 This is our very first hybrid event. We haven't been in person in years. We've never done a hybrid event before, so I hope everyone in the room and watching online gives us a whole lot of grace today. We're going to do our best. But it's really exciting. It's so great to be here. So on behalf of the Better Life Lab and the Council on Contemporary Families, I want to welcome all of you here and also online, hopefully across the country or world. I'm Bridget Schulte. I'm a writer, journalist, and the director of the Better Life Lab. And I also want to welcome you all here on International Women's Day. And I think it's perfectly appropriate, perfectly appropriate to then be here talking about gender equality, where we are, where we've been, and really where we need to go. So I don't need to tell anyone here to level set sort of where we've been. You know, decades before the pandemic, gender equality has been a very slow, and in some cases, many of you here have written about astalled gender progress. You know, women entered the workforce in mass. Their lives changed utterly in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and on. And very little in the United States changed with them. We really didn't get any family support of public policy. We still don't. Businesses would sort of grudgingly maybe give some kind of flexibility or scheduled control to a select few. But that was always seen as an accommodation for a lesser worker. You know, fast track to the mommy track, so to speak. And for many low-wage or essential workers, they were often left out with absolutely nothing. Men didn't change much either, you know, when it comes to the division of labor. You know, so we were left really up for the pandemic in a situation where women were, you know, the old not just having it all, but really doing it all, really burdened with not only work, but heavy care responsibilities, still being seen as the primary care response, primary or the default carer. You know, not just for children, but for loved ones with disabilities for, you know, for aging parents. So, you know, that led to enormous gender gaps, wealth gaps, power gaps, enormous gender inequality, as so many of you here and online have been studying and writing and thinking about for so long. And so that leads us to the pandemic, and we all know what happened. Overnight, all of that lack of care infrastructure, all of that inequality really was laid bare. If you didn't know it, it was absolutely apparent you couldn't miss it. And so that's what we're really going to be doing today, is what did we learn three years into it? Where, yes, we've got vaccines, you know, yes, there's more herd immunity, but there are still variants circulating out there. There's still immunocompromised people. We're still in the midst of, you know, explosions of cold RSV and flu. If you've got children, you know, child care is just as disrupted now for many as it was at the height of the pandemic. So we're still not out of this pandemic. Where do we go? You know, what is the business leadership from the top we need? What is the demand from the bottom that we need? What is the legislation, the policy, the regulation, and even the litigation that we need to really move forward? So that's what we're going to talk about today. The last thing I'll leave you with is last week, we had an event with a brilliant Jodi Heyman and her team at the World Policy Analysis Center. And one of the things that our fellow Haley Swenson has written about is that gender equality, achieving gender parity, the World Economic Forum, anticipates will take us 99 years, 257 years for equal labor force participation, 268 years for closing the economic gender gap. So I think we can do better than that. Jodi and her colleagues argue that we can have gender equality in our lifetime, but it will take a lot of work. So let's get to it. So just a little bit of housekeeping business before I introduce our two main presenters. So attendees joining us virtually, you can submit your questions through the Slido box, which is located to the right hand of your screen. And for attendees in the room with us, you can scan the QR codes on your table to submit questions. You know, that will open up the Slido box and you can type your question in. We'll get them on an iPad. We'll be able to ask them that way. For those of you who might be technologically challenged or who might be having Wi-Fi issues, there's also pen and paper, good old school modes of communication, and then write your questions on the paper and then we'll have a staffer at the back. You can just drop them off there and they will add them to the Slido. So we really want this to be interactive, lots of opportunity for questions. The event today will have Richard and Dan present their research. That's going to be followed by a fireside chat that we have with Representative Ro Khanna, who has a very interesting frame on childcare, paid leave and family policies, including it in what he calls an economic patriotism agenda. So we'll be talking about that and then followed by a panel discussion. So without further ado, let me introduce our two presenters. So Dan Carlson is known to many of you. He is an Associate Professor in Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. His research examines the links between family process, social inequalities and health disparities with a particular focus on gender inequalities in families. He's on the board for the Council on Contemporary Families and Deputy Editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family. His research findings have been published in numerous academic journals, and he's also been featured in a number of national and international outlets. And Richard Petz, he's a Professor of Sociology at Ball State University. His research focuses on the intersection of family work, gender and policy with a specific emphasis on parental leave, father involvement and workplace flexibility as policies and practices that can reduce gender inequality, promote greater work family balance and improve family well-being. His new book, Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States, Contemporary Norms and Barriers, focuses on the issues of persisting gender inequality in the realms of both domestic and paid work, seeking to understand barriers to greater father involvement at home and identify strategies to increase father involvement and promote greater gender equality. They, I could go on, they're both incredibly accomplished and I will leave that to them to take it from here. So, again, welcome. Thanks, Bridget, for that introduction. And thank you to everyone attending this symposium today, whether in person or online. The camera's over there. Hello. Welcome. Before we get started, Richard and I would just like to extend some thanks to the people who made Today Possible. So thank you to Bridget Schulte and Rebecca Gale and Haley Swenson at the Better Life Lab for this plan, this event. Thank you to Angela Spadette and the folks at New America for allowing us to use the space and helping us organize this. Thank you to the Council and Contemporary Families for cosponsoring this event and to the National Science Foundation for funding our work. And, you know, last but not least, thank you, where is she? To Joanna Pepin. Raise your hand. Thank you, Joanna. Joanna worked with us to draft and field the initial survey for this study back in spring of 2020. And indeed, back in March 2020, Joanna, Richard and I were working on a paper using the American Time Use Survey. And the pandemic hit. And so we asked the question, was anybody at the American Time Use Survey collecting data on parents' time use and really back then time seemed of the essence to capture the effects of societal lockdowns and school closures and furloughs and remote work on parents' work and family. And we found out that the American Time Use Survey had been suspended. So we moved very quickly to develop and field the survey which we titled the study Parents' Division of Labor with the SPDLC. Back then, none of us really envisioned how long the pandemic would last. And we certainly did not anticipate that we would be standing here three years on the cusp of the anniversary of that pandemic on National Wednesday ready to share four waves of data about changes in parents' lives during the pandemic, but nevertheless right here we are. The SPDLC was designed to assess changes in parents' divisions of labor during the pandemic to identify the factors that were implicated in those changes and then to consider the consequences of those changes for gender inequality long-term and parents' well-being. Now, because we focus on the division of labor and families our survey really was designed for partnered parents with children in the home. And though we talk about sex couples and same-sex couples we're going to talk to you today largely about our findings related to different sex couples. We administered this survey via Prolific which cultivates panelists for opt-in online surveys. So we have a panelist that we followed for four waves first wave in April 2020, then again in November 2020, October 2021 and October 2022. At each of those waves we also introduced a new set of respondents and incorporated them into the panel and have followed them since. So today we've surveyed just over 4,500 unique parents who reported for themselves and their partners and around 60 percent of those folks have participated in at least one follow-up. So as I mentioned the primary aim of this study was to assess changes in parents' divisions of both paid and unpaid labor during the pandemic. Indeed, those divisions of labor did change. And they changed in some very interesting and patterned ways that I'm going to talk to you about today. So first, let's look at the division of domestic labor and housework and childcare. So prior to the pandemic in different sex couples the majority of folks were in what we call a traditional arrangement where mothers were primary responsible for these domestic tasks but this changed early in the pandemic as fathers started doing a larger share of housework and childcare. And so early in the pandemic nontraditional arrangements where partners were either sharing domestic responsibilities equally or maybe fathers were doing the majority of tasks themselves this became just as prevalent as traditional arrangements. Now over time we have reverted back in a lot of ways to the pre-pandemic situation that remains a small but significant increase in the number of couples that have nontraditional domestic arrangements today. Of course general trends are great for understanding change but it's also important to realize that parents experiences vary and that they all didn't experience the pandemic in the same way. And so what we wanted to do was identify different trajectories of change for parents divisions of labor. And so you see the results of those trajectories here on the screen. Now the first thing I want to point out is that for the vast majority of couples their arrangements didn't change. They either maintained a traditional division of housework and childcare across the pandemic or they maintained a nontraditional division across the pandemic. But for a nontrivial proportion there was change. Some of that change has been more permanent. So if we look first at housework here on the right the gray line shows that about 25% of couples went from being more likely to have a traditional housework arrangement before the pandemic to now being more likely to have a nontraditional arrangement. And we see something very similar with childcare. The blue line for the childcare graph shows that about 20% of parents went from having a traditional arrangement before the pandemic to a nontraditional arrangement in early April and have maintained that arrangement for the last three years. The black line shows that roughly one in six parenting couples transitioned to a nontraditional arrangement early in the pandemic and then eventually reverted back to a traditional arrangement by fall of 2021. It is well documented with respect to paid work that both mothers and fathers suffered job loss early in the pandemic and that this was especially true for mothers. So both with respect to their overall employment as well as their paid work hours. But by fall 2022 we see that there's been a lot of rebound right fathers rates of employment are just as high today as they were pre-pandemic and at least as of fall 2022 mothers employment rates were higher than they were pre-pandemic. We've seen some rebound in paid work hours but on average both mothers and fathers are still working a little bit less than what they were before the pandemic started. Again however there's variation here and it's important to recognize that variation. Because mothers employment has been maybe the primary concern of most people during this pandemic we're going to focus here today on mothers employment trajectories. So first looking at the graph on the left. What we see is that for the vast majority of mothers their employment situation was stable the gray line at the top shows about 60% of mothers were continuously employed have been continuously employed across the pandemic the black line on the bottom shows that about 20% have been continuously out of the labor force. But the blue line shows that around like 8% of mothers left the labor force early in the pandemic and have slowly returned while the red line shows that 1% of mothers were not employed prior to the pandemic and have entered the labor force. Now this group is super important because discussions of the rebound in women's or mothers employment does not take this group into account and therefore mask the fact that there still remains a substantial proportion of mothers who left the labor