“When the pandemic started, I felt like I was just grinning and bearing it, and now I'm at my breaking point. I turned into a nanny, cook, tech support, cleaner, and mental health counselor – everything, all in the day. I was barely keeping it together…Most moms I know are reaching their breaking point.”
– Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO, Girls Who Code
Every working mom has a story to tell about the collision of work and motherhood in the time of COVID. At scale, these personal experiences add up to a national crisis: women are leaving the workforce in droves. Feeling forced to choose between their jobs and unprecedented childcare demands, millions of working moms are choosing their children.
The scope of the crisis motivated Saujani to launch The Marshall Plan for Moms, an urgent call for the Biden administration to take swift action to support moms through the pandemic.
But the mass exodus of women from the labor force is not just a matter of federal policy: the crisis also demands action from employers. In a webinar hosted by From Day One, Saujani and Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven Clinic, addressed the urgent need and opportunity for employers to make working motherhood work—and steps HR Benefits Leaders can take today to make an impact.
COVID-19 magnifies deep inequities, opening the door to change
Data captures the pandemic’s devastating and disproportionate toll on women:
- Nearly 2.2 million women left the labor force between February and October 2020.1
- 80% of the 1.1 million workers (865,000) who left the labor force in the month of September 2020 alone – when schools across the country shut their doors – were women, including 324,000 Latinas and 58,000 Black women.2
- All 140,000 jobs lost in the U.S. in December 2020 were held by women, and predominantly women of color.3
The impact to emotional and mental health is equally alarming and disproportionate, with an estimated 2.4 million additional cases of burnout estimated among working mothers due to unequal demands of home and work.4 Thirty-three percent of Black mothers are experiencing burnout, compared to 25% of white mothers.5
The scope of the crisis is unprecedented, with far-reaching negative impact not just to moms and children but to families, business, the economy and society. But the root problems are hardly new. Forty-three percent of women leave their careers within one year of having a baby.6 In 2018, only 8.7% of Black American adults received mental health services, compared to 18.6% of non-Hispanic white adults.7
In the wake of its devastation, the pandemic is putting a magnifying glass on deep, long-standing inequities – and exposing the need to take real action for lasting change.
“If we ever had a time to change culture it's now,” said Saujani. “We have an opportunity to fundamentally change motherhood in this country once and for all.” And because many more HR leaders now have a seat at the table, Ryder explained, they can help lead the way.
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