The pandemic has shaken the professional prospects of many mothers. Returning to the office is proving to be equally harmful.
A lack of day care centers and face-to-face classes has pushed millions of women out of the American workforce. America From March 2020. Now the situation has become worse.
Although employers prefer Microsofthandjob Amazon.Com I Netflix While help is offered for childcare and emergency leave, benefits are usually temporary and expire.
$53 billion in resources from federal government Keeping day care centers running and reopening those that were closed were only palliative.
Many Business They recognize the dilemma their parents face when looking for new employees and try to retain the ones they already have. Companies like International Business Machines (IBM) are already talking about waiting until September – the start of the US school year – to get employees back into the office.
But working from home requires someone to take care of children, and face-to-face return to work has increased demand, while available space in day care centers, camps and other programs is still more than pre-pandemic. are pretty low. Level.
For many families, the only immediate solution is part-time work or, in the case of couples living together, one of them has left their job – usually the mother.
Kelly Brinkman of Prairie Ronde, Louisiana, quit against her will. She was an employee of a health care provider who terminated her home Office in March and gave him less than two weeks to organize.
Since she could not find anyone to live with her three children, she was fired. Brinkman preferred to find another occupation, but felt that someone to look after him would pay him more than he could earn on the job.
“I gave up because it just didn’t work out,” he lamented.
It was difficult to find affordable day care centers in the US before the pandemic. Now, other factors complicate the return of parents to face-to-face work.
First, vaccination of young children is not yet authorized and there is concern that they will become infected with coronavirus by parents, even if they have been vaccinated.
Second, the good intentions and emergency benefits offered by employers are temporary and do not give parents confidence in a more permanent solution. Finally, finding babysitters and daycare has become even more difficult.
Branches are global. A study published this month by researchers from Northwestern University, University of California San Diego and Mannheim University found professional devastation for women during the pandemic in the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.
In all these countries, the same pattern was observed for women leaving their jobs to care for their children, while men continued to work.
In the US, the number of women employed in May 2021 was 1.8 million less than in February 2020, the latest reading before most offices in the country closed.
