Month: September 2021

I believe it is important to check in on top stories in other parts of the world on the topic of gender issues in the workplace to balance out our US-centric media. Today’s headlines take place in France, Japan, and Nigeria.

France

In Paris, France, Mayor Anne Hidalgo has announced that she will run for president as the Socialist candidate in the April 2022 presidential election. Elected as the first woman mayor of Paris in 2014 and reelected in 2020, Hidalgo is known as a charismatic and divisive mayor. In 2018, she was fined $110,000 by the French government for appointing too many women (eleven out of sixteen top positions) to senior city government positions. Hidalgo declared the fine “absurd” as she worked to address systemic problems with the underrepresentation of women in top civil service jobs across the country. The ministry in charge of the French Civil Service found that since she was elected, “Paris has made great strides in correcting historic imbalances. Across the city government, women now hold 47 percent of senior management positions.”

Hidalgo, the daughter of poor Spanish immigrants, would be the first woman elected as president in France. Roger Cohen, reporting for the New York Times, notes, “Up to now, the Fifth Republic has produced eight male ‘présidents’ over six decades.” Fittingly, she was anointed as the standard bearer for the Socialist Party at the Chateau de Blois, where in 1429 Joan of Arc stopped for a blessing before defeating the British at Orléans. Cohen observes that “French Socialists appear ready to put their faith in a woman facing a tough campaign and unlikely odds.” Let’s see what happens.

Japan

Even though the Japanese government promised in 2003 that by 2020 women would occupy 30 percent of all corporate management positions, only 13 percent of management positions in Japan were occupied by women in 2020. Ben Dooley of the New York Times notes that Japan continues to have some of the starkest inequality in the developed world. He reports that

• Women in Japan earn 44 percent less than men.
• Only 6 percent of board directors in listed companies are women.
• 44 percent of women worked in part-time or temporary positions compared with just under 12 percent of men.
• Many women leave their jobs after having a child because Japan’s seniority-based systems does not allow them to make up for lost time due to maternity leave.

In the meantime, despite Japan’s tech-savvy image, Malcom Foster reports that Japan is actually “a digital laggard with a traditional paperbound office culture where fax machines and personal seals known as hanko remain common.” The pandemic heightened awareness in the country that it needs to modernize, but Japan has a severe shortage of technology workers and engineering students. However, Foster reports that university programs that produce these workers have a near absence of women:

• Japan has some of the lowest percentages of women in the developed world in science and technology programs, according to UNESCO data, and the smallest share of women doing research in science and technology.
• Women make up 14 percent of university graduates in Japanese engineering programs and 25.8 percent in the natural sciences. This compares to 20.4 percent and 52.5 percent in the United States and 30.8 percent and 51.4 percent in India.

While the government of Japan has started to address these problems by mandating computer programming classes in elementary school for all boys and girls, there is still a long way to go before the mindset changes in the larger culture that tech is a strictly male domain.

Nigeria

Martha Agbani is the leader of a business in Nigeria that empowers women and cleans up the environment ruined by oil-polluting multinationals such as Royal Dutch Shell. Her goal is to put money in the pockets of women, who suffer disproportionately from the effects of oil pollution when their livelihood, harvesting shellfish, is destroyed by oil spills. Ruth Maclean of the New York Times explains that Agbani is doing this by hiring a lot of women to raise mangrove trees that they will sell to Royal Dutch Shell.

Maclean explains that mangrove trees filter brackish water, provide protection against coastal erosion, and provide breeding grounds for aquatic life. After two oil spills in 2007 and 2008 killed off thousands of acres of mangrove forests near Agbani’s village, Shell agreed to compensate the community. Agbani plans to both heal the ravaged environment and empower local women by planting large mangrove nurseries and selling the mangrove tress to Shell. This is entrepreneurial environmental activism and activism for women’s rights at its finest.

Let us continue to learn about and support women around the world who are championing women’s rights.

Photo by Dovile Ramoskaite on Unsplash

New research, collected and released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and analyzed by the Brookings Institute, shows that in 2020, the mothers of young children spent about eight hours a day on childcare while spending six hours on average working. Chabeli Carrazana, reporting for the 19th, explains that the data are averages based on thousands of interviews by the Bureau of Labor Statistics with people across the country about how they spent their time on a daily basis between May and December 2020 when the pandemic closed down schools and childcare centers. Specifically, Carrazana reports that

• On average, moms with children ages twelve and under spent about eight hours a day on direct or indirect childcare last year while working an average of six hours a day, while dads spent an average of five hours per day on childcare while working eight hours a day. Data were not collected for nonbinary people or LBGTQ+ couples.
• Overall, moms spent twice as much time as dads doing primary care activities like feeding, bathing, dressing, or playing with children.
• Fathers of children between ages five and twelve did increase the amount of time they spent on direct care, but mothers of elementary school children still did three more hours of direct and indirect childcare combined than did fathers, even with the increased time spent by fathers.

The fallout for women’s careers has been described in a previous post. Carrazana cites the US Census Bureau as confirming that “in April 2020 alone, 3.5 million moms of school-age children shifted out of active work, moving into paid or unpaid leave, losing their jobs, or leaving the labor force completely. . . . About half of all moms were not working that month.” Hundreds of thousands of mothers left the workforce completely over the past year.

