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Americans have had their lives upended by the COVID-19 crisis. Most states issued stay-at-home orders in response to the pandemic, closing our schools, restaurants, and office buildings. Many women, including those who work at the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor find themselves working from home while caring for families and children.
We now look ahead to what life will be like as states reopen. We will have to address the challenges to working women that lie ahead.
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As of 2019, 72.3 percent of mothers with minor children are in the workforce, but COVID-19 has caused them to have a childcare burden far beyond their expectations.
Some women, like the approximately 3.7 million women who work as registered nurses, have to adjust to these challenges while still reporting to work. Others may experience the brunt of layoffs as companies implement “last in, first out” policies because women filled the majority of the new jobs created in 2018 and 2019.
President Trump and his administration have acted quickly to help the women, and men, who face economic hardship and unemployment caused by COVID-19. Between new paid leave benefits, direct cash payments to families, and enhanced unemployment insurance, the President’s efforts will help women and their families outlast the virus and return to a more normal life.
COVID-19 has put issues like childcare and paid leave front and center, not just for women, but also for all workers.
As the nation explores these questions, this Mother's Day, I implore everyone to reflect on the experiences of their mothers and grandmothers as they search for answers. Not only do their stories demonstrate resilience and dignity of work and the importance of women-dominated professions then and now, but they demonstrate how far we have already come.
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I, for one, can reflect on my mother's experience as a nurse. Only retiring in 2016, Deb Todd worked long hours at a kidney dialysis center in Arizona, yet somehow was always home in time to make dinner and manage a household of five girls.
Women like my mother worked 8-12 hour days, often in women-dominated fields such as nursing or as administrative assistants, and still had the "second shift," when they came home. The second shift may still fall disproportionately upon women, but we’re hopeful recent prosperity and the technological revolution of the gig economy will lighten the burden.