force and have yet to return to the labor force. Looking at mothers paid work hours and those trajectories on the right majority of moms they were working full-time prior to the pandemic and maintained full-time employment that's about 60% of mothers but about 15% of mothers which is represented by the blue line they substantially reduced their paid work hours early in the pandemic and have returned to full-time work. The red and black lines show us that long-term reductions in paid work hours were observed amongst mothers who were working part-time prior to the pandemic. So the black line shows that about 20% of mothers were working part-time and have slowly continued to reduce their paid work hours and then the red line shows that roughly 7% of mothers had the weakest labor force attachment they have left the labor force altogether. So overall then what do the trends show? Movement towards gender egalitarianism over the last three years slight increases in non-traditional divisions of domestic labor more labor force participation for mothers today than pre-pandemic and so that begs the question then what was producing changes, right? A lot of families there was a lot of stability not a lot of change but for a non-trivial proportion there was change. Some of that change was temporary permanent and when we think about change during the pandemic maybe the better question is what didn't change because everything seemed to change and a lot of things that are related to the division of labor changed there was changes in domestic supports there was changes in job flexibility there was obviously job loss there was changes in income income loss and changes in bread-winning status there was increases in our access to paid leave there was COVID itself in the threat of exposure and the stress associated with that and then there's been some research showing that parents' gender attitudes changed that one thing about so much change across so many domains is that it's difficult therefore to identify which changes mattered especially for parents divisions of labor now luckily the SPDLC we collected data on all of these factors and so we're able using some very basic statistical techniques to sort of parse their relative contributions and so our analysis suggests that four factors really mattered for parents divisions of labor during the pandemic that was the loss and return of domestic supports changes in job flexibility job loss and employment and then the threat of COVID and the stress associated with that so first what I'm going to do is I'm going to detail how these things changed what happened in these domains I'm going to turn it over to Richard and he'll talk to you about how those mattered for parents divisions of labor so the loss of domestic supports societal lockdowns early in the pandemic parents lost domestic supports couldn't go to restaurants no more housekeepers and house cleaning services and perhaps most importantly the loss of childcare and the loss of in-person school so it's well documented what happened early in the pandemic what is the situation currently and the situation currently seems to be that at least with respect to childcare that we are basically in the situation we were pre-pandemic in terms of the proportion of parents who have their kids in care so roughly half the parents in our sample had their preschool age children in the care of others prior to the pandemic and they have returned to that situation as of fall 2022 the situation with schooling is similar right in April 2020 no kids were in in-person school by fall 2020 school modalities were highly variable which meant that schooling for kids was highly variable about a quarter of kids were in person full-time half were online exclusively by fall 2021 the majority of kids had moved back to in-person school but it's important to point out that you know in the last fall the proportion of children in in-person school full-time is still 10% lower than what it was pre-pandemic so we have not returned to pre-pandemic schooling as yet of course lockdowns not only met children back in the home but for many parents it also meant that work now entered the home and being home and able to work may enhance your ability to attend but it can also lead to work-family conflict before the pandemic the majority of parents did not work from home 60% of mothers never work from home 2 thirds of fathers never work from home by April 2020 however 3 quarters of employed mothers were working from home and 2 thirds of fathers were working from home and the majority of them were doing so exclusively now today remote work remains elevated compared to what it was pre-pandemic and especially for fathers and this is important because there used to be a gender gap in remote work women used to be more likely than men to work from home and that difference is now gone although mothers are still somewhat more likely to work from home exclusively than dads are of course not every job is remote eligible right and although some essential occupations remained in-person during the pandemic a lot of non-essential businesses and services closed and that meant that people lost their jobs now the gender gap in labor force exit during the pandemic has been a big issue even got its own label we called it the she session which is just like a marbles in my mouth word to try to say and I'm glad I didn't stumble over that I was very nervous that I would but the question is what produced that gap right on the one hand it's possible that women were exiting labor force voluntarily right to attend to increases in domestic needs at the same time we know that female dominated industries and occupations were hardest hit by lockdowns right education hospitality and so maybe that is the reason for the gap parents reports in our study suggest that yes mothers were more likely to leave the labor force particularly early in the pandemic compared to fathers but the vast majority of labor force exit was involuntary and today we don't really see much of a gap gender wise in terms of why people are out of paid labor force although let's be honest today unemployment is so low it's actually near record lows so kind of hard to compare there and then the last thing right is COVID matters for the division of domestic labor and paid labor by itself for a couple reasons one it affected parents decisions it affected their decisions about social distancing it affected their decisions about school modalities it affected their decisions about the return of the office at the same time worry about COVID in the stress that it produces you know affects parents mental health right and that affect their ability to work we asked parents in our study you know to assess their level of worry that someone they know would get coronavirus and obviously worry has been high throughout the entire pandemic and it was highest earliest in the pandemic but even in fall 2020 half of mothers still worried that someone they know would get COVID and two in five fathers still worried so worry is high and mothers have been more worried on average than dads have been and that pattern carries over to stress so stress levels have been highest for moms during the pandemic they were highest early in the pandemic and they have dropped somewhat over time but not that much now a big question is well how do we you know what are stress levels today compared to the past and that's difficult for us to assess because we didn't we weren't able right to look pre-pandemic at stress but was happy was able to find a study from 2009 nationally represented sample of U.S. men and women that used the same stress scale on their study that we used to be able to construct a comparison and so what this suggests is that stress levels today are much higher than they were in the past and I just want to remind everybody that 2009 was the middle of the great recession which would arguably be a period of high stress for a lot of people so not only is stress higher today than it was back then but there has been an exacerbation of the gender gap in stress that has continued since the beginning of the pandemic so as Dan illustrated and as we are all well aware lots of things were changing during the pandemic right so we use data on all of these various changes to try to identify which factors matter most for mother's shares of housework mother's shares of child care and mother's employment and then we use this information to develop recommendations about policies that can help us to work toward greater gender equality moving forward so looking first at mother's shares of housework we see that fathers remote work was the strongest predictor so when fathers worked from home more frequently mothers did fewer shares of housework employment also mattered so mothers did more shares of housework when fathers were employed but fewer shares of housework when they themselves were employed and also fewer shares of housework when they were essential workers and finally we see that mother's shares of housework increased when they regained access to in person school and daycare suggesting that as pandemic conditions started to become more normal mother's shares of housework increased turning to understand trajectories of housework we focus on the group of parents who changed how they divided housework during the pandemic and we again see that fathers remote work was the strongest predictor so when fathers worked from home more frequently parents were more likely to change their division of housework mother's employment also mattered so parents were more likely to shift to a more nontraditional division of housework when mothers remained employed during the pandemic for mother's shares of childcare we see a largely similar story so mother's shares of childcare increased when fathers were employed and when they regained access to in person increased when mothers themselves were employed and when fathers worked from home more frequently but we also see a few other factors matter for mother's shares of childcare and most notably we see that mother's schedule flexibility matters with mothers doing more shares of childcare when they have more flexible schedules this suggests that similar to fathers mothers may also utilize workplace flexibility to do more childcare but whereas fathers remote work reduces the gender gap in childcare mother's schedule flexibility actually increases it looking at trajectories of childcare we again focus on the groups of parents who changed how they divided childcare during the pandemic and so comparing the became nontraditional to pandemic changers groups we find that parents were more likely to maintain a more nontraditional division of childcare over the long term when fathers worked from home more frequently when mothers were employed and when mothers were not working remotely so overall when considering parents divisions of housework and childcare during the pandemic enabling fathers to work from home and maintaining mothers attachment to the labor force were key in facilitating greater gender equality in domestic labor so mothers employment was important for establishing a more equal division of domestic labor during the pandemic but this begs the question what factors mattered for mothers employment well not surprisingly access to domestic supports was key when they had access to in-person school and care when the child attended school and daycare more frequently and when fathers were home more in contrast mothers were less likely to be employed when they were more stressed and more worried about COVID because mothers are often primarily responsible for family health and well-being many mothers sacrifice their employment in an attempt to reduce family health risks during the pandemic in regard to trajectories of mothers employment we focus on families where mothers were employed prior to the pandemic and sought to understand why some mothers were able to maintain their labor force attachment whereas others pulled back again we find domestic support was key so mothers were more likely to maintain their employment during the pandemic when fathers did more housework and childcare and when in-person school and care was available there were also some socio-economic differences as less educated mothers and mothers who earned less of the family income were more likely to pull back unemployment compared to higher educated and higher earning mothers and finally we consider the key factors that predicted work hours among mothers who were employed prior to the pandemic we see a similar set of factors matter here as we did for domestic labor and for mothers employment but the relative importance of these factors differs most notably the strongest predictor of work hours during the pandemic was mothers schedule flexibility with mothers working fewer hours when they had more flexible schedules this provides additional evidence that mothers used flexible work policies to accommodate increased domestic responsibilities during the pandemic by reducing their work hours mothers also reduce their work hours when they were more stressed but increase their work hours when children attended school or daycare more frequently and when fathers worked from home so given that we identified a number of factors or a number of trajectories excuse me where mothers work hours changed during the pandemic we consider a couple of different comparisons here first we compare mothers who worked full time prior to the pandemic but who experienced divergent patterns during the pandemic we find that more privileged mothers in regard to race and family income were more likely to pull back on work hours early in the pandemic we also find that mothers who were unable to work from home who had school aged children who were more stressed and who were already doing