Speaker 1: Is this dramatic enough. Donald Trump indicted in Atlanta of
Speaker 1: refforts to overturn his twenty twenty election defeat in.
Speaker 2: Georgia back to the Middle East Israel, saying his troops
Speaker 2: are pushing deeper into Gaza City after encircling the northern
Speaker 2: part of the Palestinian enclave. The White Twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: now the hottest year on record. We saw those hot
Speaker 2: record temperatures affecting cities around the world. Ukraine's counteroffensive astalled
Speaker 2: in recent weeks, even as the country continues to come
Speaker 2: under attack from the air and on the ground.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three has been a year, a year of progress,
Speaker 3: and a year of disruptive change for women and people
Speaker 3: of color in particular.
Speaker 2: The case is an effort by a conservative legal group
Speaker 2: in Texas to limit abortion nationwide. A fatal blow to
Speaker 2: affirmative action the Supreme Court ruling that the affirmative action
Speaker 2: admission policies at Harvard and University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.
Speaker 2: Disney's asking his workers to return to his office is
Speaker 2: four days a week starting on March first.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to take stock. How has the year
Speaker 3: faired for equality efforts? Across all of these topics. Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Equality reporter Kelsey Butler says there has been progress, like
Speaker 3: corporations hiring a more diverse workforce.
Speaker 4: There were thirty nine companies, including Meta, Microsoft, Pepsi where
Speaker 4: they increase the number of black workers in like professionals
Speaker 4: executive categories.
Speaker 3: But as Bloomberg BusinessWeek senior writer Claire Seddeth puts it,
Speaker 3: equality in America is a long game and progress can
Speaker 3: be slow.
Speaker 5: If the Supreme Court can overrule the FDA and say
Speaker 5: that they know better about a drug that leads us
Speaker 5: down a completely different path than the one we'd been
Speaker 5: walking down as a country until now.
Speaker 3: Kelsey and Claire are here to give us a roundup
Speaker 3: of this year's equality news. I'm Nancy Cook today on
Speaker 3: the big take, what equality in America really means in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three and what's ahead for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: So we're talking first about the equality gains made in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. To start, Claire tell us about the
Speaker 3: O pill and why it's notable.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, Well, it's been over sixty years since birth
Speaker 5: control the pill has been available for women, but up
Speaker 5: until this year it has always been prescription only, and
Speaker 5: so while millions and millions of women are on birth control.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of barriers to access.
Speaker 5: You have to have a doctor, you have to have
Speaker 5: access to healthcare, and so there are also millions of
Speaker 5: women who aren't on it.
Speaker 1: An O pill is.
Speaker 5: The very first FDA approved over the counter birth control
Speaker 5: pill that you can just walk into a pharmacy and
Speaker 5: pick it up off the shelf.
Speaker 3: And where does it fit into the landscape of options
Speaker 3: that women have right now in terms of birth control?
Speaker 5: So if you're on birth control, you're probably not going
Speaker 5: to switch to a pill because it's actually kind of
Speaker 5: an old pill. It's progesterrine only, and most pills are
Speaker 5: a combo of progestin and estrogen. It's very effective and
Speaker 5: it works, and the reason why they picked that one
Speaker 5: is because they're sort of fewer side effects and more
Speaker 5: people can take it, so it's safer for over the
Speaker 5: counter use. But it is a bit of an old pill,
Speaker 5: and people tend not to pick progestrion only pills if
Speaker 5: they have a variety to choose from, so it's really
Speaker 5: just filling the gap of people who aren't on any
Speaker 5: form of birth control. It's probably not people switching from
Speaker 5: prescription to over the counter, and.
Speaker 3: So like, how many people having over the counter pill
Speaker 3: like that? How many people could that help? And how
Speaker 3: widespread do you think that could end up being. I
Speaker 3: think it'll be millions of people.
Speaker 5: It's not available on the market yet, it should be
Speaker 5: early twenty twenty four, and it'll take some time for
Speaker 5: the public to become aware of it, and so usually
Speaker 5: it's several years before it kicks in. But I think
Speaker 5: among especially teenagers who maybe do not have access to
Speaker 5: birth control because they have to ask their parents if
Speaker 5: they can go to a gynocologist or something like that,
Speaker 5: and low income women who don't have health care, we're
Speaker 5: talking in the tens of millions.
