Rachel Thomas (00:02):
Welcome to Tilted: A Lean In Podcast. Tilted brings you conversations at the intersection of gender and culture. We dig into topics we’re curious about, highly people, and stories that inspire us, and we hope inspire you too, and share expert advice to help you make the playing field a little less tilted. I’m your host, Rachel Thomas Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Lean In. COVID-19 has brought America’s childcare crisis into sharp relief. Millions of women are now struggling to work while caring for, and in many cases, homeschooling their kids, and according to our annual Women in the Workplace study with McKinsey, one in three, one in three mothers are now considering downshifting their careers, or leaving the workforce due to the pandemic and issues with childcare.
Rachel Thomas (00:51):
The long-term effects will be devastating to mothers, their families, and our economy, but in many ways, this is not a new crisis. Our childcare system was broken long before the pandemic, especially, for single parents and low-income families, but for middle-class families too. Over the past two decades, the cost of childcare has more than doubled, while income has remained about the same. Just think about that for a minute. So, today we talk to two women, both mothers and policy experts from each side of the political aisle about the policies we need to build an affordable childcare system for families. First, I talked to Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, who has spent her career fighting for gender justice in the courts. She focuses on everyday issues in women’s lives like childcare, income security, and workplace fairness. So, to start, now, when did you become so passionate about fighting for gender justice?
Fatima Goss Graves (01:50):
I have to say, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel passionately about (laughs) fighting for gender justice, but from a very early age, I understood not just the opportunity, almost the duty in my, in my life, uh, and in my family’s life to seek to build a better world. A world that is more equal, and just, and, and fair, and where all people can thrive.
Rachel Thomas (02:20):
And, were you inspired by the work that your mother does, which could you share a little bit about that?
Fatima Goss Graves (02:24):
You know, my mom is a amazing inspiration. Uh, you know, growing up, she had a career both first as a social worker, and then, in philanthropy, mostly in Detroit, Michigan. She was ready to retire, but she was not ready to be still, which I think is really important, and she, she built this project that she calls Warrior Women, and it is this joyful place where women who are sort of leading women in the state of Michigan-
Rachel Thomas (02:59):
Yeah.
Fatima Goss Graves (03:00):
... basically, are using all of their power, and (laughs) privilege, and aligning themselves with women who are transitioning out of homelessness, and all of the many barriers that we, for some reason put in their way (laughs) as they’re trying to get housed, and support their children, and build new lives.
Rachel Thomas (03:19):
That’s awesome, and I love that line, she didn’t wanna be still.
Rachel Thomas (03:22):
I love that idea.
Fatima Goss Graves (03:23):
Yeah, it think that’s actually coming up like a lot for folks who are ready to transition, right? They’re ready to retire. They have built these amazing careers. They’re leaving legacies behind, but that doesn’t mean that they’re done.
Rachel Thomas (03:39):
That’s amazing, so getting into the heart of the matter today, could you paint a picture of what mothers are grappling with right now?
Fatima Goss Graves (03:46):
I would like to say that our pandemic has just made a lot of things visible that were already happening, but the truth of the matter it is, it has a- accelerated the pain that people are feeling in this country, and we’re seeing it show up in the data where about 20% of the women who were working a year ago are no longer working, and when you start looking deeply, just in the month of September, what we saw was 1.1 million people leave the workforce, and not continuing to look for jobs, right? So, this is not the people who may have lost their jobs, and are continuing looking. These are people who are not looking for work, and over 800,000, about 880,000 of them are women.
We have never seen anything like this, and if you have young children, maybe it won’t surprise you that September was when we saw those numbers, because that is when schools started up, again, virtually or in hybrid modes in different parts of the country, and that’s when it became clear that women would continue to hold the line share of unpaid caregiving, of paid caregiving, but also, continue to work, and it was not sustainable. You know, when I think about what we have learned in our language around essential work and essential workers this year, we have this, this new language that I really feel like is a gift to acknowledge the hard and critical jobs that people are doing that are disproportionately women in this country.
One in three black women in almost one in three Latino women are essential workers. They’ve been working throughout this pandemic, many times in conditions that are not safe, and without things like premium pay, and without our care infrastructure, which crumbled.
Rachel Thomas (05:51):
Yeah.
Fatima Goss Graves (05:51):
And so, this period is one where we can see the short term losses right now, but there will be long-term losses around women’s wages, and ability to accumulate anything that looks like wealth around women’s ability to actually sustain their careers, and around our cultural narratives, and long-term penalties that I believe women are gonna face as caregivers. I think we will see a new and sustained spike, and how employers think about women in the workforce, and all sorts of presumptions around them as caregivers, precisely, because we’re not treating this as an infrastructure problem. We’re treating it still as a personal problem, so you’re like, either really good at solving your care (laughs) challenges, or you’re not, and that’s not how you treat infrastructure in this country.
Rachel Thomas (06:52):
One of the things that you talk about a lot in your work, and you just mentioned it, is the impact of this crisis on mostly women who work in childcare facilities? What does that look like? And also, talk about what their experience was pre COVID-19.