more of the housework in child care were also more likely to pull back on work hours mothers who were already primarily responsible for child care may have prioritized their children early in the pandemic by either choosing to leave their jobs if their family could afford it or feeling as though they had no choice if they were unable to work from home and manage children's schooling in contrast mothers were more likely to remain employed full time if they could work from home and if they were essential workers focusing on mothers who worked part time if they were more educated worked from home more frequently were an essential worker, were less stressed and did fewer shares of housework in child care so similar to the findings from mothers who worked full time access to workplace and family supports increased the likelihood that part time working mothers maintain their attachment to paid work so as Dan mentioned I don't think any of us thought we would still be talking about the effects of the pandemic as it is ongoing and one that has cost countless lives numerous jobs significant mental health issues and learning losses for children although the costs have been immense there are opportunities to learn from what happened to work toward a better society our goal with the SBDLC and the symposium is to use the information from our study and insights from others here today to really identify strategies practices, policies that we can use to work toward a better more equitable society moving forward and so we identify four lessons from our study on things that we can do to advance gender equality in the future first father's remote work was a key predictor of both domestic labor and mothers employment fathers increasingly expressed a desire to be more engaged at home but set workplace barriers as preventing them from doing so by having greater access to remote work during the pandemic fathers likely were more exposed to domestic tasks, had more time to participate in these tasks and reduced burdens on mothers as a result interestingly mothers also do more domestic labor when they have workplace flexibility so simply increasing workplace flexibility seems to be a double-edged sword we suspect that this largely has to do with broader gender and workplace norms which encourage mothers to use work family policies for domestic tasks while stigmatizing fathers for doing the same thing to overcome this we need to shift expectations surrounding gender work and care by providing equal access to work family policies for mothers and fathers as well as incentivizing fathers to use these policies in doing so we can increase fathers time at home while also changing cultural attitudes about gendered work and care responsibilities given the importance of fathers remote work for our findings we did look at trajectories of fathers remote work during the pandemic as we know access to remote work has increased and remained elevated for some but not all workers we find that fathers who were able to maintain the ability to work from home were more educated had higher incomes and were more likely to have schedule flexibility prior to the pandemic white fathers were also more likely to consistently work from home than black fathers so taken together this suggests the increased access to remote work was disproportionately concentrated among more advantaged families to broaden the benefits of remote work access to remote work needs to extend beyond high salary professional occupations and become more accessible to diverse families we also recognize that not everyone can work from home and so increased access to remote work must be used in combination with other policy recommendations to advance gender equality more broadly the second lesson from our study is the importance of supports for mothers labor force participation greater domestic and family supports enabled mothers to maintain their attachment to paid work whereas as those supports started to come back fathers actually reduced their domestic involvement as a result taken together it's vital that we acknowledge that the care crisis existed prior to the pandemic and that the pandemic only exacerbated this crisis we need to increase both structural supports and father involvement and not simply substitute one for the other this means expanding access to affordable child care reducing our focus on virtual learning and expanding access to before and after school programs substantial financial and cultural investments in care are needed and we need these investments to come from both the government and fathers to reduce domestic burdens on mothers and promote greater attachment to the labor force to illustrate the impact of fathers domestic support on mothers employment here we show the association between father shares prior to the pandemic and changes in mothers employment early in the pandemic in families where mothers did all of the childcare prior to the pandemic they had a 50% probability of reducing their paid labor force participation during the lockdown period in contrast when mothers and fathers equally shared child care mothers had only a 15% probability of reducing their paid labor force participation quite simply enabling and encouraging fathers to perform more domestic labor can have dramatic effects on mothers labor force attachment the third lesson we highlight is the persistent impact of stress and worry about covid on mothers employment declines in mental health have been well documented and we must recognize the toll that these stresses have taken on mothers in particular mothers remain primarily responsible for decisions about family health and many mothers reduce their labor force participation to minimize risks to their family stress remains elevated and nearly half of mothers remain worry about covid we need a more unified public health approach to minimize virus transmission and reduce the burdens on individual families seasonal spikes in flu RSV covid and other viruses may have similar negative impacts on mothers employment moving forward making it essential to invest in policies that lessen mother's fears reduce stress and increase access to mental health services and interventions to give you a sense of the impact of stress and covid worries on mothers employment here we show the strong link between these factors during the pandemic not surprisingly mothers who were more worried about covid were more stressed but more importantly we find that nearly 87 percent of mothers remained employed during the pandemic when stress and worry was low but this drops to only 67 percent of mothers being employed when stress and worry about covid was high concerted efforts to reduce mother stress and fears about covid and other viruses are essential to keeping mothers in the labor force and finally just as fathers participation in domestic labor enabled mothers to mean attachment to paid work parents were more likely to shift to a more permanent non-traditional division of domestic labor when mothers were employed and particularly when they were not working remotely to increase mothers attachment to the labor force employers need to actively retain employed mothers and develop strategies to recruit mothers back to work employers need to be mindful of how pandemic related gaps in employment are viewed and recognize that these employment gaps may be due to the structural changes we illustrate and thus should not be viewed negatively return to work mentorship and career development programs are vital for mother successful long-term reentry into paid work we provide just one example to illustrate this so looking at the trajectories of housework previously shown we see that in families where mothers were not employed prior to the pandemic it was highly likely that they maintained a traditional division of housework during the pandemic in contrast in families where mothers were employed full-time prior to the pandemic it was much more likely that they followed the pandemic changers or non-traditional trajectories of housework as such enacting strategies to recruit and retain mothers in paid labor can promote greater gender equality so in conclusion we examined three years of data to understand changes in parents divisions of labor identified key factors that led to these changes and use this information to formulate recommendations on ways to work toward greater gender equality moving forward but this is only the start of the conversation we look forward to hearing from and working with policymakers and legislators activists and business leaders and other academics about strategies to use the knowledge gained during the pandemic to work toward greater gender equality moving forward thank you for a few questions okay great alright so we'll just take a few questions alright so we've got a bunch of questions that have come in we'll just get to a few of them so someone's asking geographically how did these changes play out urban versus rural and then can you talk a little bit more about any other kind of differences race, income and education level that you found in the data yeah it's a good question geographically we have respondents from 48 out of the 50 states and to be honest we have not sort of analyzed geographic variations much we did look extensively particularly early in the pandemic the shifts that we saw the most dramatic shifts toward a more equal division of domestic labor those patterns existed across socio-demographic categories so across racial and ethnic groups across levels of education across essential worker status, various types of employment it was very consistent that parents sort of shifted to a more non-traditional division of domestic labor early in the pandemic as we look sort of more long-term we have started to see some changes by socio-demographic groups you know I noted the changes in remote work have been largely sort of concentrated among more advantaged families so remote work popped up a lot as being important in facilitating greater gender equality and so I think it's fair for us to assume that more advantaged families in regard to race, income and education have been the beneficiaries of those kinds of changes so while we cautiously paint an optimistic picture on some levels we recognize that progress has been uneven and continues to be uneven and so we really need to recognize strategies that can enable less advantaged families families who do not have the same access to remote work to affordable childcare to all of these sorts of things you know to really sort of help them more so okay cool so a couple one other question and then we'll get to the next panel we've got another question that says is it time to let go of the work-life balance phraseology paid work, childcare, house work is all work and all life the labeling feels gendered and outdated I mean yeah I think a lot of people in this room have moved on from using that phrasing I think you know Katie Collins depiction of this as a work family justice issues is perhaps more apropos and something that a lot of us are moving towards thinking about you know the notion of balance and I think you know maybe Kathleen will talk about this later suggests that we can have everything that we want that we can have it all that we can be the ideal employee and also be carers but truth be told time is finite and you know especially when it comes to work sometimes are asked to do much more than what our caregiving responsibilities would allow us and so we have to forsake different things in our lives so this notion of balance right I think again portends this notion that that you know we're ignoring these cultural contradictions with respect to what our pace of employment demand of us and also what our families need from us and so we really need to start thinking about this in terms of how can we empower people to devote their energies where they feel they're most important and so maybe changing the way in which we phrase this and think about it it's going to be helpful and moving towards that we have time for one last question you know and this is you know asking about you know will we be delving into the how the pandemic affected transgender non-conforming individuals you know and then anything about like long COVID you know that kind of that very invisible kind of research you know is a research you know and kind of how the the long tail of the pandemic is continuing yeah so with respect to you know non-binary folks or people who are LGBTQ we have some in our sample we did not limit our study to those in different sex partnerships but it's really hard for us to look at those groups individually just because the numbers are so small you know but the end chat study which I don't know why I'm sitting here promoting someone else's work you know is you know NSF funded and was designed to look in particular at what is going on in gay and lesbian couples and those who are genderqueer and non-binary so and they've been producing some excellent work in that area so I recommend whoever had that question to look into the results from from those analyses with respect to long COVID I don't have any questions about long COVID I don't know why but I can't ask everything but I do think it plays into the worry and the stress story I think part of the reason why worry about COVID is so high right I think everyone knows someone or has had it themselves right and most people get over it okay and so you know is it any different than other viruses well it is for a lot of people and I think that's why people remain more worried about COVID than they are the cold or the flu or anything like that and so I can't sort of definitively say that but I strongly suspect that that is a big reason why we see rates of worry and stress levels continue to be and I would just add that it's also why we need