Speaker 3: Claire, was this a long time coming? Having this over
Speaker 3: the counter birth control pill?
Speaker 5: In some ways, this has been on activist radar since
Speaker 5: the sixties.
Speaker 1: I would say in the last decade, maybe fifteen twenty years,
Speaker 1: it has really picked up.
Speaker 5: This was a joint effort among reproductive rights activists and
Speaker 5: scientists to find the right pill, find a pharmaceutical company
Speaker 5: that is willing to jump through all the hurdles because
Speaker 5: one of the interesting things is birth control is so
Speaker 5: widespread that pharmaceutical companies aren't making a ton of money
Speaker 5: off of this, and so the hindrance in the past
Speaker 5: was less that the FDA wasn't open to this. It
Speaker 5: was that no drug company really thought it was worth
Speaker 5: their while. But Hi Pharmer, which is a French pharmaceutical company,
Speaker 5: it was like, yes, you know what, we will do this.
Speaker 1: They did the same thing in Britain.
Speaker 5: Actually, for the most part, this was a very smooth sailing,
Speaker 5: which you can't really say that about very many things
Speaker 5: related to reproductive rights these days.
Speaker 3: One of the other huge things that happened in the
Speaker 3: equality space in twenty twenty three was the labor economist
Speaker 3: Claudia Golden won the twenty twenty three Economic Nobel Prize.
Speaker 3: What did Golden win for and what was the biggest
Speaker 3: finding in her research?
Speaker 4: Kelsey, Yeah, So I think what is notable about this
Speaker 4: is it was multiple barriers broken here the first time
Speaker 4: a woman had won this prize alone. But then what
Speaker 4: Claudia Golden's work actually focuses on, which is about women
Speaker 4: in the workplace and basically a lot of things that
Speaker 4: we talk about now in this return to office environment,
Speaker 4: which is the motherhood penalty as well, and where the
Speaker 4: pay gap really starts to accelerate, which often is after
Speaker 4: the birth of a woman's first child.
Speaker 3: And apart from the motherhood penalty, what are some of
Speaker 3: the other findings that she's known for.
Speaker 5: She sort of studied women's labor force participation throughout history,
Speaker 5: and prior to her work, there was this sort of
Speaker 5: assumption that women quote unquote didn't work, and then suddenly
Speaker 5: in the nineteen seventies they decided that they were going
Speaker 5: to start working, and oh, this is a brand new thing,
Speaker 5: and oh my gosh, all these women are working. How
Speaker 5: do we feel about working mothers? Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: But what she showed was actually before the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 5: when many people were working on farms and in a
Speaker 5: more agricultural re based society, and as society shifted to
Speaker 5: a more factory and office centered work model, women were
Speaker 5: left out of that. And so in some ways from
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies on, we've been sort of like returning
Speaker 5: women to the workforce. But obviously it's a completely different
Speaker 5: work environment than it was before for them.
Speaker 3: And how has our work on the gender pay gap
Speaker 3: been a applied to the modern workplace?
Speaker 4: So I wanted to highlight something interesting that she talked
Speaker 4: about in a recent conversation with our colleague greed Picker,
Speaker 4: after she won her prize, which is just kind of
Speaker 4: looking at the idea of both greedy jobs versus flexible jobs,
Speaker 4: and how we're kind of seeing an evolution of greedy
Speaker 4: jobs that would take a lot from a person's time.
Speaker 4: You know, for example, it was a job that maybe
Speaker 4: you had to travel a lot, and we've seen kind
Speaker 4: of an evolution of that. In this push pull over
Speaker 4: work flexibility.
Speaker 6: We have flexible jobs that are becoming more productive. Think
Speaker 6: about the flexible job that you were told, well, you
Speaker 6: can work part time twenty five hours a week. Well,
Speaker 6: that wasn't going to lead to very much of a
Speaker 6: promotion possibility, but if you can now combine it with
Speaker 6: some remote work, that will be much better. So greedy
Speaker 6: jobs becoming more flexible, flexible jobs becoming more productive.
