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Child care remains an issue for working mothers, and that was a major theme of Thursday’s roundtable. Nearly 400,000 child care jobs have been lost since the start of the pandemic, Ms. Harris said. Small business closures and the loss of millions of jobs have created the “perfect storm” for women, especially black business owners, she added. “The longer we wait to act,” she said, “the harder it will be to get these millions of women back into the workforce.”
The administration’s relief proposal would provide some $ 130 billion to help reopen K-12 schools, a major component of child care. But how and when to do it – and how to explain decision-making to Americans – has proven to be a sticking point for the president and his advisers.
President Biden has vowed to reopen as many schools as possible in the first 100 days of his administration, a commitment that has been questioned by teachers’ unions who want to be assured of safety measures before schools reopen . Ms Harris limited her remarks on schools on Thursday, saying the plan would “provide funding to help schools reopen safely.” Ms Harris said in an appearance on the “Today” show Wednesday that “teachers should be a priority” to receive immunizations.
Several representatives of women’s advocacy groups participated in the appeal with Ms. Harris, including Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. She said the vice president did not go into the “granular” details of school reopening, but the group had focused on other topics, including the importance of direct payments for students. families in difficulty.
“People are barely together at the moment,” said Ms. Goss Graves. “I was delighted to hear that she understood and spoke urgently about making this investment.”
As the pandemic continues, the statistics for women are truly grim.
A report released last year by researchers at the University of Arkansas and the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California found that female employment began to fall almost immediately once the coronavirus took hold last spring. Since then, researchers have found that women have taken on a heavier burden than men when it comes to childcare.
Out-of-school women and women of color have been disproportionately affected. Another report, released in the fall by the Brookings Institution, showed that nearly half of all working women have low-paying jobs. These jobs are more likely to be held by black or Latin women, and they are in industries, such as restaurants and travel, that are among the least likely to return to some level of normality soon.
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