Before the pandemic hit, Tia Ferguson worked at Ohio’s largest school district as a substitute teacher. In December 2019, she gave birth three months early to her stillborn son. She had just returned from her unpaid maternity leave in February 2020 when she suddenly became unemployed during the first national shutdown almost a year ago.
After those previous unpaid months off to care for her health and her son, Tia, like too many others, did not have a safety net when this unforeseen crisis struck America. On top of that, her medical issues put her in the high-risk category, making it unsafe for her to return to in-person work for the foreseeable future.
Her story is not an anomaly. The pandemic has crucially affected women in the U.S. workforce, with more than 4 million either laid off or forced to leave the job market since last March according to the latest jobs report. The unemployment rate is 8.9 percent for Black women and 8.5 percent for Latina women, compared to 5.2 percent for white women. Countless women have experienced sharp employment losses because their work was not pandemic-proof or able to be done at home. Add to that an increase in child care needs caused by school and daycare closures that have fallen on the shoulders of mothers, and you have a recipe that’s made it impossible for many women, including myself, to work.
ADVERTISEMENT
In April 2020, the organization I worked for in Florida informed me that they would be shutting down permanently. I did not ever foresee a scenario like a pandemic that would cause me to lose my full-time job. With a 10-year-old daughter to care for and a husband already working two jobs in the health-care industry, I was extremely worried and uncertain about my career and what my next moves would be.
In this organization, I had the rare benefit of flexibility—they understood and took into consideration that I was a mother. I was able to pick up my daughter from school and return to the office with her. Suddenly, that was no longer a reality for me. To make matters worse, we soon realized that as a frontline worker my husband was risking his life every time he went to work. And then our schools were shut down and my daughter, like millions of other children, became isolated from her peers. Since I was unemployed, it made the most sense for me to stay at home to care for our daughter and manage our household.
Like millions of families, we have no alternative for childcare. As the pandemic continued, the plan for me to return back to work appeared extremely grim. Besides caring for my daughter and home, I also had to become her second teacher as she started online learning. I have been unemployed for almost a year now and still without child care, so returning to the workforce is just not an option for me now.
This is the cry of mothers heard across the United States and around the world right now. During this pandemic many women are being forced to choose between their family and careers, setting us back decades in the span of one year.
But we are resilient creatures. In the midst of all that Tia has going on, she is optimistic and is planning for her future. She is taking this time to focus on building her own literacy tutoring business and achieving financial stability. “My husband and I are re-imagining what success looks like; and for us that is living below our means, being financially wise, self-employed, and ending the cycle of poverty for our children,” she told me.
We cannot survive as a nation if we don’t support our women and mothers, who are the backbone of our society.
America’s economy will continue to suffer if millions of women and mothers are left out of the workforce. A report by the Center for American Progress estimated that the risk of mothers leaving the labor force amounts to $64.5 billion a year in lost wages and economic activity. The loss of so many women out of the workforce will be felt for generations as it contributes to the cycle of child poverty and the weakening of gender equality in the home and at work. It is a lack of paid family leave and other family-forward workplace conditions and the undervaluing of care work that got us into this position in the first place.
We are one of the richest countries in the world that doesn’t offer a structure to help parents take care of their children and put food on the table, but Congress and this new administration can change that. Including $40 billion for child care in the American Rescue Plan would offer a great relief for women, especially mothers and care workers. We also immediately need expanded unemployment insurance for the duration of this crisis, recurring stimulus checks, and direct relief funds for small Black and brown owned businesses.
Long-term, it’s time to build a real sustainable child care infrastructure. The Marshall Plan for Moms is a 360-plan to get women back to work that includes direct payments to moms who have had to swap labor in the workforce for labor at home, paid family leave and pay equity and retraining programs that will help women return to work. The Child Care for Working Families Act helps ensure equity along with good paying care jobs. A Just Recovery squad at Community Change is fighting for an economic foundation that supports women beyond the pandemic.
There are any number of solutions out there, but what’s clear is this is an issue we can no longer ignore. From Tia’s struggle in Ohio to mine in Florida, women are sharing their stories, refusing to take a backseat any longer, and devising strategies to ensure that child care is seen as a public good. We need to pass policies that provide all families with affordable and quality care and prioritize the needs of the Black and brown families most affected.
