research, collect data, analyze your data, and just make the changes you need to move things forward; It’s really not rocket science, policy change within companies can happen pretty quickly. ”
Domestic abuse
The research also indicated a disturbing finding – 9% of women living in Utah said they had suffered domestic violence in their homes since the pandemic began. For Latino-Hispanic women, this number increased to 11%, compared to 8.7% of white women who felt the same way.
“A lot of women who struggle the most didn’t take the time to take (the survey),” Madsen added. “There are a lot of people even in our sample, but we know that percentage is probably much, much higher.”
The data points to a trend first reported in March 2020, when police agencies, including the Salt Lake City Police Department, said they saw an increase in domestic violence calls in the first few weeks of coronavirus closures.
Connecting victims of domestic violence to adequate resources, such as the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, YWCA Utah, South Valley Services, and the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, is crucial to addressing these issues in the state, according to Madsen.
“We need more resources in the state of Utah, but we have some solid fundamental resources,” Madsen said. “The problem is that a lot of people in situations of domestic violence don’t even know what to do because they don’t want to admit that this is happening, they don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to. So, some of those who have the greater need of him need people around them to say, “Hey, can you read this report that actually defines what domestic violence is?”
Raising awareness of the problem itself, educating individuals about the signs of domestic violence and communicating to people that there are groups that help is one of the most important things the state can do to address the problem, Madsen said.
before
Now that there is data, what can state residents do? Madsen said it’s pretty simple: implement best practices to address these issues. Companies, for example, can do research and immediately look at how their business practices could be changed to better serve the women on their staff, Madsen said.
“For me, these are conversations tomorrow,” she said. “If they get this brief, companies could have conversations about just that.”
For state and local leaders, it is important to take action and look for ways to address the issues facing residents in local areas.
Madsen said county and city leaders contacted their group during the project to create data based on respondents’ locations, to establish a baseline of where each area currently stands, in hopes of improving issues in the future. . There were differences in experiences based on where women in Utah lived. For example, those living in Washington County reported a little more hope than exhaustion, while all other counties in the state saw an increase in exhaustion and a decrease in hope.
Solutions such as Governor Spencer Cox, who recently implemented the return program for adults affected by the economic pandemic, are an excellent way to address the issues raised by COVID-19, she added. Cox’s executive order aims to remove barriers that many may face as they try to re-enter the workforce after suffering from the ongoing economic constraints of the pandemic.
“The purpose of a return program is to help experienced adults get back into the workforce without starting at the bottom of their careers,” said Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson when the program was announced last week. “Diversity and life experience are valuable to us and should not be relevant to payments and opportunities in the workplace.”
Furthermore, the implementation of several types of programs can really help the state develop and address some of the problems caused by the pandemic, which could have a lasting impact on the state in the coming years, Madsen said.
“By understanding the research and the research that will follow and then putting these programs together, everyone can work together to really move things and change things,” she said.