Capable Women-Bad Decisions

From an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer on January 10, 2008.


...poverty is a significant problem for women and girls in Greater http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080110/EDIT01/801100319/1090


Cincinnati, and there's no sign it's diminishing. The 2007 Ohio Health Issues Poll showed the percentage of women below the poverty line growing from 16 percent to 19 percent while the number of women at upper-income levels dropped from 62 percent to 59 percent in the last two years.

The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation is in a three-year campaign to reduce the effects of poverty on local females, devoting half a million dollars to the effort. This week, a Macy's Foundation grant and matching donation from the Charlotte Schmidlapp Fund added $50,000 to the fund.

But how exactly do you take on a problem this large and multidimensional, a problem that trips up women at multiple points in their lives, that siphons off their ability to take care of their families or themselves?

The focus, according to the Women's Fund, has got to be boosting earning power. Women don't do well at the game of financial catch-up. Many spend their lives trying to recover from early decisions that limited their earning potential - entering low-paying fields, getting minimal education, having children at an early age, sometimes jumping from job to job because of family needs.

By midlife, these factors may mean a woman has an unimpressive resume or has been tracked into a career path with little advancement potential. And by retirement, many women have no pension and have not built up savings for themselves.