As the pandemic continues to decimate the job market, the threat to women’s careers has never been greater.
The total number of women who have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic surpassed 2.3 million last month, making women’s labor force participation the lowest it’s been since 1988, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly job report. To compare, nearly 1.8 million men have left the labor force since February 2020, the report found.
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“A working father may be praised for being both a great worker and father,” Yang says. “But for women there is this inherent bias that because she’s caregiving for her child, she’s not as invested in her work.”
For women with children, COVID-19 interrupted the delicate balance many working mothers have learned to strike. Without the right amount of support, the strain has reached a breaking point.
“Moms are currently in a delicate balancing act and many are unfortunately going to topple over due to the unrelenting pressures of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic,” Dr. Pam Cohen, president of WerkLabs, said in a release. “Women are drowning in an attempt to maintain both careers and family.”
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“The longer women are out of the workforce, the harder it is to actually get back in,” says Jennifer Reynolds, CEO of Toronto Finance International. “Every month and year you're out of the workforce contributes to increasing the wage gap between others who have been in the workforce.”
While mothers have had their own unique challenges, unemployment numbers among women of color across the board continue to rise. LatinX women under the age of 20 have nearly doubled their pre-pandemic rates at 8.8%, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Close behind are Black and Asian women at 8.5% and 7.9%, respectively.
The problem isn’t just COVID, but a larger issue that has plagued women for decades, Yang says. Organizations need to boost support for their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to create spaces for women to succeed.
“It’s about that commitment to ensuring that there are women moving through the pipeline,” she says.