to continue to focus on attending to those concerns right vaccines are not the solution for our public health problems in total right we need a more comprehensive approach there remains families that are at risk with immunocompromised loved ones or themselves who have long COVID it affects their ability to work you know we cannot just move on from this we have not moved on from this and so you know that question goes right to the heart of you know the worry about COVID and its centrality to the changes that occurred during the pandemic and are likely to continue to have impacts for a lot of families all right well thank you so much a round of applause everyone this is a representative from California and I'm realizing that I don't have your bio with me apologize I have your bio somewhere and it's not here those are usually waste of a lot of time anyway so we can just get to the conversation oh let's get you and then in the conversation then you can tell you can give us your bona fide which I'm sure we don't need so congressman one of the reasons that we really wanted to talk with you today we're here talking about gender equality and we're talking about what happened to advanced gender equality you know world economic forum says we're centuries away from true parity or economic equality and we're talking about what needs to change in public policy in business practice in cultural attitudes and when I came across your economic patriotism agenda I was reading about it and in the same breath that you talk about everything that you would imagine in industrial policy investing in manufacturing and chips you in the same breath talk about paid family leave and childcare and you talk about them as economic issues as part of economic patriotism so can you tell us a little bit about your economic patriotism agenda and where family supportive policies that have generally been seen as social policies how they fit into an economic and industrial policy well first of all thank you for having me on this important topic particularly on women's history month I'll start with women helped industrialize America I mean FDR's new deal all of the women were in the factories that was Rosie the Riveter so this idea that industrial policy isn't linked to gender equality is just false in fact when I was with the president in Ohio I was one of the authors of the Chips and Science Act one of the points I made with Governor DeWine about the Intel factories is you can't have abortion laws restrictive and banning abortion after six weeks and expect people from my district to show up at work in those factories or to expect people to want to send their daughters or sons to college so if you're thinking about in Ohio so if you're thinking about what is an effective policy industrial policy that has the workforce you have to think about gender equality one of the points of that and Gino Ramondo I think has done an excellent job on implementing chips with child care is that you need child care policy so that we can have people who want to work but also want to make sure that their kids are being taken care of have that option and the reality is that child care is still unfortunately folds on women that's changing but it's the truth and so having child care is essential if we want to tap all of the talent and resources and we're working on a bailed model after the Canadian model to have child care at $10 a day capped at that for working in middle class families and this will actually help unleash the talent the potential for contributing to our economy you mentioned a commerce secretary Gino Ramondo and just this past in the last few days the Biden administration has come out with their new industrial policy tens of millions of dollars for the semiconductor industry with the proviso that they also provide child care so the question there there's been a long reluctance to have the government involved in family issues so is this a change do you see this as a change in terms of government role that's sort of one part of the question the other is we've also got a system where we have private health care is this sort of starting down a slippery slope of child care then becoming tied to private employers or is this sort of the best that we can do to kind of get started on something where there's been so little movement for decades one of the ideas as one of the original authors of the Chips and Science Act with Senator Schumer it was very important for us to have conditionality and that means if we're going to provide government financing to accompany to build new factories they have to adhere to certain standards they can't use that money for stock buybacks we made that clear to Gina Ramondo when we were discussing with the administration the implementation of this to the administration's credit they said that they would deprioritize companies that engaged in any stock buybacks they have to invest in the United States they have to have prevailing wage and they have to treat families well that was the intent of those of us who drafted the legislation so I think what Secretary Ramondo is doing is implementing the intent of Congress which came with very clear conditions and these conditions are new this is where I talked about FDR if you go study the new deal there were tremendous conditions to the financing of private sector industrialization there were conditions around prevailing wage there were conditions around unionization there were conditions about racial integration we probably weren't as advanced on gender equality so I'm not sure if there were conditions on that back then they probably knew deal scholars who would know that better but the idea of conditionality has been true in American history when the idea of the government playing a role in industry has been true since Hamilton I mean this is what built the Hamilton American system and what built us post World War II now I do think we have to move to universal child care and we can't just rely on conditionality in these cases of government assistance so while I applaud what Secretary Ramondo is doing I don't think that that's a substitute for what people like Elizabeth Warren have been calling for for years which is universal child care in this country so let's talk about your proposal now about universal child care as many people in this you know scholars in this room know the United States spends about you know among the least of all OECD countries in child care you know we really don't have care infrastructure which the pandemic made so brutally clear so tell us more about your plan and how do we go from going through a pandemic and still not getting child care or investments say and build back better that all fell through how do we go from you know from where we are now to a system which with hopefully good care wages for people who work in early care and education how do we get there how do you build that coalition of support for that kind of investment well we get there I think by by being simple and how we explain it that's why I like this idea of no middle class and working class families should pay more than ten dollars a day and we should have a twenty dollar wage floor for people who are providing child care and if you have a bill structured like that where you get the grants to the states the states then can contract with child care providing agencies that meet a threshold of quality they can be public or private and you pay twenty dollar wages for the child care workers and you say that if you're making under four hundred thousand no one should be paying more than ten dollars that's the threshold outline of the plan I have great respect for what the president was trying to do and go back better and I have tremendous admiration for Elizabeth Warren who is the champion on that but a lot of their plans are linked to percentage of income and I think that makes intellectual sense I think it's a harder message to get across I think what Canada has done in saying look ten dollars a day that's what the cost should be for families now one of the things that we're discussing with groups and be curious for your others input is whether they have an opt out provision for those who don't want that and are stay at home dads or stay at home moms or have their grandparents looking after their kids whether they get some stipend three hundred dollars a month four hundred dollars a month if they are middle and working class income that would help us get more conservatives on work because they often are saying well what about parents who are home with the kids or who have their grandparents and that's something that of course we need the broad coalition that we're actually trying to work through and would help us get to the votes for universal child care so I'd like to switch gears a little bit and talk about workplace policy as Richard and Dan were talking about you know finding that when there is schedule control I don't want to say flexibility because for a lot of low wage workers there's too much flexibility they don't have zero contracts or they you know zero hours contracts they don't have enough hours of predictable schedules so when you have schedule control that gives you amount of say over when, where and how you work across the board whether you're a desk knowledge worker or a low wage hourly worker you know that that makes a huge difference for women to be able to stay in the workforce it makes a huge difference for men or people of all genders to be able to be more present and be more active in care and caregiving roles which as you rightly point out still is still tends to fall largely on women you know other countries have things like right to request flexible work they have other kind of government policies or states like Oregon have stable schedules laws what role do you think government or policy should play in in sort of nudging workplaces to actually adopt the kinds of policies or what kind of roles should government play to have the policies that would create those workplaces that would promote gender equality very basic we certainly need to start with paid family leave so that people have obligations with their family in terms of health issues in terms of mental health issues that they can take that you know I read somewhere shockingly that one in three teenage girls have contemplated suicide at some point some of that is because of social media in my district but it may not just be a paid family leave for a obvious medical condition someone may be having a very rough day and people may benefit from staying at home and that is something we need to do then I think we need flexible work today I don't do it offered but I had to run to the school because I suddenly didn't have a school bag that would be consequences that I was a little bit late many people if they have to do that there would be consequences at their work and so how do we have laws that have accommodation not just ok you're sick but I have a dentist appointment for my kid or I have a medical appointment or I had to do something to go to see their teacher or a lot of things that people in more privileged positions take for granted can yes we have busy schedules but we have a lot of flexibility in terms of not having those consequences and how do you have legislation for that I think not enough time has been played on developing that because we don't even have the paid family leave for the crisis situations but both of those I think are critical to some extent the remote work model was embraced by folks because it did provide some of this increased flexibility and the question is can some of those practices be codified in terms of flexibility and we have laws around them and do you think that's a direction that government should go yes I do I think we've got a basically on paid family leave it was very frustrating to those of us in the house of representatives that we did not get paid family leave in the legislation last Congress and that was because that's just the basic but beyond that I think that there should be a conversation about some amount of family time flexibility that you you don't have to provide a rationale but it's just if you care about doing things for your family or your kids or your relatives that you have that flexibility and don't have that consequence and you know technically a party the Republicans would say their pro family before some of these policies and care about parents being more involved in their kids education but they're not even right now for paid family leave which is the starter in my view to these conversations. So how do we get there you know I mean that's the question you know people in this room have been researching this for decades it's been something that advocates have been calling for for decades it is a floor the United States I think the event that we had last week along with Papua New Guinea and a handful of Pacific islands we're the only ones that do not guarantee paid maternity leave which you know people have said is nothing short of cruel so how do we move from where we are and sort of the stalemate how do we actually get to that very baseline of paid family leave and getting that passed? I think we have to move the conversation beyond just what is rights based to what is going to make the economy strong. A lot of our conversation understandably has focused on racial equality, gender equality, racial agenda justice I think those are things that are deeply held values but that are also values that are highly charged in our political environment but when we begin the conversation by saying look we've got about 330 million people here we're competing with countries over a billion people we're losing out on our industry we know that women are leading and graduating in a lot of important fields we can't lose talented people in our