There is a need for more support and investment in childcare and care work as the U.S. opens its economy back up, according to scholars who participated in a virtual panel titled “The Economics of Care: What’s at Stake for Women in the Workforce,” hosted by the Center for American Progress on Tuesday.
According to the event description, women have suffered disproportionately from job losses and insufficient caregiving supports, resulting in 4.2 million fewer women employed and almost 1.8 million fewer women in the labor force as of May 2021. The overall labor force participation rate for women is 57.4%, the lowest since 1988.
Women of color suffer higher unemployment rates than White counterparts, according to experts. These are the result of policy failures, such as lack of a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program and gaps in affordable child care access, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic’s caregiving crisis.
Dr. Lisa Cook, professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University, said that her research shows that if women’s participation was higher in the innovation economy, the economy could improve. Child care and family leave may also help to boost participation, she added.
“So if we’re not using all of the human resources we have in the economy and making it possible for people to participate, then we are leaving $20 bills – as economists say – on the ground,” Cook said. “We’re not maximizing our potential and we’re not raising living standards as much as we could. And one of the main policies that I have talked about, in terms of augmenting women’s participation in the innovation economy, is childcare and family leave. That’s why I would suggest that these conversations can’t be separate if we’re really talking about equitable, broad-based, long-run growth and augmenting living standards, not just the recovery but a sustainable economy.”
As it stands now, the ways that the U.S. government invests in families and youth is lacking, said Dr. Aaron Sojourner, an associate professor of economics and labor economist at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
“That means that families are being crushed by this dual responsibility of care and earning. You have to put a roof over your family’s head and you have to provide care for a child who really needs care all the time,” Sojourner said. “Parents are stretched.”
