By Nadia Khan
Years of work and millions of dollars devoted to gender equality in the workforce are disappearing into thin air. As pressures mount in the midst of COVID-19, working women are shouldering new burdens and making the difficult decision to quit their jobs. This turn for the worse in the hard-fought struggle for workplace gender equality is fueled by latent socio-economic inequalities that the pandemic has laid bare. As many as 2 million women report planning to leave the workforce. By some estimates, women would be set back half a decade.
There are also structural setbacks. Traditionally, economic downturns have been termed “mancessions,” for their disproportionate impact on men’s employment and wage rates. However, the pandemic rendered the opposite effect: women’s employment dropped by 17.8% from February to June 2020, compared to 15.8% for men. The gender gap in hours worked is even larger: between February and May, women’s average hours fell 27%, versus a drop of only 20% for men.While women constitute 47% of the US labor force, they accounted for 54% of initial coronavirus-related job losses and still make up 49% of them.
This decrease in female employment during the pandemic could be explained by the fact that women were hit the hardest, and earliest, by layoffs in the industries most devastated by the pandemic, like healthcare, retail, and restaurants. Additionally, the National Bureau of Economic Research reported another gendered disadvantage in pandemic employment –– women are underrepresented in the occupations best suited to the transition to telecommuting. This means that women’s employment is more vulnerable in the socially-distanced work environments.
The COVID crisis also exposed numerous defects in our nation’s socio-economic infrastructure that have made it nearly impossible for women to cope with the stresses of job and family life. Stunningly, women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate of men. In September alone, the Labor Department reported that 865,000 women aged 20 and older dropped out of the American workforce compared with 216,000 men in the same age group.
Nationwide school and daycare center closings have generated childcare shortages, adversely impacting mothers’ professional prospects, as the majority of mothers say they are responsible for either all or most domestic duties. Among married parents who both work full time, mothers account for 40% more of childcare responsibilities than fathers do. Forty percent of working women report spending an additional three or more hours a day on child care and home responsibilities than before the pandemic, while only 27% of fathers said the same.
These domestic burdens, disproportionately placed on mothers, widen the wage gap and reverse multimillion dollar corporate gender equality initiatives –– effects likely to extend into the foreseeable future. Considering these burdens, it is imperative to increase women’s access to childcare services for the nation’s full economic recovery. In 30% of households with children, all are under the age of six. Furthermore, 32% of the US workforce has a child under the age of 14 in their household, and two-thirds of these households do not include a stay-at-home adult to help out. If employers or the government subsidized the childcare resources working women
need to ensure their children are taken care of, they would in turn enable women to dedicate more of their time and efforts towards their careers.
Another key driver is lack of social support. The differential response to familial stress between men and women in the workforce is startling: 20% of women reported considering leaving work, compared to only 11% of men. This rate rises to nearly 25% for women with young children. Additionally, 15% of women have considered dialing back their responsibilities at work to better cope with a more demanding home environment.
With these two factors –– lack of public infrastructure to serve working mothers and restrictive gender norms –– it is no surprise that women are leaving the workforce at four times the rate of men.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however: this crisis also revealed vast opportunities for corporate change. If companies take heed of its female employees’ demands and translate them into actionable solutions, the reward is two-fold. Higher retention rates will mean that strides toward workplace gender inequality will not be undone, and any additional efforts to improve workplace equality will be built on a strong foundation.
And indeed, some companies have made attempts at damage control for their female employees. More than half have increased paid leave, which is an important first step considering many employees need time off but are not financially stable enough to miss pay, and one third have added or expanded stipends to offset costs related to working from home.
Pharmaceutical giant Bayer exemplifies positive corporate intervention for female employees’ coronavirus-related stress. Bayer’s U.S. branches have increased female representation in upper management ranks, from 28% in 2010, to 40% in 2020. Part of their success championing women in senior-level positions can be attributed to the company’s heightened sensitivity to the obstacles women face climbing the corporate ladder. Since the onset of the pandemic, Bayer has been keeping close track of how many women are still seeking promotions. The company also expanded employee benefits like childcare and homeschooling assistance. Bayer management have also taken an active role in helping women employees maintain work-life balance –- from not scheduling early meetings to awarding much-needed breaks.
“I still see women getting that next big job, and some have young children. So the good news is they are figuring it out, hopefully with our help,” says Bayer executive Lisa Safarian. As founder of the gender advocacy group Lean In, Rachel Thomas reminds us, “You may be struggling now, but if you don’t dig deep, if you don’t make major investments in supporting working parents in different ways, you will have lost years of hard-earned progress.”