Balancing home and work demands

The pandemic threatens to upend decades of progress women have made in the workplace. As most schools shift to some version of remote learning—either full time or a hybrid model—women are being forced to make difficult decisions about further balancing their roles at work and home.

Women already take on the lion’s share of healthcare responsibilities for most families: Mothers make about 80% of healthcare decisions for their children, according to the U.S. Labor Department. And 75% of caregivers are women, with many spending 50% more time providing care than men, the Institute on Aging found. It’s partly why Ninfa Saunders, president and CEO of Macon, Ga.-based Navicent Health, calls women the “CEO of their household.”

“We are going to lose progress if we don’t figure out creative ways to really work with families, to work with women—people that take care of so many generations,” said Nancy Schlichting, former CEO of Detroitbased Henry Ford Health System and now retired.

Allowing employees to work from home, which companies have become more comfortable with amid the shelter-in-place restrictions, could help relieve some burden on women and combat burnout, industry leaders said.

“One of the great aspects of the pandemic was remote work. Now we can have that remote workforce,” said Dr. Joanne Conroy, president and CEO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, based in Lebanon, N.H.

Conroy said her organization started a group for female physicians so they can support each other and relieve some stress.

“They’ve created a leadership curriculum, created learning circles based on the Lean In methodology, but frankly they love the time together. It addresses the loneliness that I think some professional women at every single level feel.”