Fatima Goss Graves (07:07):
When I think about what our childcare infrastructure l- looked like even before COVID, we should have frankly (laughs) been embarrassed by the situation already. It was largely childcare providers who are running, effectively, shoestring businesses. They are paid so little. No one had any sort of nest egg to fall upon, and get them through in this period. It meant that people couldn’t keep their centers going and families, frankly, couldn’t afford to pay. The thing is w- we know that we are desperately in need of care and that, that care, it actually has to look different. It has to look different in part because, oh, I’m sorry. Hold on a second.
Rachel Thomas (07:59):
No problem (laughs).
Fatima Goss Graves (08:00):
My own care challenge.
Rachel Thomas (08:01):
Yeah, no, listen. That’s real, that’s what happens (laughs).
Fatima Goss Graves (08:05):
Sorry about that (laughs).
Rachel Thomas (08:06):'
No, um, uh, um, how old is he?
Fatima Goss Graves (08:08):'
(laughs) nine.
Rachel Thomas (08:09):
Nine.
Fatima Goss Graves (08:10):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rachel Thomas (08:10):
Um, do you have more?
Fatima Goss Graves (08:11):
I also have a twelve-year-old.
Rachel Thomas (08:11):
Twelve.
Fatima Goss Graves (08:11):
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Rachel Thomas (08:13):
Okay, so mine are, um, a bit older, and I’m grateful for every year, because it comes with a little bit more agency and autonomy (laughs).
Fatima Goss Graves (08:21):
Yeah (laughs).
Rachel Thomas (08:23):
You were talking a bit about-
Fatima Goss Graves (08:25):
Yeah.
Rachel Thomas (08:25):
... how the fact that childcare is privatized. It doesn’t set the industry up for success, particularly, in a moment like this. Could you pick that thread up?
Fatima Goss Graves (08:33):
The very private nature of our childcare infrastructure meant that it could not be successful, because the truth of the matter is that we have built our childcare system off of the idea that it’s just okay to pay m- a largely black and brown women workforce poverty wages. Childcare is actually expensive (laughs) at a time where families had less, not more. They couldn’t afford to pay more. The whole thing crumbled. This key infrastructure for our families and for our economies, businesses were like, "The biggest challenge we have right now is the fact that our workers have care challenges."
The other thing about the pandemic was in order to actually support care, even initially, just for the essential workforce, and let alone for others that were in need, in order to do that, what we actually needed to have in place was sort of different settings. People needed to be more socially distanced and further apart. Providers could take fewer children safely. They needed PPE in a different way. They needed cleaning supplies in a different way. Instead, what happened, and it’s, frankly, because we didn’t invest is that about 20% of providers closed.
Rachel Thomas (09:58):
Yeah.
Fatima Goss Graves (09:59):
And, I don’t know that we’ll get them back. I don’t know that we’ll get them back in part, because we’ve built the system on paying them poverty wages. There were b- some small business programs of which childcare providers barely participate in. Uh, you know, some folks who are technically running a business, they don’t even think of themselves as running a business. They think of themselves as providing care, because they love children and their ability to access this program. It did not work in the same way, so there were other solutions, but we did not move them forward as a country, and, and it is a shame.
Rachel Thomas (10:35):
One of the stats from y- your research that really stuck with me, and this is pre COVID-19, I believe, but was for a typical black family the average annual cost of center-based childcare for two children is 42% of their median income. That just left me breathless to think about what a big expense it is for that family, those families. Could you talk a little bit about, I know that COVID-19 has kind of blown up and already broken system.
Fatima Goss Graves (11:05):
That’s right. Well, first of all, childcare is expensive.
Rachel Thomas (11:05):
Yeah.
Fatima Goss Graves (11:09):
It just is, but the other thing is that although childcare is expensive, it’s expensive for a reason. It is a service built on caring for our youngest and most (laughs) precious humans. There is not a way to do it, and have quality that is free, and so, the question is how do you make childcare affordable? And, the answer really in part involves investment I- by our federal government, and add a totally different scale, so that’s one thing. The other thing is that childcare was hard to find, so as expensive as it is, if you talk to new parents, they’re worried about childcare, because of how expensive it is. They’re also worried about childcare, because they can’t find it. They sit on waiting lists, they are desperate to get in, they know that there should be more, but they can’t access, there’re whole parts of the country where even before COVID, there were what people call childcare deserts, where you can’t find childcare within a 50 mile radius.
That has only expanded in this period, so when we think about the solutions ahead, we need an immediate investment to sort of stabilize the sector for sure, and to solve the cliff that we are on, where women, especially, are leaving the workforce in droves. We have to do that.
Rachel Thomas (12:44):
Honestly, my heart rate goes up (laughs) just thinking about the anxiety of trying to find childcare, so you started to talk about solutions. Wave a magic one for us. You get to-
Fatima Goss Graves (12:54):
(laughs).
Rachel Thomas (12:54):
... you get to paint what the future looks like.
Fatima Goss Graves (12:57):
I actually think we’ve laid out a plan that’s super common sense, that I feel like I shouldn’t even need my magic wand for it.
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:13:04]
Tilted S2: Episode 7
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