By DEACON MIKE MANNO
(The
Wanderer) This month, the 8th to be exact, was celebrated as
International Women’s Day. It was, apparently, a big deal and I almost missed
it. But I quickly caught on when photos of Eleanor Roosevelt, Barbara Walters,
Clara Barton, and other notable women started appearing on my daily news feed.
I don’t mean to diminish it, but for me it was like a
husband who forgot his wedding anniversary. That’s something that you might get
away with once — anything beyond that, well, see a lawyer and do your best to
keep your pension.
But for the few who are allowed to make amends, let me do
that right now. Actually I started watching this subject some time ago, but I
think it’s time to bring it to your attention now. And while this issue clearly
affects women more than men (you’ll have to pardon me here, I’m assuming there
are only two sexes). The issue is COVID, childcare, and closed schools. Bad for
everybody, bad for families, and much badder for women.
During the span of my lifetime, women in society have made
remarkable gains in nearly all areas: academic, sports, science, business, and
politics, just to mention a few. However, it seems that lately society is
trying to consign them, or at least most of them, back to the second-class
status to which the leaders of the women’s movement claimed they were
originally confined.
The obvious, of course, is the gender-blending advocates
that want to allow biologically stronger males to compete in athletic
competitions against females, denying them the opportunity to compete in a fair
contest, including the loss of scholarships and advancement into certain areas
of women’s pro sports. You know who is pushing that, and why, and you
should keep that in mind when you vote. However, that is not the problem I’m
attempting to address. It is women in the workforce.
We all know intuitively that the COVID closings have been
harder on women in the job market than on men. The reason is simple: Many women
work in lower-paying retail jobs which were nearly eliminated in an attempt to
curb the spread of the disease. They were, therefore, unable to work from home.
Many other women, who could easily work from home, were unable to fully
participate in that option since children, child care, and school closings made
that almost impossible during the pandemic.
And nothing hurt these women more than the closing of
schools. And what is pouring salt on their wounds, now that the kids should be
back, is that teachers’ unions, who apparently don’t really care about kids,
are refusing to go back to the classrooms in many areas. That fact alone
complicates everything.
Recently a study by four university researchers from
Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Melbourne, the Maryland
Population Research Center, and the University of North Texas compiled a report
for Gender and Society, which is
described as the official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society. The
title of the article is: “The Gendered Consequences of a Weak Infrastructure of
Care: School Reopening Plans and Parents’ Employment During the COVID-19
Pandemic.”
The first thing I noticed about the report is that it was
very left leaning in suggesting certain alternatives such as state-funded
daycare and in attitudes toward governmental and employer responsibilities.
Those are topics we can debate, but the thrust of the report hits hard at what
is happening to working women with school-aged children.
The report begins with something that every member of a
teachers’ union or board of education should memorize:
“The unprecedented impact of COVID-19 on schools has
underscored their critical role, not only for children’s well-being, but also
parents’ employment — especially for mothers, who continue to do the bulk of
caregiving in families despite working for pay nearly on par with fathers.
Schools constitute the most expansive care infrastructure in the United States,
and school closures and uneven reopening have affected mothers far more than
fathers. . . . Some fear that the pandemic will unravel decades of feminist
gains in the paid labor force for women.”
It continues: “We find mothers’ labor force attachment
worsened relative to pre-pandemic levels in states that offered fully remote
instruction. As the pandemic continues into spring 2021, states with
significantly curtailed in-person learning will likely continue to see low
maternal labor force participation with the potential for devastating long-term
employment effects for many women with children.”
To conduct the study, the authors took three representative
states with different approaches to school openings to make their preliminary
findings: Maryland, which adopted an extensive remote learning model, New York,
which used a hybrid model for schools, and Texas, which used mostly in-person
learning.
Some of their findings: In Maryland mothers of
elementary-aged children were 16 percentage points less likely to be in the
labor force during the first semester of 2020 as compared to the similar time
in 2019. Over the same period the status of fathers dropped only five points.
In New York, with a hybrid method of instructional delivery
with in-person education two days per week, there was a drop in the mothers’
labor force participation of seven points, while fathers’ rate of drop was four
points from the prior academic year.
In Texas, where half the schools were in-person full-time,
the fathers’ drop-off rate was only three percent and the mothers’ rate was 10
points, which the authors called insignificant, “a larger shift than observed
in New York but one that is still nonsignificant and substantially smaller than
the changes observed in Maryland.”
The authors observed, “When schooling goes fully remote,
mothers’ employment suffers. This is observed clearly in Maryland, where
mothers’ labor force participation was dramatically reduced during the first
semester of the 2020 school year compared with the same period in 2019.
“Hybrid and in-person schooling in New York and Texas,
respectively, were associated with a less dramatic reduction in mothers’ labor
force participation. Across all states, mothers’ work attachment fell to a
greater extent than did that of fathers, but the gap is widest in Maryland,
where schooling was fully remote.”
The report concluded: “We find that the gender gap in
parents’ labor force participation grew the most in states where school
instruction was primarily remote, and least in states where hybrid or in-person
instruction were more commonly offered.”
Similar results were also reported by LinkedIn, where
mothers with children faced greater burdens during the pandemic. “That burden
only grew heavier when lockdowns forced schools and childcare facilities to
close: thirty-two percent of unemployed women surveyed in the United States
said they weren’t working because COVID disrupted their childcare.”
LinkedIn’s chief economist, Karin Kimbrough, opined, “I
think a lot of it was that women were just busy. They suddenly had kids at
home, they had childcare or eldercare responsibilities. And so they were
definitely pulled out of the workforce a bit.”
And Janine Chamberlin, LinkedIn’s senior director,
commented, “It’s clear that Covid-19 is having a devastating impact on women’s
careers. Women have been more adversely affected by disruptions to the retail,
travel, and leisure industries which employ a relatively greater share of women
and often aren’t remote-ready roles. Our data also clearly shows women are
applying to fewer roles and are also taking on a disproportionate share of care
responsibilities.”
And, just to be on the safe side, I called a friend of mine
who is an HR manager, and a working mother herself, and asked if she saw this
pattern. Yes, she said, and it goes even further. “They are not applying for
jobs; not even for the evening positions.”
Of course with all the responsibilities mothers have in
today’s economy, none of this should seem surprising. We’ve come a long way
since Beaver had a stay-at-home mom, and there are a lot of reasons why there
has been that change. Bottom line, however, is that mothers do have a more
difficult time balancing job and family — something June Cleaver never had to
do.
One way to help: Open the schools. If you won’t do it for
the children, do it for your mom.
(You can
reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m.
Central on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)
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