A new report on Texas women’s economic well-being finds little progress in being made and access to affordable childcare is one of the biggest obstacles.
The Texas Women’s Foundation has been tracking women’s economic indicators for more than a decade. Its latest report finds that women working full-time now earn, on average, 81 cents for every dollar earned by men, down from 83 cents in the previous report. The gap is wider for Black and Latina women.
“I would say there’s not been a lot of forward progress,” said Karen Hughes White, president and CEO of the Texas Women’s Foundation.
The new research, conducted in partnership with the policy group Every Texan, examines 12 indicators of women’s economic opportunity across 252 of the state’s 254 counties, including employment, education, health care and childcare. (Loving and Kennedy Counties were excluded because of insufficient data.)
The stakes are growing: According to the report, women currently make up 46% of the Texas workforce, but White said they could become the majority by 2040.
And, the research shows childcare stands out as the biggest challenge.
Half of Texans live in what’s considered a childcare desert. That’s an area with at least three children for every available licensed childcare spot. For families who can find care, affordability is another hurdle.
The average cost of center-based infant care in Texas is nearly $12,000 a year. White said that’s roughly the cost of a year of tuition at a public university.
“It forces, especially women, to make these untenable decisions about going to work to support their family or being able to afford childcare,” she said.
She said women often end up reducing their hours or leaving the workforce altogether.
The report comes as Texas lawmakers and state leaders consider ways to address the childcare crisis ahead of the legislative session in January.
White said expanding paid parental leave and increasing enrollment in public pre-K could help. But she cautioned that expanding public pre-K can also put financial pressure on private childcare centers, which depend on revenue from older children to help offset the higher cost of infant care.
She said policymakers also need to look at what they’ve already tried to see what’s working and what isn’t.
“Oftentimes, we’ll have policy changes. We’ll have funding increases. We’ll have stronger participation by philanthropy,” White said. “But we don’t do a good job, in my opinion, of coming back around the table together … to assess what we solved for and where we may have created some unintended consequences.”
Sujata Dand is KERA’s early childhood reporter. Got a tip? Email Sujata at sdand@kera.org.
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