What Are Women's Rights?
Today, we have the freedom to earn a living as we choose, including as independent contractors. Some politicians are making us fight like hell to keep it.
We are all hearing a lot about the need to protect women’s rights this campaign season. To enact laws that will protect women’s rights. To confirm judges who will protect women’s rights. To stop the candidates who threaten women’s rights.
But all these references are about one policy issue, and only one policy issue:
It is beyond frustrating that anyone believes abortion is the only issue of importance to America’s women.
I’m a woman—a proud American woman, and very much a pro-choice woman.
But when I say pro-choice, I don’t just mean in the doctor’s office.
I also mean in the home office.
Yes, I want all my rights protected. Why? Because in addition to being a human being with a uterus, I am also:
a homeowner with a monthly mortgage payment and an ever-rotating list of things that need fixing, replacing or rebuilding;
a taxpayer in New Jersey, the state with the highest effective property tax rate in the whole country;
a 52-year-old person trying to make sure I’m saving enough for retirement (about 60% of people my age worry about this);
a pretty darn healthy person for my age who who walks at least 4 miles every day, yet is still being soaked by outrageous health-insurance costs (about half of insured adults feel the same way);
a responsible person who is trying to maintain a solid rainy-day fund (about 60% of Americans worry about this);
an at-home cook who forks over $350 at the supermarket and can’t believe how few groceries the money buys (nearly 70% of Americans agree);
a charitable person who donates to multiple causes every month, including the food bank, for people even more frustrated than I am by the price of food;
a driver of a 2010 SUV (that’s the average age of a car in America right now) who invests in regular maintenance, but whose brakes are, yet again, starting to squeal;
a dog owner whose 12-year-old pooch can’t get out of the vet for less than $400 after a checkup (more than 90% of pet owners are equally frustrated).
How am I managing to pay for it all?
As a freelance writer and editor who has spent years working my tail off to build a stable business with great clients.
I earn my living as an independent contractor. Every single dime. I earn this way by choice, for two decades now, after my first decade out of college in traditional jobs that came with far too many sexist bosses and far-too-low glass ceilings.
What I require from lawmakers—first and foremost—is the ability to pay for things I need. Not things I want; things I need.
Health care related to my reproductive system is one among many possible needs. My ability to earn a living is something I do need. Every single day.
And that freedom, for women like me to choose how we earn a living, is just as much on the ballot in the upcoming election, too.
May 6, 1970
I wasn’t yet born on the spring day in 1970 when feminist Gloria Steinem testified before the U.S. Senate. She was there in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, but the issues she described are in many ways identical to what our political candidates are talking about on the campaign trail today.
Yes, Ms. Steinem did talk about abortion. She said: “Women’s bodies will no longer be owned by the state for the production of workers and soldiers; birth control and abortion are facts of everyday life.”
But that was far from all that Ms. Steinem made clear to the lawmakers.
She also elaborated at length about the freedom to earn a good living as a woman:
“During 12 years of working for a living, I’ve experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. … As a freelance writer, I don’t work in the male-dominated hierarchy of an office. Women, like Blacks and other visibly different minorities, do better in individual professions such as the arts, sports, or domestic work; anything in which they don’t have authority over white males. I am not one of the millions of women who must support a family. Therefore, I haven’t had to go on welfare because there are no day care centers for my children while I work, and I haven’t had to submit to the humiliating welfare inquiries about my private and sexual life, inquiries from which men are exempt. I haven’t had to brave the sex bias of labor unions and employers, only to see my family subsist on a median salary 40 percent less than the male median salary.”
Ms. Steinem gave that testimony 54 years ago.
I was born two years later into that very same America. My grandmother, mother and aunts all told me, from the time I was in pigtails, that it was a different America than the one where they grew up. They told me that I didn’t have to limit my choices to being a teacher, a secretary or a nurse. I could be anything that I wanted to be.
Like Ms. Steinem, I looked around at my options and barriers, and I also chose to be a freelancer.
Like Ms. Steinem, I made this choice because I want every bit as much a chance as a man to succeed in this world.
And like Ms. Steinem, I and other women have gone to public hearings and state legislatures and even Capitol Hill to say so—because apparently, it still needs to be said, every damn day:
August 26, 2024
As I clicked “publish” on these words you are reading, millions of American women are just like me, earning some or all of our income as independent contractors.
