All the Older Single Ladies in Poverty

[Hekate]

86. "America's ladies are not doing a great job of figuring it out on our own": way to blame the victims

Here's what we go through to get to 65:

• We work, and our work is not paid the same as men's
• We get married, and take care of the house and the kids
• Sometimes we keep right on working after an all-too-short break for childbirth, but even if we quit work to have kids we go back to work because hubby is not making what men used to make in the 1950s and 1960s
• We try to find flexibility in our hours so we can take care of the house and the kids (talks with teachers, pediatrician's appointments, dinner, just everything) -- but very few employers will let us. So we shift to part-time.
• Part-time work is not career-track
• Finally, after a hiatus of some years, we have time to go back to full-time career-path work. But we've been left behind.
• But wait, there's more! Grandma has a little stroke, runs out of money, gets dementia. Guess who takes care of her?

Social security payments are based on the paid work you've done. Pensions are based on a long stint at a single job, and depend on the company not going belly-up in an economic downturn. Husbands die or leave. Adult kids have problems of their own.

Oh, we ladies in our 60s know !@#$%^&! well how a woman gets old and ends up in deep poverty. That smug line about us "not doing a great job of figuring it out on our own" has made me furious enough to spit.