Speaker 4: So I think it'll be really interesting to see see
Speaker 4: how some of this plays out going forward when we
Speaker 4: look at how the workplace is evolving and what women's
Speaker 4: advancement looks like in that environment.
Speaker 3: One of the other big stories of the last few
Speaker 3: years is that labor data shows that big US companies
Speaker 3: did hire more people of color after the Black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter protests of twenty twenty. Bloomberg covered that data in
Speaker 3: the summer. What were the big takeaways?
Speaker 5: This is actually pretty fascinating. I want to start by
Speaker 5: saying I did not participate in this. I am highlighting
Speaker 5: my colleagues' work, but I'm happy to talk about it
Speaker 5: because I think it's pretty awesome. They analyze employment data
Speaker 5: for the S and P one hundred, which covers about
Speaker 5: nine million working Americans, and they found that of all
Speaker 5: of the jobs created in twenty twenty one, ninety four
Speaker 5: percent went.
Speaker 1: To people of color.
Speaker 5: There are some caveats to that most of those jobs
Speaker 5: were sort of lower or entry level positions, but the
Speaker 5: minority hiring boom happened at all the ranks as well,
Speaker 5: so executive, managerial, et cetera. And I think it's really
Speaker 5: important because the dominant message from companies in the past
Speaker 5: has been it's not our fault that we're so mail
Speaker 5: or we're so white, because this is just the labor
Speaker 5: pool that we have to pull from. It's not our fault,
Speaker 5: this is just you know, pipeline problem, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Et cetera.
Speaker 5: And as you can see, when they actually sort of
Speaker 5: put their money where their mouth is and they're given
Speaker 5: a reason to try to make a difference, they can
Speaker 5: do it. You know, this is just twenty twenty one data,
Speaker 5: and since then we've had sort of a pullback on
Speaker 5: DEI efforts, and so it's sort of not clear yet
Speaker 5: whether this is going to be a blip or the
Speaker 5: start of a real sort of long change, but it
Speaker 5: is good to know that you can make a pretty
Speaker 5: big difference in one year if you want to. So
Speaker 5: I think it's really interesting is there are some companies
Speaker 5: that made really big gains all across the top the
Speaker 5: places where people get paid the most. There were thirty
Speaker 5: nine companies, including Meta, Microsoft, PEPSI where they increase the
Speaker 5: number of black workers in like professionals executive categories. And
Speaker 5: I think that's really notable because yes, it is wonderful
Speaker 5: to hire people at the kind of entry level, but
Speaker 5: we know that we have a kind of environment where last.
Speaker 1: Hired first fired.
Speaker 4: So if you're just bringing in people at kind of
Speaker 4: the entry level, the lowest rung, those are people that
Speaker 4: are going to be most likely to be cut in
Speaker 4: kind of difficult economic times, and they're also not making
Speaker 4: the hiring decisions for the future either.
Speaker 3: And this data, you know, we talked about how it
Speaker 3: has a lag from twenty twenty one. When the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two and twenty twenty three data come out, what
Speaker 3: will you be looking for in particular?
Speaker 4: I'll be looking at retention, honestly, because it's very easy
Speaker 4: to ride the wave when other companies are talking about
Speaker 4: racial equity and moving the needle on all this kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. But it's a little bit harder to kind
Speaker 4: of keep that going in the environment that we're in
Speaker 4: right now, where it's not popular in any arena to
Speaker 4: do anything that.
Speaker 1: Has a whiff of DEI.
Speaker 4: So I'll definitely be looking at retention and also advancement
Speaker 4: to see what those executive ranks, those positions of power
Speaker 4: and companies look like.
Speaker 1: Are those getting more.
Speaker 3: Diverse when we're back from affirmative action to abortion medication,
Speaker 3: two cases that have changed the US the most this year.
Speaker 3: So we talked a little bit before about the progress
Speaker 3: the country has made on equality issues, but I'm curious
Speaker 3: to hear more about how the country has also regressed
Speaker 3: a little bit. Kelsey. You wrote about the Supreme Court's
Speaker 3: affirmative action ruling the day it was decided, what was
Speaker 3: the expected impact of that ruling and what have we
Speaker 3: seen with universities so far?
Speaker 4: Six months later, the Supreme Court decision essentially banned affirmative
Speaker 4: action at the university level.
