Fast Facts: Economic Security for Women and Families in Arizona

Click here to view other state fact sheets in this series.

While Arizona has seen continued economic momentum and the successful implementation of an expansive, statewide paid sick days law,¹ the state lags behind in other policies that would support women and their families, including those concerning maternal and reproductive health. Policymakers should prioritize policies that advance economic security and health care in Arizona.

Women need policies that reflect their roles as providers and caregivers. In Arizona, mothers are the sole, primary, or co-breadwinners in 58.8 percent of families,² and these numbers are higher for some women of color. The following policy recommendations can help support the economic security of women and families in Arizona.

Promote equal pay for equal wor­­­k

Although federal law prohibits unequal pay for equal work, there is more that can be done to ensure that both women and men across Arizona enjoy the fullest protections against discrimination.

• Arizona women who are full-time, year-round workers earned about 85 cents for every dollar that Arizona men earned in 2017;³ if the wage gap continues to close at its current rate, women will not reach parity in the state until 2047.⁴ The wage gap is even larger for black women and Latinas in Arizona, who earned 68.2 cents and 54.7 cents, respectively, for every dollar that white men earned in 2016.⁵
• Due to the gender wage gap, each woman in Arizona will lose an average of $336,800 over the course of her lifetime.⁶

Increase the minimum wage

Women constitute a disproportionate share of low-wage workers; raising the minimum wage would help hardworking women across Arizona and enable them to better support their families.

• Women make up nearly two-thirds of all minimum wage workers in the United States.⁷ More than half of the minimum wage workers in Arizona are women.⁸
• In Arizona, the current minimum wage is $10.50 per hour.⁹ Increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024 would boost wages for 551,000 women in Arizona and more than 23 million women nationally. Fifty-two percent of Arizona workers who would be affected by raising the minimum wage to $15 are women.¹⁰

Guarantee access to quality health care

Women need access to comprehensive health services—including abortion and maternity care—in order to thrive as breadwinners, caregivers, and employees. To ensure women are able to access high-quality care, states should, at minimum, strengthen family planning programs such as Title X; protect Medicaid; and end onerous restrictions that reduce access to abortion care and undermine the patient-provider relationship. At the state level, Arizona should ensure that women have access to the full spectrum of quality, affordable, and women-centered reproductive health services.

• In 2014, almost 470,000 Arizona women were in need of publicly funded family planning services and supplies, and 25 percent of those women were uninsured.¹¹
• Title X—the nation’s only federal domestic program focused solely on providing family planning and other related preventive care, such as contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing, and cancer screenings—served 30,400 women in Arizona in 2017, up from 29,800 women in 2014.¹² Funding, however, has not kept pace: In 2014, Arizona disbursed $5.4 million to Title X clinics but only provided $5.3 million in 2017.¹³ Federal Title X funds are also subject to restrictions in Arizona that effectively preclude private reproductive health-focused providers from receiving public funds.¹⁴
• Arizona bars state family planning money from funding abortion providers and other entities that contract or are affiliated with an abortion provider.¹⁵
• There are also significant state restrictions on abortion care itself: Arizona requires biased counseling that gives women inaccurate and misleading information about abortion care; a 24-hour waiting period and an ultrasound at least 24 hours before women can undergo the procedure; and parental consent for young women under the age of 18. Medicaid does not cover medically necessary abortions, despite a court order mandating otherwise.¹⁶
• Arizona’s infant mortality rate—5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2016—is slightly lower than the national rate of 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.¹⁷ The state’s maternal mortality rate is 2.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births,¹⁸ compared with the national rate of 18 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.¹⁹

Ensure workers have access to paid sick days

Everyone gets sick, but not everyone is afforded the time to get better. Many women go to work sick, because they fear that they will be fired for missing work. Allowing employees to earn paid sick days helps keep families, communities, and the economy healthy.

• About 34.2 million U.S. employees, or nearly one-third of the nation’s private sector workforce, do not have access to paid sick days.²⁰
• Arizona passed a statewide paid sick days law that went into effect on July 1, 2017, allowing all employees—including both full- and part-time workers—to start accruing and using paid sick time to care for themselves or a loved one. Approximately 934,000 workers formerly without paid sick leave gained access to paid sick days through this law.²¹

Ensure fair scheduling practices

Many low-wage and part-time workers—approximately 60 percent of whom are women²²—face erratic work schedules and have little control over when they work and for how long.