We’re not all freelance writers—some are real-estate agents or comedians or bookkeepers or translators or graphic designers or truck drivers or any number of other professions—but we are all independent contractors first. Millions upon millions of us are making the choice to be self-employed, to become our own bosses in all kinds of professions.
The U.S. Office of Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy reported last month that based on the latest government data, women own 43% of all nonemployer firms in this country. Ours are the smallest of small businesses, with no employees. In this structure, we are able to get closer to parity with men than for businesses with employees, where men still dominate in the C-suite.
Additional studies show that our nonemployer firms comprise almost 89.8% of all women-owned businesses.
Read that again.
Almost 90% of all women-owned businesses.
Being our own bosses is how many of us entrepreneurial women can thrive. We generate hundreds of billions of dollars for the economy. These kinds of businesses are also a haven for Black, African American and Asian women, who represent a higher fraction of women-owned nonemployers than their share of the overall population.
Quite a few of us happen to be darn good at what we do, too. About one in five of us in the category of “creators”—the same percentage as men—are able to earn more than $100,000 a year as independent contractors.
And so, to every politician telling us that we need to vote to protect women’s rights this fall, I ardently say this:
If we want to protect women’s rights, we must start by protecting
the freedom to choose self-employment and be our own bosses.
Our status as independent contractors, for many of us women, is about even more than getting a fair shake on earning potential. Being our own bosses also improves our physical and mental health.
I know that I sure couldn’t find the time to walk 4 miles a day in the fresh air and sunshine—to give my eyes a break from the computer, and to maintain my own physical and mental health—back when I was a staff employee. No, I had to be at my assigned desk, subject to every whim of male bosses who had secretaries handling the details of their jobs and wives handling the details of their homes.
Again, I am far from alone in wanting freedom from that machine. The top reasons women give today for pursuing freelance work include:
preferring to work from home (41% versus 31% men);
needing more flexibility in their schedule (39% versus 22% men);
feeling burned out (25% versus 17% men);
wanting to avoid an unpleasant or toxic work environment (26% versus 15% men);
experiencing a lack of enjoyment in their work (22% versus 13% men).
So many problems vanish if we simply have the freedom to be our own bosses—especially for caregivers, who are still disproportionately women. In one recent survey of home-based business owners, 45% of respondents reported having children. Among those who worked part time, women were more likely than men to stay at home.
There’s also the fact that a lot of us women just plain feel better as our own bosses. Nearly half of women who switch to contract work report improved mental health. That’s also true for so-called “gig work,” with 38% of those women reporting improved mental health.
Heck, many of us are healthier because we have the freedom to choose self-employment. UCLA Health found that compared to women who have a salary or work for wages, women who are self-employed have:
a 43% lower risk of reporting high blood pressure;
a 34% lower risk of reporting obesity;
a 30% lower risk of reporting diabetes.
Especially among those of us who are mid-career age, becoming our own bosses feels like a huge foot being lifted off our necks. AARP found that, among women older than 40 who launched a business between 2020 and 2022:
“[T]he vast majority of women (98%) agreed that they made the right decision in starting their business.”
Ninety-eight percent of those women felt they made the right decision.
To exercise their right to become their own bosses.
November 5, 2024
Our freedom as women to choose self-employment—to be healthier, to be happier, to earn a living that can pay for all our needs, and to live our lives without somebody else’s arbitrarily imposed limits—is on the ballot this autumn.
If you’re new to this policy issue, then I urge you to spend a few minutes learning the positions of the Democratic and Republican parties, and specifically of Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, former President Donald J. Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance.
Every single one of them has a record on this issue—and you just might be surprised by which candidates support women’s freedom to choose self-employment, versus the ones who have been trying, for years now, to restrict that freedom.
Personally, I have no interest in going back to the times of my grandmother and mother and aunts. America should never again be a place where women’s options are far more limited.
Deeply misguided lawmakers can keep trying to restrict my right to choose self-employment, but they can’t have it. I won’t give it.
Our freedom to be our own bosses is every bit as much a women’s issue as anything else. As an independent contractor, I am evaluating every candidate this year on the issue of self-employment, along with all the other issues that matter to me.
I want lawmakers to protect all my rights. I will be voting this fall as if my freedom to live the life of my own choosing depends on it.
Because it does.