A pandemic recovery doesn’t succeed unless women are included, and helped

Why is it that most elected leaders, companies and communities across the nation are not adequately addressing the huge toll the pandemic is taking on women?

After all, the economic stability of women is integral for our country’s economy to experience lasting and continued growth.

Before the pandemic, women made up roughly 50% of the American workforce, and nearly a quarter of them were single mothers. During the pandemic in 2020, more than 2 million women left the labor force. Women are now at their lowest workforce-participation level since 1988.

Women’s jobs have been nearly twice as vulnerable as men’s during this crisis. In a recent jobs report from the National Women’s Law Center, men gained about 16,000 jobs in December 2020, while women lost about 140,000 jobs during the same month.

Job losses in female-dominated industries such as hospitality have resulted in many women being out of work, while women in professional jobs have faced the difficulty of balancing child care with paid work — in some cases leaving their jobs or experiencing wrongful termination because of these challenges.

At the same time women lost paid jobs, they took on more unpaid work in the home, including home schooling of their children and caring for their family members. These women do not have access to paid sick time or health insurance or flexible work schedules. In many cases, they lack access to health care, housing support, home mortgages, business-loan opportunities and relief programs for student loans.

The problem is not just that women have been laid off — it’s that COVID has brought to light a set of difficulties for women in the workforce, who do not have good safeguards.

What can, and should, we be doing about it?

First, we need to recognize that the child-care sector and care for the elderly are integral to our economic growth and stability. We cannot have a swift recovery unless we can get women back into the labor force. That means having options for them such as good paid family medical-leave policy.

Additionally, women must have a seat at the table everywhere that decisions are being made. Whether those decisions take place in our halls of Congress, statehouses, county commissions and city councils, or in the offices of Wall Street, the tech industry or the media who tell our stories, it’s vital that women be present, along with people of varying ethnicities and ages.

We need to have these various experiences and perspectives behind our decisions. When that happens, the voices around the table provide a fuller decision-making authority on behalf of society, because they see and reflect society in a richer context.

Furthermore, we need to move beyond simply training women in how to enter a chosen field. We need to offer more virtual post-secondary, graduate and doctoral degree programs and opportunities. We need to open our networks to women and develop more welcoming professional mentorship programs, as well as more accessible home-mortgage and business-loan opportunities focused on potential growth and not based on unforgiving credit scores.

We need to make sure these initiatives are fully funded, supported and accessible. Today, too many women find these pathways inaccessible to them. They also encounter obstacles that almost ensure failure instead of success.

So, as we go forward with economic recovery from the pandemic, who is going to speak up, step forward, and help provide solutions and do what is needed to support women — the people who give birth to all and often do for others before themselves? If this is our goal, the result will be a better, stronger economy.