workforce and expect to be the strongest manufacturing superpower the strongest innovation economy and we also have to support families and so that these policies are common sense to building a strong American economy and their common sense in terms of being pro family and if we start with that I think we can build a broader coalition that doesn't mean that we don't understand the value of these intrinsically as policies of equal opportunity and justice but I think that the language of economic growth and the language of pro family they help us build a broader coalition so we've got a number of questions coming in that I want to make sure we have time for but before I go to them I want to ask you for any kind of closing thoughts that you might have and if you have any calls to action for anyone here in the room or who are watching us online either now or later because with the virtual world this will live I appreciate your convening here I would say that on child care paid family leave please continue to advocate for that it was one of the big disappointments for many of us in the house in the last two years of congress we got a lot done on climate we got a lot done on some of the industrial policy on infrastructure but we did not get a lot done on things like child care, paid family leave universal preschool and that was a big miss especially after the pandemic when we know that part of the the quote unquote worker shortage was women who weren't entering the workforce those were economic policies and they didn't get done so please keep these up high up in the priority I just was at a congressional progressive caucus meeting yesterday we were discussing the top three priorities breakout group child care up in the top three but it matters to hear from folks in terms of what the focus of the party will be and second let's start thinking about how we make the economic argument there's a right space case to be made for policies there's a right space case to be made that the Indian American community someone of Hindu faith should be able to be in public service but there's also a case that's not just in that case is that this is not asking for something that's going to in any way hurt America this is something we desperately need for America that we're losing so much talent we're losing our productive capability we're losing our ability to compete with China and other countries if we don't have these policies and these policies actually are going to be what makes America strong and prosperous and wealthy and in general I think the Democrats need to talk more about that that's how FDR won four terms it wasn't just social justice it was this is what's going to make America a strong prosperous economy all right let me get to some of these questions thank you so much for that closing stirring closing a call to action so it says here and also for yeah yay for child care yay for all of the things that we've been working on here thank you for highlighting the ongoing risk and stress of COVID long COVID and acknowledging we need much more than vaccines to protect us all and then it says if we're paying workers $20 an hour and then families are paying $10 an hour for child care how do these businesses afford all their costs is this government subsidies it is it's government financing that helps working families I mean how do you afford public school or to pay teachers we should pay teachers more but how do we afford that as a society I would say that that is a a social public good and having a child care for kids particularly till they get to the public school is a social and public good and that is something that we should be willing to pay taxes for I mean we've made plenty of billions of dollars in my district I've got $10 trillion and I've said tax these folks and they're fine they keep sending me back to Congress we could tax them and have child care for everyone I love that alright well thank you so much for your time it's wonderful to have you here and we will send out some of the articles that you've written about child care as part of economic patriotism and your bio that I so neglectfully forgot to start off with we'll include that in the email that we send out to all of the participants so thank you so much for your time thank you so much so during the pandemic right from the very beginning our life was totally disrupted we went from being out of the home to just being at home all the time and so my wife and I both shifted our businesses to working remotely and we shifted you know arts kids education to remote learning and that was just such a big disruption we felt like we knew what we were doing beforehand and then all of a sudden everything had changed and so it certainly led to an incredible amount of stress and tension and worry and not only regarding sort of the larger events of what was happening in the world but certainly in our own home of just like how do we adjust everything that we were used to doing we were no longer doing and we were having to figure out on the fly how to work remotely how to take care of the people who we served in our businesses and how to provide sort of simple things like food for our children and so it was it was just as if everything overnight had changed and it was incredibly difficult to adjust to so since March 2020 a lot has changed I think that certainly the beginning of the pandemic really forced us to have to confront a lot of issues a lot of tasks and responsibilities we were having conversations around unseen labor around things that you know often would by default get completed and handled by my wife and so certainly by being together things like taking care of the kids about like helping the kids whether it's with their academics or whether it was physical activity whether it was cooking cleaning doing the laundry all of these things we really figured out how to communicate more openly and effectively about who was doing what and while I believe that over the years it sort of continues to fluctuate like who is exactly doing what we've been able to just be much more intentional and open about having these conversations and it's not perfect communication has been sort of like a big way all of a sudden 2020 happened the pandemic happened and I had to make a choice do I protect myself and my son or do I go to work do I risk the safety of my clients or do I keep them at home making sure that I do all the things which should have never been a risk at first because now going shopping during 2020 could be a death sentence it was very borderline depressing because we would find ourselves priced out of Seattle losing our home having to move to a different city I would have to make very big cutbacks on what we could and could not do because we didn't have the finances for it anymore even to this day I now rely on food banks because I'm still digging out that hole from not being able to work not being able to have you know that guarantee stable paycheck now that we're coming out of it we still have the title of essential workers but all we're getting is a hand clap so I've learned many things over the past three years and my family is one of the families that COVID touched we lost seven people and if I can't take anything else away I learned that life is precious life is precious and we all have to realize that we can't just care for ourselves we have to take care of our most vulnerable people their life is just as precious our senior citizens their lives are just as precious because they're the ones that paved the way for us during the pandemic my job changed in that of course we were considered essential workers as a nurse so I was almost expected or prior to go to work and not miss and I normally don't miss work Richard did then was able to stay home which was good for us but he basically then had to do everything I worked my three days a week I was part-time actually before the pandemic and then during the pandemic I went full-time basically worked a bunch of extra days sometimes I would work four days a week and sometimes it was required and sometimes it was voluntary but there were times that there were mandatory over time when the pandemic hit in March I was moved to work from home solely Melissa of course being a nurse worked long weeks and would work up to 80 hours a week depending on how busy it was so I became the basically the full sitter for my kids worked at home and then took care of the kids specifically well she worked long hours as a nurse I mean I do choose to do that but I do work a lot of 16-hour shifts it's almost easier for me just to stay at work and so then I would get home and sometimes I would work the next day so I would get home around 11 to midnight and then go to work it's 7am the next morning I do the brunt of the housework and she does help out for sure when she is home on her days off but I am the sole child care provider for my kids at this point we found out that our daughter has autism or somewhere on the spectrum not quite sure yet so we started with a sensory modulation disorder and then now we've gotten the official diagnosis from a medical professional and she does have that so in so doing she is a lot of takes up a lot of Richard's time and she loves Richard like Richard is her rock and really like takes care of her really well this is Vicki Shavo and I'm senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy here at the Better Life Lab at New America and I'm really excited to welcome this panel you know we've heard a lot today about how families changed, how work changed what we need to do moving forward so much to consider about people's lived experiences and what the implications are for policy and for practice lots to consider as we think about what is the scaffolding that we need to create a strong economy that we need to create strong families and that we need to level the playing field so that we don't continue to live in a country where people are playing the boss lottery or playing the geography lottery or playing any other number of lotteries to create huge disparities in circumstances and inequalities not just in current experiences today but in the implications for children and for families and for retirement security and for gender equity and for business strength and for everything else in the long run it's International Women's Day so we celebrate that we celebrate women's history a month but we also take stock of where we've been and recognize that we're at an inflection point we've all come through a very transformational experience in one way or another and the pandemic affected all of us in different ways there are some silver linings and there are a lot of things to reflect on and consider about how we create a stronger country going forward it feels to me and I think to many of us like narratives and expectations are shifting and yet we are stuck in a political moment where only a little bit has changed where we've made nudges the American Rescue Plan the infrastructure bill and reduction act are all really important steps forward and yet there's so much more to do the care economy in particular is the great unfinished business of this moment the house passed transformational policies on paid family and medical leave on childcare and on home and community based services and yet all of that was left on the cutting room floor when the Senate considered what to do at the hands of two Democratic Senators and 50 Republicans and so here we are at this moment as we head into a moment of more policy making lots of conversations about deficit reduction and trimming core programs when we know that there are a lot of places where we need to expand we're waiting for the President's budget which comes out tomorrow and hopefully we'll have a renewed commitment to huge investments in things like childcare home care and paid family and medical leave you know there was a little bit to celebrate a lot to celebrate the end of the year with the passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Pump Act which provided new protections for pregnant workers and for breastfeeding parents in the workplace but there's so much more to do women's rights obviously this particular International Women's Day are really on the chopping block with respect to dobs so there's lots for us to noodle over here as we think about where to go so I am excited to introduce the panel we're supposed to be joined today by another panelist, Yvette Lagual who is a worker here in DC she unfortunately had a family death and needed to leave the country but I want to just touch on her experience before we turn to these panelists because it really does speak to so much of what was in Richard and Dan's presentation Yvette is a mom she had a child before the pandemic she had a child during the pandemic she was a frontline healthcare worker at a community health center here in DC and in our conversations with her prior to when she was planning to be part of this conversation she told us about the fear of going to work every day the unpredictable hours that she dealt with the contagion that happened despite the carefulness of her work setting she was testing patients for COVID before there were vaccines she had several scares and needed to quarantine she had her second child during the pandemic DC provided for paid family leave which she said wasn't enough and happily has been expanded to 12 weeks since then but it still wasn't enough her husband was also on the front lines of the pandemic he needed to be at work she was doing most of the caregiving at home as well as working her job and it became too much and she ultimately after her parental leave returned there was another health scare and it was just too much and so she is one of the people who's left the workforce to figure out what to do next so it is a very short short