In the last economic downturn in 2008, while in the corporate world. I was also caregiving my mother and working a six-figure management job for a national publishing company. My job was intense and demanding. My duty as a family caregiver pulled at me to care for my mother, and it was a continual battle within me as her condition continued to decline. I felt backed up against the wall with an enormous responsibility on my shoulders- feeling alone, unsupported, and overwhelmed.
Specifically, in September 2008, Mom had a major surgery, and I was the one to care for her. As I reported to my boss at the time, I requested time off to care for her. It was “not approved” and thus, I had to go to human resources, through my rights to use the Family and Medical Leave Act to get time off.
This began a downturn of a different kind. Upon my return back to work, several weeks later, I was discriminated against because of my caregiving duties. Upon returning to work after my Family and Medical leave, I was notified that I had been demoted from my job. I was also, then, marginalized in my workplace, and had to hire an attorney to fight for my original job back. It caused such an “uproar” in the company that I worked for, that the Director of Human Resources flew out from the corporate offices on the east coast to Seattle to negotiate and represent the company to deal with this issue. Yet, the issue resolved itself, not to my favor, as when there was a downsizing, on December 5, 2008 I became a casualty.
I was 52 years old. The job market was slim. All I had was a mortgage that I could no longer pay, and a dismal 401K. The jobs that I was qualified for to return to the workplace in digital media companies were more interested in a 35 year old who would happily take half the wages that I earned.
To tell me that I do not relate to what caregivers are dealing with today during times of COVID-19, is a falsehood. I know all too well the situation that family caregivers are facing today due to my own experience. Today, families are experiencing most of what I dealt with- (sadly, not much has changed) and new challenges during the coronavirus crisis. They must manage both work (if they are lucky enough to still be employed) and an increase in caregiving responsibilities.
While many working women, especially those in jobs with low wages or nontraditional hours, have long struggled to manage work and caregiving for a loved one, the pandemic has created additional stresses for everyone. Low AND high-income families face concerns on caring for a senior loved one if they live nearby, or far apart. In some cases, if a loved one has been diagnosed with COVID-19, many of them have children in the home, and now as we are coming back to school, there are added issues in coordinating online classes. Women with young children have had no choice but to take on additional child AND senior care responsibilities that are often shared unequally with their partners.
Federal policymakers have been neglectful in this segment of the population, which since COVID, has doubled, and according to recent studies, represent over 100 MILLION adults in the USA today.
Many unpaid family caregivers have also lost jobs in an economy that is in shambles. They are struggling to pay their own bills, and yet, every single day, their minds are consumed with concern about the well-being of a loved one who may need advanced care. There are fears of making changes right now, and resources are restrained due to the pandemic.
I founded Answers for Elders to support family caregivers. I recognize, as a caregiver for my mother until she passed, the enormous responsibility that rest upon our shoulders, and similarly to these times, after my job was lost my life spiraled out of control. That was over 10 years ago that I experienced my story, but still, the USA has been remiss in providing the right type of resources for those caring for our children and our senior loved ones.
Now with COVID, I was informed recently that due to the pandemic, unpaid family caregivers have now doubled. Originally being over 50 million in this country, to now, over 100 Million Americans. Clearly, it’s time to take a stand. Our lawmakers must take significant action to invest in those who are currently caregiving and support women’s work and caregiving now and in the future. If they do not, the United States risks losing much of the progress women have made toward gender equality in the home and workplace. Current caregiving challenges are experienced differently along race, ethnicity, and gender lines as well as by employment status—as women continue to go to their essential jobs, and now many women are unemployed. There are also women working from home.
No matter where a woman is in her situation, all women are now paying the consequence of the United States’ earlier systemic failures to value and support women’s work and caregiving. These failures have left the country with inadequate childcare funding, low wages for child and eldercare workers, and workplace policies from a bygone era when fathers were assumed to be their families’ sole breadwinner. Women’s increased caregiving responsibilities during the coronavirus crisis, compounded by the lack of policies that support caregiving and the potential permanent closure of many programs may result in long-term negative impacts on women’s earnings and employment. This will ultimately worsen the gender wage gaps for women—and mothers in particular—and will undermine the economic stability of families.
