Child care remains a problem for working mothers, and it was the main theme of Thursday’s roundtable. Nearly 400,000 daycare jobs have been lost since the pandemic began, Harris said. The closure of small businesses and the loss of millions of jobs created the “perfect storm” for women, especially for black entrepreneurs, she added. “The longer we wait to act,” she said, “the more difficult it will be to bring these millions of women back into the job market.”
The government’s relief proposal would provide about $ 130 billion to help reopen K-12 schools, an important component of child care. But how and when to do this – and how to explain decision-making to Americans – proved to be an obstacle for the president and his advisers.
President Biden has promised to reopen as many schools as possible in the first 100 days of his term, a promise that has been questioned by teachers’ unions that want to have security measures guaranteed before schools reopen. On Thursday, Ms. Harris limited her comments on schools, saying the plan “would provide funds to help schools reopen safely”. Harris said in an appearance on the “Today” program on Wednesday that “teachers should be a priority” to receive vaccines.
Several representatives of women’s advocacy groups participated in the liaison with Ms. Harris, including Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. She said the vice president did not go into “granular” details about the reopening of schools, but that the group emphasized other topics, including the importance of direct payments to families in difficulties.
“People can barely control themselves now,” said Goss Graves. “I was grateful to know that she understood and spoke urgently about how to make this investment.”
As the pandemic drags on, the statistics for women are really disheartening.
A report published last year by researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of Southern California’s Economic and Social Research Center found that female employment started to plummet almost immediately after the coronavirus was established last spring. Since then, the researchers found, women have borne a heavier burden than men when it comes to taking care of children.
Women without higher education and black women were disproportionately affected. Another report, published in the fall by the Brookings Institution, showed that almost half of all working women have low-paid jobs. These jobs are more likely to be occupied by black or Latino women, and they are in sectors, such as dinner and travel, which are among the least likely to return to a degree of normality soon.