summary of her conversation and one of the things that she said when I asked her what would have made a difference she said child care more paid leave, paid sick leave and norms around gender equitable caregiving so that her husband would have felt more comfortable providing equal care at home so that she could have shared the load better so with that I'm really excited to turn to this panel to my immediate left is Sophia Mitchell she's a policy attorney at the First Shift Justice Project which is a local nonprofit organization here in DC a legal organization with a mission to help working parents assert their workplace rights to prevent job loss at First Shift Sophia advocates for improvements to the DC paid family leave program and other laws and programs impacting working families in the district to Sophia's left is my good friend Julie Cashin who's the director of economic justice at the Century Foundation she has expertise in the care agenda economic mobility and labor she has more than two decades of experience working on these issues in federal and state government and through the nonprofit sector including working for the late Ted Kennedy Governor John Corzine of New Jersey the Make It Work campaign and the National Domestic Workers Alliance and others and then to Julie's left is Shonda Kosser the executive director of Main Street Alliance a national organization of small business owners working to advance a circular economy Shonda has extensive work experience in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations like SEIU, ONST and the Leadership for Educational Equity and as an executive coach she's worked with burgeoning executives to seize in leaders to support strategy management and overall confidence in leadership this variety of work experience helps her to think through processes from different angles effectively so we have a rich discussion planned here and we hope to make those very interactive and to have some time for Q&A and a reminder if you're in the room scan the QR code to send questions and if you're online send questions through the internet so I'm going to turn first to Sophia thank you so much for joining us I love First Ship Justice I used to be on your board which was great pleasure to work with Laura and see your organization grow as someone who's been working on these issues in the context of low wage workers I'm wondering if you can tell us you and First Shift work with a lot of workers like of it who have been managing work and health concerns and implicit bias and explicit discrimination I'm sure you've heard stories from clients at First Shift and I'm wondering if you can just share some with us yeah sure thank you for having me I'm so thrilled to be a part of such a timely conversation and I'm so sorry about couldn't be with us but I'm glad that we started with her story because I think it highlights a really important part of the work and care conversation which is while having paid leave is really important workers have ongoing care and giving needs on their paid leave from work so when returning to work workers may wonder what options or protections they may have when they have exhausted all their paid leave and a lot of that unfortunately is up to their employer so some employers acknowledge family responsibilities and may for example allow you to leave 30 minutes early to pick up your child from work or daycare or excuse me school or daycare or work from home when there are last minute changes to your child care arrangements however if you do not have a employer who is flexible you have you're left with very limited options and legal protections have everyone to note that there are some laws and policies that can support continuing caregiving needs I know earlier we talked about predictable scheduling and there are a number of cities and states that have predictable scheduling laws which provide workers in the retail hospitality and food service industry with more stable scheduling and some of these laws even include for a right to request a change to schedule to accommodate caregiving leaves there's also paid sick leave which provides workers a time off to care for themselves or a loved one and some of these jurisdictions even have a you're allowed to use paid leave to attend things like parent teacher conferences or if your child your child care is impacted by a public health order there are also less obvious ways to support caregiving like ensuring that child care and caregiving responsibilities are a basis for a reasonable accommodation for individuals experiencing domestic violence last year we had a client who I'll call Louise who was experiencing domestic violence and came to us seeking legal assistance after being terminated from her job Louise informed her employer that she was experiencing domestic violence and requested an adjustment to her schedule to attend her court dates to meet with her social worker and care for her young daughter after leaving her abuser, Louise was staying at hotels and domestic violence shelters and she needed to be available to care for her daughter in the afternoons instead of granting the scheduling adjustment and giving her a morning shift, Louise's employer reduced her work hours and told our client that her daughter to bring her daughter to work with her she applied with these instructions because she had no choice however on the third day that she brought her daughter to work with her Louise was terminated for 25% of her child's life. So this year we advocate to include a direct acknowledgement of child care needs and adjustments to child care arrangements to be added to the reasonable accommodation to empower domestic violence survivors to request reasonable accommodations that allow them to address the broad range of issues that they deal with as they seek to get their lives back on track and maintain employment. So while policies may assist in addressing caregiving needs, what is really important in the workplace in the absence of child care infrastructure in our country? Yeah, listening to you, I mean DC has done a lot in terms of putting laws on the books but you still have situations like Louise's or events or many others where there's just this day to day tension and there's a broader lack of awareness from employers about the needs and we'll talk to Shonda about the employer perspective in a second or in a few minutes but what do you think and what is First Shift doing in terms of the education and outreach to employers and to other stakeholders in the community to try to make sure that policy can play a particular role but what else do we need to do to try to make sure that the promises of policy are real? Yeah, so I think we're in a very unique and special position at First Shift because we provide legal services and we do policy advocacy, we do continued education so we're able to identify issues like this from that individual client is experiencing and then move from there all within the same workplace. I speak to my colleagues, they inform me of this thing that is going on and we together brainstorm what the next step should be so that's been really great. I think also with specifically with the paid family leave program the continued advocacy from the D.C. Pay Family Leave Coalition they work to pass the law but now that's passed years ago there's still work to improve the law so that has been great. Thank you. So moving from the local level up to the national level Julie you've been at the forefront of childcare, policy efforts and others we heard a little bit today about families experiences we heard some about the childcare sector but you've really dug into what's happening with the childcare sector and sort of the ecosystem between families and children and I'm wondering if you can tell us about that and sort of what do you see as the best steps forward from where we are right now? Yeah, thank you Vicki and thanks for including me. Before I dig in on childcare I just want to note listening to Dan and Richard before I was brought back to those moments at the beginning of the pandemic and my husband and I were both remote working and we were really trying to be equitable about the way we were doing it all and two weeks into remote kindergarten with our son my husband asked me for the password for school and I was like oh wait a second I've been doing two weeks of remote learning without you so at the same time he cooks dinner every night so we'll take the division of labor and we definitely know we're the lucky ones so getting into the childcare pieces of it you know we saw the House of Representatives actually pass a $400 billion childcare package in November of 2021 and that is the probably a low end of what's really needed to build the childcare and early learning system that we need in this country a system that will make it affordable for families, make it available to families, make sure that the early educators who provide such important care to our children are paid for their work I had someone in early education come up to me the other day at an event and say I just want health insurance and that bill didn't even include health insurance because it was more expensive right and so we are in a situation where families can find childcare in their communities it often costs about the price of public college tuition rent, mortgage many families can't find childcare because half of all American families before the pandemic were living in childcare deserts where they just did not find it, they could not find it and at the same time as I noted that early educators are doing this work at poverty level wages and that means that we're losing a lot of workforce that a lot of folks who train to do this work, who love doing this work with children are going to poor coffee at Starbucks or sell appliances at Home Depot because they can get benefits there and so that actually then decreases the pool of childcare available for families and forces more and more families to just piecemeal it and what that does is create more stress that we saw that stress gender gap, I don't think I've heard about the stress gender gap before but I felt the stress gender gap and I think that that's what's happening that if you don't have reliable ongoing childcare that means that you're going to have more work disruptions that means that you're not positive that you can go to work with the peace of mind that your child is in safe nurturing situations and that's going to be very disruptive for work and for employers as well and so we have a more than a million dollar problem that has been solved with zero dollars that were in the final economic package that passed so that's a depiction of where we are in childcare today and you've thought a lot too and Century just did a report about the connection between childcare and industrial policy so I know you have some thoughts about that and how these things fit together I was really struck, I heard Felicia Wong from the Roosevelt Institute on the radio the other morning talking about how some people measure infrastructure in the number of bridges that are built and what we actually need to be doing is measuring the number of bridges that are built plus the jobs that are created plus the care that's being provided and I thought that was a really interesting way to think through like how is it that we define what it is that we're going for with industrial policy or really with any policy that's privileging physical infrastructure over social infrastructure and so I'm wondering Julie yeah if you can talk a little bit about the recent report and what's next yeah absolutely Emily Peck had this great quote in the New York Times great in that it's real, not great in that it's a good thing but talking about how if the United States treated our physical infrastructure the same way we treated our childcare infrastructure, am I doing that backwards childcare infrastructure, yeah physical then you would have people asking their family members to hold up stop signs on the way to work and traffic lights and basically we put it together with duct tape that is the way we are doing care today and so what's needed is actually building out infrastructure, there's not really a difference between physical infrastructure and care infrastructure they're all part and parcel, they're all symbiotic they're so connected and so one of the things that's really interesting is that at the beginning of the Build Back Better process we were talking about the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan and how these needed to go together because families and work there's, we're not talking balance, we're talking about how they're all interconnected and that was the original vision and they got broken apart and the physical infrastructure pieces got through congress and the care agenda got left on the cutting room floor as you said and so what that means is that as we want to create millions of new jobs that the federal government's investing in if we want those jobs to get filled we're going to have to do something about those parents who want to work on those jobs who want safe nurturing care for their kids that they do not currently have and so I think Representative Conner and who were talking before about the importance of the CHIPS proposal from the Department of Commerce where they're basically saying look we're not going to be able to fill these manufacturing jobs these jobs constructing these factories unless we have parents part of that workforce so we need to provide that childcare to make sure those parents can participate and I think it shows just exactly how tied together they are. Yeah and it'll be I mean but to your point about childcare supply also I think one of the questions is if you're telling companies that they have to provide childcare but you're not