This “shesession” has been particularly punishing for women of color, for whom the unemployment rate remains high at 8.5 percent, compared to 5 percent for white women. . In addition, single mothers, who typically have a higher employment rate because they are the sole breadwinners for their families, still lag five percentage points below where they were in January 2020 before the pandemic.

Labor shortages are in the headlines daily, but women cannot fully participate in the labor force without the availability of quality, affordable childcare. In fact, women’s participation in the labor force is the lowest it has been since 1988.

We must both get the COVID-19 crisis under control and fund childcare. Our economy and women’s careers depend on this.

Photo by Tanaphong Toochinda on Unsplash (BY CC 0)

I am the oldest of four children. After my mother gave birth to me and my sister, she had two late-term miscarriages, and I remember her intense sadness and depression after each loss. Even though she went on to deliver two more healthy babies several years later, the sadness never fully lifted for her. Twenty years later, my father asked me to help him help her. We talked with her about the fact that she had never been able to grieve the two lost babies. It was simply taboo at the time for her or anyone else to bring up the topic. She agreed that it might be helpful to her to have a formal acknowledgment of her lost babies. We had a funeral and placed grave markers in our family plot inscribed with their names and birth/death dates. She shared that this ritual did help her a lot.

Because of my mother’s experience, I was drawn to an article by Jennifer Gerson writing for the 19th about new legislation sponsored by Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Tammy Duckworth called the Support through Loss Act. Gerson notes that “while pregnancy is typically widely celebrated, those struggling to grow their families typically do so privately out of any combination of grief, stigma or fear of retaliation should their employer find out that they are trying to conceive.” They point out that miscarriage, failed IVF cycles, or unsuccessful adoption or surrogacy plans can be losses that individuals and couples are expected to bear privately, often with the admonition from professionals to “move on” and resume their lives immediately.

Pressley and Duckworth note several reasons why we need to change these dynamics. We need to publicly recognize that family building can involve painful challenges, and employers need to demonstrate compassion and understanding about related grief and loss. The bills’ authors point out that providing paid family leave and support services for grieving families is a critical workers’ rights issue. Workers need protection from fear of retaliation if they access leave and mental health resources when dealing with a loss. Duckworth states that it is “time to recognize the contributions of women in our economy” by providing paid leave and support that, according to Erin Grau, the cofounder and COO of Charter, addresses “the full spectrum of challenges around becoming a parent and being a parent today” in the workplace.

To bring about these changes, the new legislation sponsored by Pressley and Duckworth calls for

• Expanding paid family leave to include pregnancy loss as part of bereavement leave
• Allocating $45 million for coordinated research about pregnancy loss
• Requiring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to distribute information on pregnancy loss, miscarriage prevalence, treatment options, mental health options, and other support strategies

Both Pressley and Duckworth became committed to sponsoring this legislation because they and their constituents have experienced loss as aspiring parents. This is an excellent example of the added value that women bring to leadership.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

The media coverage of the recent Tokyo Olympics Games has featured a number of “Olympian-mother success stories,” reports Lindsay Crouse of the New York Times. Crouse notes a few examples:

• Aliphine Tuliamuk and Sally Kipyego, both with babies and young children, represented the United States in the Olympic marathon.
• When the sprinters Quanera Hayes and Allyson Felix qualified for the Olympics, they brought their toddlers onto the track to celebrate.

Crouse also points out, however, that while motherhood in elite sports is something to celebrate, there is also another reality for athletes who have children: having children puts their careers and incomes at risk.

Crouse reminds us that in 2019, Olympic runners Alysia Montaño, Kara Goucher, and Allyson Felix challenged the sports industry for celebrating them as mothers in advertisements while cutting their pay when they missed races because of pregnancy and childbirth. Their public complaints got Nike to change its contracts to include some protections for the pregnant athletes it sponsors. But, Crouse notes, the real root of the problem is a societal one:

• The United States is the only wealthy Western country that does not ensure paid leave for all parents or health benefits and equitable, quality healthcare for all.
• Black women are still about three times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy. Racial disparities in healthcare are serious in the United States. For example, Serena Williams almost died after childbirth.

Talya Minsberg writes about an especially egregious situation that Olympic athletes who are new mothers had to face: the Olympic Committee prohibited them from bringing their nursing babies to the games because of COVID-19-related restrictions. When the athletes protested against this decision, the International Olympic Committee reversed the ban but provided impractical accommodations, according to the Spanish swimmer Ona Carbonell.

Crouse points out that how the sports industry treats mother-athletes reflects our culture. For this reason, athletes historically have been powerful agents for change:

• Black men taking a knee for racial justice has contributed to the change in the criminal legal justice system brought about by the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Female college basketball players argued and won for equality in access to training equipment.
• The United States Women’s Soccer Team filed a lawsuit for equal pay during the Olympics, as reported by Alexandra E. Petri and Andrew Das.

Crouse closes her article by noting, “Yes, cheer for Felix and all the other brave, determined and talented mothers out there defying the constraints imposed on them. But remember that they are succeeding despite the fact that we failed them.”

Photo courtesy of maisa_nyc (CC BY-SA 2.0)