Page 33 - BusinessWest March, 21, 2022

The Women’s Economic Security Hub envisions a woman’s ‘economic engine’ as a series of interlocking gears, each affecting the others.
drop out of the workforce.”
Then there are issues around transportation
and internet access. “Prior to the pandemic, people didn’t realize how critical that was,” she went on, whether the problem was lack of online access altogether or having difficulty sharing devices or WiFi with other family members.
To create the research and action project it called the Women’s Economic Security Hub, the Women’s Fund began collaborating with key area partners, including Arise for Social Justice, Dress for Success Western Massachusetts, Springfield WORKS, and the Western New England Univer- sity School of Law Social Justice Center.
This work will focus on women, mostly of color and living at or below the poverty line,
to understand the myriad factors that make or break an individual woman’s ‘economic engine,’
thereby affecting family prosperity.
The UMass Donahue Institute developed a
survey instrument that will be refined, imple- mented, and analyzed by the UMass Amherst Center for Research on Families, and the survey will delve into 12 interconnected determinants (see the image at left), to form a framework which will be used to survey women in commu- nities that have historically faced disproportion- ate challenges to economic growth.
“We’ve portrayed a women’s economic engine as a bunch of interlocking gears,” Haghighat said. “Each of these things can have an effect on the other things.”
“We’ve portrayed a women’s economic engine as a bunch of interlocking gears. Each of these things can have an effect on the other things.”
Obstacles to Success
Luisa Sorio Flor, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington and lead author of the Lancet study, noted that “the pandemic has exacerbated gender disparities across several indicators related to health and other areas of well-being. Women were, for example, more likely than men to report loss of employment, an increase in uncompensated care work, and
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