doing anything to strengthen the childcare workforce I think it's a very interesting experiment to see what happens like can you actually create all of these childcare spots if you're not also incentivizing good jobs for childcare workers. Yeah that's a great point Vicki I think a lot of what we're thinking about now that that announcement is out is how do we make sure there's adequate stakeholder engagement with all the different players in childcare how do we make sure that people aren't just getting some money to pay for something that doesn't actually exist or to crowd out all of these small businesses that are owned by women by women of color who are providing childcare right so we're really thinking about how do we make sure that this works that it does get enough money both from the federal level from the corporate level from states and localities to make it a success. Yeah which I'm going to turn now to Shonda because one of Main Street residents has done such an amazing job organizing small business owners listening to their lived experiences and advocating on their behalf and in fact Marcia Finn St. Hilaire who's a childcare provider here in DC has just been a wonderful advocate on the DC paid leave campaign on the national paid leave and childcare efforts and you know I think about her when we're talking about creating more childcare jobs and you know she's been a great example of somebody who has paid for her workforce who does pay good wages and she's here we've had her speak here at New America before I've testified in Congress with her before but Shonda sort of going from that like how do you think about all of this you know you and your staff are talking every day to small businesses and business owners and entrepreneurs across the country about what they're struggling with and how they want to create good jobs for their workers with very little in the way of government support for the kinds of things that make jobs good jobs and the kinds of support that their workers need to so tell us like what you're hearing and what kinds of policies do the work the businesses that you work with well let me tell you a little bit about mainstream alliance for people who don't know Marcia or Karen Henderson and the countless names of folks who organize with mainstream alliance we organize first thinking about what's disrupting the circular economy the first thing we think about our organizations like Amazon big box and corporations if they don't pay their fair taxes and we don't have the investments for these types of public investments like pay leave care economy and retirement so that's the first step and I think the second question Julie you had a lot of things in there so I might ask you just to go back to that last piece that you were asking me about what was your last question it was like what yeah what policies do you need I mean we talked about what families need but also families are workers and workers are the people who are working for the small businesses that mainstream alliance works with and represents and also for the business owners that you work with like what would be helpful yeah that's well I think it's also I think it's really important to think about small business I define small business as true small business meaning that those who are solo entrepreneurs entrepreneurs and employ 20 employees or less and when you think about that you're not thinking about those bigger businesses right on average they earn about $51,000 or less so it's not owner versus worker it's owner and workers working in partnership to organize to change these policies and so when we get that kind of going through your head when you go through pandemic I was talking to KB who's a small business owner reentry small business owner in Minneapolis so because he's a reentry status he and his wife didn't qualify for PP loans right so if they get sick which they did he got sick then his wife got sick that means you have to train your body to do something that's inhumane and often times that black and Latino workers who are doing this so we saw our surgeons in small businesses about $10 million I think that might be the right number and when you think about Latino businesses and black businesses the majority of those were women and those women are often caregivers right so you're not only providing care for your family you're providing care for your children but also your parents who are also aging and so I think when we think about these policies just being clear who's at the backbone of those and those of people who are black and Latino and urban centers and also rural communities as well. Yeah the rural thing is something I've been thinking a lot about we did a report here on the intersection between rural care policies rural workforce demographics in rural communities across the country distances to hospitals and how that affects the kind of care and so I'm glad that you brought the conversation so many of the places that are moving paid leave policies right now for example are looking at child care places like New Mexico, Vermont Maine, Minnesota places that are very diverse economically that are some of them are diverse racially and ethnically as well certainly diverse economically this wasn't on our list of questions but I'm curious for all of you actually particularly for Julie and for Shonda how do you see opportunities I guess across coalitions that marry geographies together to advocate for policies that we haven't you know that traditionally have been thought about as urban policies or policies where the faces are urban folks Well I mean I can start from the organizer perspective I'd love to hear you from the policy perspective. Watoga Feli and I just did about 40 45 or 48 business I want to be precise in rural western North Carolina and there are people who didn't look like me going in to talk about investments into these public services and we didn't start the conversation off talking about we need to get paid leave in child care because people automatically think wait not in my taxes I already can't survive already but it's about understanding what your power is in organizing these are public investments not an opportunity for you to pay more taxes because most small business owners are already paying there enough so they're not talking about folks to put their investments in that so we can have a pool of investments what would you think say about policy I think one of the things is as we build out our industrial policy a lot of that's going to take place in these rural areas right and so rural areas are places where there's the biggest child care deserts where people just don't have access to it and so that's going to be even more important that we're marrying the industrial building out the job creation with the care needs of the workers right yeah and just to add I think we've been talking a lot today about families with children we haven't talked as much about families with elder care or with care for people with disabilities in their families and that's a huge piece we've got 53 million caregivers in this country 11 million sandwich generation caregivers caring both for an older an adult in their family and for a child in rural communities for example skilled nursing facilities are three times as far as they are in urban communities hospitals that deal with cancer cancer treatment cardiology treatment are three times as far and caregiving needs and expectations are bigger in rural communities where there are fewer working age people for older people and so and this is true everywhere so I don't know yeah I'm curious and we've talked a lot about the child care piece for businesses in particular I would imagine the elder care piece caring for older adults is a big deal I'm curious if anybody's got reflections on that so if you I don't know how much this comes up in your work at first shift I know you deal mostly with parents and mothers but so many people are caring for both yeah I would say we all we work with you know folks who are caring for others but also people who are seeking care and time off for themselves we and navigating that process you know we have had clients who have had a difficult time getting the paid leave for medical leave because the process is not as straightforward as it could be um there's the whole medical certification process and you know anyone who has you know worked with a doctor to get things get things filled out knows that can sometimes take time and there is a set amount of time you have to submit the application so so like issues with not having access necessarily to a computer or a printer to print the form not having transportation to go and drop off and check in with the um medical provider to get certification that has been an issue and has been a barrier to people accessing paid leave unfortunately and that's something that we continue to advocate for because we want to make sure that people who have who are eligible for leave are able to access it and unfortunately that's not always the case and from a small business perspective Shonda I know some of your folks that you work with have talked a lot about what it means when an employee gets sick and they want to be able to provide care I think that's a really important I come from three generations of small business owners and being a small business owner myself and having to work and when I was doing more consulting work just as a personal story is that I wasn't thinking about retirement investment too so not only people are working just to death they're working themselves to death and we're not providing the care we need but then when our small business owners get at the end there's not enough pot in the pool to stop you know or to even so if you can't provide that for yourself you can't provide that for your employees so that's what I think about when you offer that question yeah and I think if I can offer this I think about um there's a small business owner in Minnesota which is moving paid leave this year and she's been involved in this fight for forever um and she has talked a lot about her um her name is Sarah and she owns a vinegar and oil store oh she's uh MSA member yes MSA member yeah and she um Sarah Piepenberg from Piepenberg yeah and she wrote this really she's spoken before she's testified but she talked about how her employee got sick had broken both arms and she went to deliver groceries to this woman's house she provided um she provided paid leave at the expense of having to forgo her own rent and fell behind um and then I believe she cared for her also when this woman was sick and dying and um she did the calculations about how much it cost out of pocket to provide paid leave versus how much it would cost for the state to have a paid leave program in place and super compelling um same testimony last week from Vermont from one of your your business owners so thank you for the work that you all do and helping small businesses present the real business case for these policies because so often we're seeing large corporations speak for business and we know that that isn't the case I just want to remind folks we're getting a couple questions in but if you are joining us virtually you can submit your questions through Slido on the right side of your screen if you're in the room and you have questions please just write them out on a piece of paper or scan the QR code and we can start integrating them I think the American Rescue Plan is a really good lesson on how we can invest in all of these pieces together right so what we saw with the American Rescue Plan as a result of very significant advocacy and the fact that we actually could see the problems in a way that we hadn't seen them as obviously before we were able to get $50 billion in child care funding to help stabilize the child care sector and support families not nearly what was needed didn't build the system we'd always needed it just helped employers and um the child care employers and providers to stay in business to pay the rent to pay their um employees and we also were able to get Medicaid home and community based services funding that has gone out to help serve more families to serve um where people in states like Illinois they were able to raise their rates and actually pay better for their home and community based workforce and states and localities are using state and local money for paid family and medical leave and so Colorado had built out their system but they didn't have enough money to fund it all and they were able to use some of the American Rescue Plan dollars to help support that so it's actually a great example of policy working that we we saw when the federal government invests in the care agenda it matters people get paid better people get the care they need more people are included um you know the problem of course is that this money is all going to go away or has already gone away to some extent and so we need to use that as a lesson on what we need to do next rather than just say it was a one-time pandemic related emergency. I'm really glad you brought that up and also I'm really mindful that we have a lot of researchers in this room and so there's a lot of fodder for research to be done um you talked about the money going away I know there is talk about this child care cliff and what that means um what advice do you have for folks who are in this room who want to be part of efforts to make sure that the cliff doesn't lead to calamities and crashes if we're gonna whatever use that metaphor what can we do knowing that the child care cliff is coming to bolster the evidentiary case the storytelling case to try to convince congress to continue some of that funding or build on it. That's a great question and just to be clear so the child care stabilization money that came from congress must