Childcare remains an issue for working mothers, and it was a main topic of Thursday’s round table. Nearly 400,000 childcare jobs have been lost since the pandemic began, Ms. Harris said. The shutdowns of small businesses and the loss of millions of jobs have created the “perfect storm” for women, especially black entrepreneurs, she added. “The longer we wait to act,” she said, “the harder it will be to get these millions of women back into work.”
Updated
Apr. 18, 2021, 5:19 p.m. ET
The government’s aid proposal would provide around $ 130 billion to help reopen K-12 schools, a key element of childcare. But how and when to do this – and how to explain decision-making to Americans – has proven to be a stumbling block for the president and his advisors.
President Biden has promised to reopen as many schools as possible in the first 100 days of his term in office. This promise has been challenged by teachers’ unions seeking security measures before schools reopen. On Thursday, Ms. Harris kept her comments on the schools limited, 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 get vaccinations.
Several representatives of women’s advocacy groups took part in the call with Ms. Harris, including Fatima Goss Graves, President of the National Center for Women’s Rights. She said that the vice president did not “go into” detail “about reopening schools, but that the group emphasized other issues, including the importance of direct payments to families in difficulty.
“People barely hold it together right now,” said Ms. Goss Graves. “I was pleased to hear that she understood this investment and spoke with urgency.”
As the pandemic drags on, the statistics for women are indeed grim.
A report released last year by researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research found that women’s employment began to decline almost immediately after the onset of the coronavirus last spring. Since then, researchers have found that women took on a heavier burden than men in looking after children.
Women without a university degree and women with skin color are disproportionately affected. Another report released by the Brookings Institution in the fall showed that nearly half of all working women have low-paying jobs. These jobs are more likely to be filled by black or Latin American women, and they are in sectors like food and travel that are the least likely to return to normal soon.