TRUTH: The United States has never adequately valued and supported women’s paid work and unpaid caregiving.
We as a country have disregarded the important work that family caregivers provide and though both are essential contributions to the nation’s economy and families’ well-being, their work has been under-valued and unappreciated.
Women perform the majority of unpaid care work, (approximately 65%) and these contributions at home help ensure the functioning of a strong economy.[1] Despite the critical importance of this uncompensated care, it is not valued or supported by society. Rather, women’s unpaid labor often diminishes their economic opportunities and time spent on paid work. Although women spend significant hours on unpaid care work, their participation in the labor force has grown since the 1950s, reaching 57.4 percent in 2019.[2]
Women of color, of course, adds a whole new dimension to this challenge, and Women’s participation in the economy adds an estimated $7.6 trillion to the nation’s gross domestic product each year and contributes significantly to their families’ financial security.[3]
Before Congress passed relief packages in response to the coronavirus, the United States was one of the only countries in the world that didn’t guarantee workers access to any form of paid leave. The lack of a national paid sick leave policy and national paid family and medical leave program forced many workers to choose between keeping their paycheck and recovering from an illness or caring for a loved one.
Women’s caregiving responsibilities have increased during the coronavirus pandemic
The pandemic has caused dramatic shifts in the lives, work, and care arrangements of families. Stay-at-home orders have closed many workplaces, schools, and they are also limited in visiting seniors who are isolated, either at home or in a senior community. Normal care arrangements for children, family members with disabilities, and elderly family members are closed or unavailable. Our seniors are experiencing added conditions of loneliness and depression- which can exacerbate symptoms of dementia, or can increase the risk of falling or poor diet.
This includes family-based arrangements: For example, grandparents who are at high risk of complications related to COVID-19 may be unable to care for their grandchildren. These changes are especially challenging for women who have both caregiving responsibilities and essential jobs with little to no workplace flexibility.
While Congress has attempted to help families with caregiving by temporarily providing workers up to two weeks of emergency paid sick leave and an additional 10 weeks of emergency paid child care leave through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the law’s loopholes and exemptions exclude an estimated 68 million to 106 million private sector workers from receiving these paid leave protections.Among these millions of people are essential workers such as health care providers, emergency responders, and more than 2 million grocery store workers employed at large chains with 500 or more employees.
Women working in essential jobs face additional barriers to managing caregiving due to a lack of workplace flexibility, forcing them to figure out care solutions in order to keep their job and report to work. While some women may be able to work from home during the pandemic, they struggle to manage work with home schooling and caring for their children or caring for a senior with dementia- especially if their employer denies them flexible work hours.
Unfortunately, these challenges may not be short term. As the coronavirus pandemic stretches on without a clear end in sight and causes permanent damage to the child and eldercare industry, many providers are now laying off staff, or closing their doors and may never reopen.
Women’s increased caregiving could have long-term effects on their earnings and employment
Women are already feeling the effects of their increased caregiving responsibilities on their ability to work. As time spent on caregiving increases, some women may be forced to reduce their work hours, or the added strain of their caregiving duties will compromise their jobs entirely. Women more than men often have multiple part-time jobs to keep afloat.
When women reduce their work hours to manage additional caregiving responsibilities, their household’s earnings will decline, jeopardizing their family’s immediate financial security and likely exacerbating the financial stress families are experiencing due to the coronavirus. This is especially true for families in which mothers are the primary or co-breadwinner.
Policy recommendations
Federal policymakers must act now, during the pandemic. They MUST implement new policies to address this issue. These are serious long-term issues that impacts on women’s earnings and employment. Lawmakers MUST prioritize structural policy changes. This includes the expansion of supportive work-family policies and investments in the eldercare and childcare industries—in order to recognize the value of women’s work and unpaid caregiving and improve gender equality. The following sections highlight specific changes that policymakers should advance.