be spent by September of this year so that means that's about seven months more that states have this money to spend it has already gone to serve about 200,000 providers and about almost 10 million children and so one of the things is trying to figure out you know what are the stories about what's worked why it's been successful how it's been effective and what are the consequences going to be when it goes away what does that mean I have an image that the sector that was already struggling that was already at a deficit before the pandemic and then hit hard by the pandemic is not going to recover to where it was before the pandemic I think things are going to be worse and I'd love to know if we can predict some of that and tell some of that as you know both through quantitative data and the qualitative stories of the people experiencing it directly. Great okay I'm gonna go to some of the questions that we've gotten here so it isn't lost on me and wasn't lost on me as we were designing this panel that we are all women sitting here I felt better about the non the homogeneity of our gender identities sitting up here because there were only men presenting other than Bridget earlier in the day but we've I know in every conversation that comes up there is the question of how do we bring more men into this movement. Folks like Aquamundo Gary Barker have done a good job they're convening a table of dads and men's organizations but this isn't I mean part of my reflections at least about International Women's Day and Women's History Month is really the importance of men not just as allies but as partners in this work and in you know sort of the lived experiences of dads that do experience we know that there's generally a fatherhood bonus but there are men that experience discrimination from caregiving that try to hide it Sophia you know I don't know I know for ship mostly works with moms but maybe there are dads that come to mind as you're thinking about this work but also how do we men do 40% of caregiving in this country and yet their caregiving is often invisible or either like inappropriately applauded as superhero or minimized and invisible because we talk about these issues as women's so I'm just curious there's not really so much a question here as like reflections that you have on how do we make this a conversation that spans gender and how do we make clear that women's equality and things like the wage gap and workplace discrimination and the other barriers that women face in the workplace also require that men and people across all genders sort of be part of this fight I mean historically women has just always been care providers that's just a true thing but at the same time I've been having a lot of conversations with men who are providing care for their aging parents and we often don't talk about that or when we think about pay leave we think about the early part and just kind of drop off but we all know someone that we got to care for including ourselves especially if we think about our circuit economy and going back to the business structure with all of our successes that we've had with Main Street Alliance over the years healthcare has really been the part of that overwhelmingly our work have been white milk over 65 who engage in the pay leave conversation so I think it's really just about expanding what it is what it's always been and what it is now and who's all a part of that care what would you add on? It makes so much sense I think about the research that we heard about today from Dan and Richard and how that told the story of how men were able to be more involved with childcare and domestic labor that did change the situation that more women were working and so that was a really supportive answer to that so I feel like telling stories like that getting that research out into the world you're welcome is an important part of the equation I would just add that also being inclusive in our language in these narratives I think would play and also when fathers are trying to access these programs making sure that you're thinking of both caretakers mothers fathers whoever the caretaker is in the way that you're creating these programs so to ensure that if for example you want to take after six months after your child is born and you're a father and you want to take leave that you're getting a wage replacement that you expected so you still have the fight you have the opportunity through paid leave of financial security and that's not always evaluated when creating these laws yeah I'm really glad you raised that I mean one of the key insights of the paid leave movement over the last several years and most of the laws that have passed have been improved in this way is making sure that the wage replacement is adequate because if we have a gender wage gap and we have a huge gender wage gap especially for women of color for black women and latino women and some asian women and native women two opposite sex caregivers in a family and one of them earns lower wages and one of them earns higher wages and the higher wage earning person is male that person isn't going to take leave if the wage replacement rate is low and then you need job protection as well and so these are features that we've built into programs in addition to making them gender equitable on paper so I'm really glad you raised that point actually the next question is a paid leave question so main this is a question from Kim Simmons and I agree with her main has an exciting paid leave bill coming they have a bill that is going to be pending in the legislature that's been the product of a work group they will go to the ballot if they can't pass it through the legislature but Kim's question is actually about the interplay between federal policy and state policy so main has an exciting paid leave bill coming but we need federal policy instead can we offer any strategic advice on this because advocates are exhausted and Kim I agree with you I see that exhaustion as somebody who's been working on this policy for the last 13 plus years I guess I would offer first like I want to celebrate the tremendous growth and momentum when I started working on paid family medical leave in 2010 there were two states that had laws California and New Jersey we now have 11 plus DC or sometimes as we say 12 including DC because DC should be a state and there are several more in the pipeline potentially this year in Minnesota we talked about Vermont, we talked about Maine we talked about New Mexico Illinois, Pennsylvania potentially Oregon is going into effect this year we'll start paying benefits Colorado next year Maryland and Delaware coming down the pike as part of that 11 plus DC and we've seen improvements the states that have created paid leave programs have learned from the experience have improved wage replacement rates have added job protections have a broad inclusive definition of family and that's been really exciting but I agree ultimately if we go state by state we're still going to end up with this have have not situation this lottery of bosses and geography and I guess I would say that state success builds to federal success and this goes to Shonda I think we've also seen the large business organizations start to say okay federal policy like we actually saw the chamber of commerce in Vermont testify last week but ultimately we need a federal policy so yeah I don't know reflections especially from you Shonda you know small business owners are often mischaracterized as being opposed to these public policy interventions but as you've talked about they're actually beneficial to workers and to businesses and especially when those people are the same yeah I mean I don't know the question is about between federal and state I'm an organizer so I think that we always got to be focused on state policies all the time and then also going back and making sure that those policy are enforced and stronger and keep improving on that where we are with federal what you talked about with Bill Beck better and where we are in our economy I just wouldn't I don't focus I'm hopeful we always are hopeful we're organizing for that horizon point but I'm I really believe this person's right and it's her main it's just that the investment in Maine and then the tipping point with all the other states that you that you led will be the catalyst to change at the federal level yeah any other reflections from you all you know I think there's there's two sides to this on the one hand here's my cynical side right that yeah right I mean it's real so like we have a vicious cycle where moms don't have access to child care you know we don't have paid family medical leave and what that means is that moms especially women in general can't get ahead in the economy can't make more money can't build up their wealth that also that means that they can't influence the political process they can't be a part of the political process and so now we have you know a bunch of mostly like older white dudes who are wealthy who's you know why I've stayed home with their kids who are making our policies it's changing it's getting better more moms are joining congress and more women are joining congress and more people from different backgrounds and different economic backgrounds are joining but until that changes it's going to be really hard to change federal law so I think that's the the cynical side the hopeful side is we literally passed all these policies over the last two years in congress for the first time through the American Rescue Plan and the other COVID release packages we've seen we can do it and so let's build on that momentum yeah Sophia from from what you've seen here in DC you working with a local organization that's been pushing for local policy what lessons would you impart I guess on what's been effective and how might that translate into federal action yeah well I want to add even if we don't have a federal paid family leave law you know at this moment I would look to things that have passed and see how they can like not directly but kind of indirectly support you like for example the pregnant workers fairness act passed recently and while that's not directly related to family leave it DC has a pregnancy accommodation law too and we can use that to strengthen ours and with that protection and having more with having a stronger law we can advocate for people to act as paid leave more more so I think even though it might not directly be affect or support your law you can look at some of the federal apps that have passed and it can support the overall kind of effort to support folks in work and care yeah well and we build evidence from all of these things too that help to create the economic arguments for example that Ro Khanna was talking about that lots of people have been leaning into over the last couple of years they start to dismantle misunderstandings and myths about how these policies are costly rather than how these policies are cost savings and yeah I think I think the other thing too that comes to mind is thinking about the geographic clusters of laws so for example DC passed paid family leave Maryland is in the process of implementing a new paid family leave law Virginia for the first time this year passed paid family leave through one chamber through the senate whereas before I mean this goes to your leadership question like Virginia's legislature has some new members they will have more going forward but even some of the opponents of paid leave in the senate who stopped it from getting a vote or moving through committee before flipped this year and allowed it to pass so I see that as a hopeful sign and Delaware has paid leave so as you grow these clusters it helps at least regionally to make a case that doesn't help the swaths of the country that don't have anything and won't have anything and that is why we need federal policy but the evidence, the stories, the organizing success begets success is what I would say we've only got two minutes left and I want to make sure to get folks out of here at this time and I guess I actually just want to turn it over to each of you for any last reflections we've covered a lot of ground Richard and Dan covered a lot of research there's a lot more to be answered I think about single parents and families that are non-traditional in terms of structure there's a lot to be answered in terms of folks that are gender fluid where we don't know as much about experiences and where there might be overlapping multiple forms of discrimination or bias that are impacting experiences there's a lot to know about different kinds of sectors and industries and there's a lot to digest here so I'm just curious for your last thoughts as we close out and I'll start with Shonda and come this way Thank you for this opportunity to share space with all of you I think the thing that I would encourage people to think about when you think about two small businesses the number ahead of $51,000 we're not talking about owners or overlords we're talking about people who are collaborative with workers to have good jobs and investment around paid leave and the care economy I think you know we are eagerly awaiting the president's budget tomorrow we are following a lot of great work in the states where we are getting as Wendy Chun would say models and mobilization and momentum and you know I think I'm a pragmatic idealist so I think that there's a lot of hope out there and a lot of work to do Yeah I'll just add that as we advocate for stronger laws and protections it's always very important to be in community with folks who are actually experiencing these laws and making sure that we're centering and uplifting their voices at all times. Well thank you all it's been a great conversation to close us out and I will turn it back to Bridget for any last words