• More than 1 in 4 low-wage U.S. workers has a schedule that is nonstandard—that is, outside of the traditional 9-to-5 workweek.²³ This can be especially difficult for parents who need to plan for child care.
• In addition to threatening the economic security of these workers and their families, unfair scheduling practices are often accompanied by reduced access to health benefits and increased potential for sexual harassment.²⁴

Provide access to paid family and medical leave

Access to paid family and medical leave would allow workers to be with their newborn children during the critical early stages of the child’s life; to care for an aging parent or spouse; to recover from their own illness; or to assist in a loved one’s recovery.

• Only 17 percent of civilian workers in the United States have access to paid family leave through their employers.²⁵
• Unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is inaccessible to 62 percent of working people in Arizona.²⁶ Workers and families in the state need paid family and medical leave for reasons other than childbirth. For example, more than 1 in 5 workers in Arizona is at least 55 years old, and in less than 15 years, the state’s population that is 65 and older will grow by more than 17 percent.²⁷ Arizona’s aging population means an increase in older adults with serious medical conditions who will need additional care.
• National data show that 55 percent of employees who take unpaid leave through the FMLA use it for personal medical reasons. Twenty-one percent of workers use leave for the birth or adoption of a child, while another 18 percent use it to care for a family member.²⁸

Expand quality, affordable child care

Families need child care to ensure they are able to work, but many lack access to affordable, high-quality child care options that support young children’s development and meet the needs of working families.

• Sixty percent of Arizona children younger than age 6 have all available parents in the workforce, which makes access to affordable, high-quality child care a necessity.²⁹
• For an Arizona family with one infant and one 4-year-old, the annual price of a child care center averages $18,687 per year, or nearly one-third of the median income for an Arizona family with children.³⁰
• Arizona lags far behind the national average in children enrolled in public preschool, with only 15 percent of 4-year-olds enrolled.³¹

Protect workers against all forms of gender-based violence

Women cannot fully participate in the economy if they face the threat of violence and harassment. There are a number of steps lawmakers can take to prevent violence against women and to support survivors, including establishing greater workplace accountability; strengthening enforcement; increasing funding for survivor support services; and educating the public on sexual harassment in the workplace.³²

• In Arizona, 41.3 percent of women have experienced contact sexual violence in their lifetimes,³³ and 34.9 percent of women have experienced noncontact sexual harassment.³⁴ Given that research at the national level suggests that as many as 70 percent of sexual harassment charges go unreported, these state numbers likely only scratch the surface.³⁵
• Forty-three percent of Arizona women have experienced intimate partner violence, which can include physical violence, sexual violence, or stalking by an intimate partner.³⁶ Experiencing intimate partner violence has been shown to hinder women’s economic potential in many ways, including loss of pay from missed days of work and housing instability.³⁷

Protecting the rights of immigrant women and families

Immigrants—particularly those seeking asylum and those without legal status—can be vulnerable to social and economic insecurity. A combination of federal and state policies targeting immigrants is cause for concern in Arizona. The Trump administration’s decisions to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and allow Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to expire for more than 300,000 people who have lived and worked lawfully in the country for nearly two decades will force many immigrants out of the workforce, putting them, their families, and the communities in which they reside in economic peril.³⁸ In addition, immigrant women can be especially vulnerable to domestic and sexual abuse and exploitation.³⁹

• In 2016, more than 13 percent of Arizona’s population was foreign-born, of which more than half were women.⁴⁰
• In 2016, 1 in 6 workers in Arizona was foreign-born, contributing to the state’s economy across various industries.⁴¹
• More than 466,000 Arizonans live in households with family members who are unauthorized, including nearly 227,000 children.⁴²
• If Dreamers are no longer able to renew their DACA, Arizona could lose more than $1.3 billion annually from its gross domestic product (GDP).⁴³ There are 54,000 immigrants in the state’s workforce who are Dream Act-eligible, and putting them on a pathway to citizenship could increase the state’s GDP by up to $2 billion.⁴⁴
• Arizona is home to 1,100 TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti, as well as their 1,300 U.S.-born children.⁴⁵ All of these TPS holders will lose their protected status when the designation expires in 2019, leaving them with two choices: to remain in the United States without legal status or work authorization or to return to a country they haven’t known for years.

Promote women’s political leadership

Across the United States, women are underrepresented in political office: They constitute 51 percent of the population but only 29 percent of elected officials.⁴⁶

• Women make up 51 percent of Arizona’s population but only 33 percent of its elected officials.⁴⁷
• Women of color constitute 22 percent of the state’s population but only 7 percent of its officeholders.⁴⁸

Shilpa Phadke is the vice president of the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Samantha Pedreiro is a graduate intern for the Women’s Initiative at the Center. Diana Boesch is a research assistant for the Women’s Initiative at the Center. Osub Ahmed is a policy analyst for the Women’s Initiative at the Center.