- Ensure workers have a right to request workplace flexibility
With increased caregiving responsibilities, workers need workplace flexibility. Sadly, however, many workers are unable to request such flexibility, or they fear discrimination or retaliation from their employer if they do. Lawmakers can expand and protect workers’ right to request workplace flexibility by passing a law which would protect workers from discrimination, compel employers to seriously consider flexibility requests, and allow employers to deny requests only for valid business reasons. Lawmakers should also require employers to post schedules two weeks in advance, allowing workers the ability to plan for caregiving arrangements. This may prove to be particularly important now, as employers call employees back to their workplaces even as schools, care services, senior facilities, and other places of care remain closed.
- Expand and make permanent paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave
Women with increased unpaid caregiving responsibilities during the coronavirus crisis need access to paid leave to be able to take time off work to care for their children or a senior loved one, in the event they or their family get sick, to recover or provide care without risking their paycheck or their job. In response to the coronavirus crisis, Congress passed the FFCRA to temporarily provide workers, until December 31, 2020, up to two weeks of emergency paid sick leave and an additional 10 weeks of emergency paid childcare leave, but it did not include those caring for seniors.
This law falls significantly short of helping all workers and addressing their comprehensive caregiving needs. Congress must close the loopholes and exemptions that excluded an estimated 68 million to 106 million private sector workers, including workers at large businesses with 500 or more employees, health care workers, emergency responders, and employees taking childcare leave at small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Finally, while the paid leave provided in the FFCRA is gender neutral, women are more likely to use the leave unless policymakers raise the wage replacement for caregiving leave above two-thirds of normal wages.
The temporary nature of the emergency paid leave provided in the FFCRA and the expected continuation of caregiving challenges have highlighted the need for permanent, national paid sick leave and paid family and medical leave policies to support workers, particularly women, in the future.
- Prohibit caregiver and pregnancy discrimination
As someone who was discriminated against due to my caregiving this is an issue that is far more rampant than most realize. Let’s face it. Women with increased caregiving responsibilities during the coronavirus pandemic may face caregiver discrimination, not only in their current job, but in a future job or job interview. This is also known as family responsibilities discrimination, from their employer. They could, for example, be denied leave, flexible hours, being hired or a promotion due to their caregiving responsibilities. The opportunities for caregiver discrimination may only increase in the future, as mothers struggle to find adequate and affordable childcare, and as our senior population grows, as over 10,000 Americans turn 65 each day in the USA.
Currently, there is no federal law specifically protecting caregivers from job discrimination based on their family responsibilities. Federal lawmakers must act to protect against employment discrimination based on caregiving responsibilities.
- Raise wages and ensure equal pay
To support women as they continue to work and contribute to their family’s economic security, policymakers must raise the minimum wage and address gender wage inequality. Women make up nearly 58 percent of minimum wage workers and would benefit from an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 as proposed in the Raise the Wage Act. Women continue to experience significant gender wage gaps as I did, and policymakers should take meaningful and comprehensive action such as passing the Paycheck Fairness Act to strengthen existing equal pay protections and combat discriminatory pay practices.
Conclusion
The Chinese symbol for “crisis” also means “opportunity.” There has never been a more optimal time to reevaluate our outdated policies and make changes for the better for all Americans.
We must do better!
- Public policies have provided working women little support in managing work and family responsibilities.
- The USA devalues those who are caregivers professionally, and even though women make significant contributions to their family’s economic security they perform the majority of unpaid caregiving in their households.
- The COVID pandemic has only exacerbated the caregiving challenges women face today.
- We also must not lose thought that this will likely also result in long-term consequences for women’s work and their progress toward gender equality.
Our lawmakers must act now to invest in the caregiving industry and support women’s increased caregiving responsibilities. There must be legislation that provides permanent policy solutions to improve gender equality in the future. This moment also calls for a greater reimagining of the future of work and caregiving—not as a precarious balance between two interests but as an integrated approach that is valuable to the nation’s economy and families.
After being a career woman all of my life, it would be great to finally see that the United States begins to truly value women’s paid work—especially paid care work from domestic caregiver workers, to childcare workers, and those who are part of caring for others—as well as support unpaid caregiving labor through robust, structural policy change.
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2018/05/18/450972/unequal-division-labor/. ↩
[2] https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat02.pdf
[3] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2017/03/07/427556/a-day-in-the-u-s-economy-without-women/. ↩
