Policymakers and the journalistic community have turned their attention to difficulties facing American men, especially young and middle aged men who are increasingly falling away from college and, in some cases, full-time work. Yet, in my book Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics, I demonstrate that the American public is very concerned about women’s economic opportunity. In two surveys, I asked representative samples of American adults whether they thought economic inequalities across class, race, and sex were due to individual characteristics (such as differences in work ethic) or structural factors (such as discrimination or lack of access to good jobs). The former are often thought of as “fair” reasons for inequality, the latter as “unfair” and thus as cause for concern. On balance, Americans were surprisingly sympathetic to lower earning individuals and groups, but they were most concerned about women’s lower earnings relative to men. When asked in one of the surveys to speak in their own words about what barriers they perceived to economic advancement for a wide variety of groups, gender discrimination was one of the most popular responses.

Our nation is working its way through an acknowledgement of, and recalibration regarding, important obstacles to economic success faced by men. This is perhaps as it should be, given that, for decades, we made inappropriate assumptions about the ability of men to “work their way up” when economic opportunities were in fact not abundant. But this acknowledgement should not come at the expense of attention to the continued economic difficulties women face. Despite their greater educational attainment, women continue to earn considerably less than men on average. Women are more likely than men to be in poverty and this difference increases with age. Elderly women are especially vulnerable to “late onset” homelessness, something I have seen up close on the streets and in homeless shelters in the Washington D.C. area. I am persuaded by recent economic research that much of the “gender gap” in income and poverty rates is due to motherhood, not directly to discrimination. Yet, the particularly great economic burdens of motherhood that American women face are themselves an indirect result of gender traditionalism. Our public policies around childbearing and childcare are designed for an America of the 1950s, not the 2020s (or any time in between). We are the only OECD country that does not provide guaranteed paid parental leave. Unpaid leave is a paltry twelve weeks and is not guaranteed for a significant proportion of women due to company size and other restrictions. We similarly regulate and subsidize child care at a lower rate than nearly all other advanced economies, leading to exorbitant child care costs. As a result, many women who would prefer to work drop out of the labor force for extended periods when they become mothers. Some have support from a partner or spouse, but many do not. For those of us worried about declining birth rates, it is also worth noting that many women choose not to become mothers for these same reasons.

Not every economic barrier that women face is linked to their sex or gender: poor and working class women also face the same barriers as similarly situated men. Rising housing, health care, and transportation costs are well documented, as is difficulty entering the job market and job insecurity once there. By some estimates, approximately forty percent of full-time workers do not earn a living wage.

The American Dream isn’t real for American men, and it turns out it isn’t for women either.