I’m part of the “she-cession”, now what?
February 3, 2020 was the last day that I worked. I decided to leave my senior management position after being completely burned out from 6 grueling years of start-up life. I had five (glorious) weeks to decompress before we went into shelter-in-place for Covid-19. The first week of SIP I began supporting my daughter’s remote learning in kindergarten and managing my Grandmother’s treatment for breast cancer. The second week my partner’s firm laid off and furloughed six-thousand employees and the rest took a 20% pay deduction (he was in the latter bucket). Our lives were shadows of what they once were.
Remote school for my daughter continued the next year in pod format, with me sharing the support duties with another mother who left the workforce. The return to in-person school would come eventually, but the schedule varied and came with a plethora of rules to follow, such as who we could be around without masks and a required 7-day quarantine if we travelled more than 100 miles from our home. A child sneezing could cause the school to send them home and require a negative covid test to return. We lived on the edge everyday, not knowing what may come up, but persevered so that our daughter could continue her education and have much needed social interaction.
I carried the constant fear of covid exposure and transmission as I shuffled between our home and that of my elderly Grandparents, who were high risk. Although I initially intended to take 3 months off of work, that timeline kept getting pushed back. The thought of going back to work under such challenging circumstances was overwhelming. My previous company was in the live events space; nothing existed for me to go back to. Not only had my priorities changed, but my career would need reimagining as well.
According to the latest U.S. labor statistics, I am one of 1.8 million women that left the workforce during the pandemic (aka the “she-cession”) and have not re-entered. Through the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government is offering support to eligible families by providing monthly child tax payments and investing $39 billion in childcare to help support women returning to work. It should be noted that “work” is nonspecific and there is a spectrum of types of work and industries that are more impacted than others, like retail, manufacturing and customer service positions. For my purposes, I will be taking the perspective of professional industries and generalized “office jobs” that can be performed in-person, hybrid and remote. Here are a few ideas for what organizations and the government can do to welcome women back.
Create More Part Time or Flextime Positions
Organizations need to look at designing more part-time and flextime roles throughout their organization and at ALL levels. A brief Google search of part-time work for moms, brings up lists of low paying clerical jobs that would not even bring them above the poverty line. A professional woman shouldn’t have to accept a lower position just because she is seeking part-time hours, nor should she be valued any less.
The 40 hour work week became law in 1940 and is overdue for revision to meet the technological advancements of the present day. Organizations can require being online during overlap times to ensure that teams are interacting, and asynchronous work can be done when it works for the individual. The emphasis should be on delivering the required work and not clocking in and out.
Allow for Benefits for Part-Time Positions
Most organizations offer limited or no benefits for individuals that work less than 31 hours a week. They miss out on medical benefits, 401k and matching programs, stock options and bonuses, all of which can impact the stability of an individual’s income now and in the future. The government needs to look at the potential long term issues here– overall poorer health and less financial security for retirement– and incentivize organizations to offer benefits to part-time roles.
Allow for 401k Catch Up Contributions
In addition to women’s loss of income during the pandemic, they also lost the ability to contribute to their 401k, benefit from tax breaks and compounded interest growth. According to Investopedia, employees can contribute up to $19,500 to their 401(k) plan for 2021 and $20,500 for 2022. Anyone age 50 or over is eligible for an additional catch-up contribution of $6,500 in 2021 and 2022. Similar to allowing those over 50 to make “catch up” payments to their 401k, legislation should be introduced to expand this benefit to women returning to the workforce.
Conclusion
There is no one answer to address how to welcome women back to the workforce and there will be different motivations for each individual. Through a combination of intentional redesign of part-time opportunities, offering benefits to part-time employees and financial incentives, there can be expanded opportunities for women to consider.
Sources:
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