Speaker 1: So colleges are.
Speaker 4: Going to have to reimagine how they make admissions decisions.
Speaker 4: And that's what actually changed with that decision. But there
Speaker 4: was kind of this ripple effect that happened beyond colleges,
Speaker 4: which is now we're seeing a contribution to a chill
Speaker 4: in corporate America when it comes to dei or anything
Speaker 4: that kind of seems affirmative action esque.
Speaker 3: And can you tell me more what those knock on
Speaker 3: effects have been from this ruling in corporate hiring?
Speaker 1: What have you seen?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what we've really seen is legal challenges by
Speaker 4: some of the same activists that sued Harvard and UNC
Speaker 4: over their affirmative action policies now set their sights on companies.
Speaker 4: So conservative activists Edward Bloom, who was involved in the
Speaker 4: Harvard case he hasn't organized that has also filed lawsuits
Speaker 4: against law firms that have fellowship programs for those from
Speaker 4: underrepresented populations and As a result to law, firms Morson,
Speaker 4: Enforcer and Perkins Qui have eliminated their diversity requirements. There
Speaker 4: have been other lawsuits for similar kind of diversity programs
Speaker 4: at companies like Pfizer, and we've also seen those companies
Speaker 4: take steps to basically open up their programs to everyone
Speaker 4: in order to not seem like they're discriminating.
Speaker 3: So are the companies just doing business totally differently now
Speaker 3: after this ruling or is it just they're pairing back
Speaker 3: their diversity program slightly. What does that look like?
Speaker 4: I think we're seeing kind of three modes of addressing this,
Speaker 4: and one is companies that we're just kind of doing
Speaker 4: what everybody else was doing in twenty twenty and putting
Speaker 4: out a statement certainly pulling back, and that's to be expected.
Speaker 4: They didn't really have an infrastructure around DEI, so it's
Speaker 4: not much to scale that back. Then we have companies
Speaker 4: that are being very forceful that they're going to keep
Speaker 4: doing what they're doing and they're not going to change
Speaker 4: at all, and that's obviously a smaller up pool of
Speaker 4: companies that are deciding to kind of stick their heads.
Speaker 1: Up on that. And then what we have that is
Speaker 1: a larger.
Speaker 4: Kind of population is companies that are doing the same
Speaker 4: things that they're doing, they're just.
Speaker 1: Being less vocal about it.
Speaker 4: And the data kind of bears that out. There was
Speaker 4: a survey in October of professionals that work in corporate
Speaker 4: responsibility and more than eighty percent said that they had
Speaker 4: changed the language they used to talk about work or
Speaker 4: cut down on external comms about their DEI efforts, But
Speaker 4: only ten percent said that they had actually decreased their programs.
Speaker 4: So they're just being quieter about it. Makes my job
Speaker 4: a little harder to get them to talk to me.
Speaker 4: But doing things like tweaking language on websites and really
Speaker 4: lawyer proofing everything seems to be the route a lot
Speaker 4: of company are taking.
Speaker 3: And what's the argument that these conservative groups that are
Speaker 3: suing the companies that they're making and apart from sort
Speaker 3: of universities and companies, what do you see as their
Speaker 3: next target.
Speaker 1: As far as the next target.
Speaker 4: I don't think they're quite done with corporate America yet.
Speaker 1: You know, we still haven't had a.
Speaker 4: Very definitive answer from the Supreme Court on diversity programs
Speaker 4: like the ones that we're talking about. In this kind
Speaker 4: of corporate context, so I think we'll certainly see a
Speaker 4: lot more of that going forward. The argument that's really
Speaker 4: being made is that by singling out a specific group
Speaker 4: of people that in and of itself is discrimination. If
Speaker 4: you have a fellowship that is for black and Latina professionals,
Speaker 4: for example, then you're leaving out the rest of the
Speaker 4: population that doesn't fit into that bucket, despite the fact
Speaker 4: that the people that are targeted by these programs, you know,
Speaker 4: have had historical disadvantages in the US.
Speaker 3: I want to talk little bit next about abortion medication
Speaker 3: and how it was put at risk by Texas court ruling.
Speaker 3: Kelsey remind us what mepha pristone is and how long
Speaker 3: it's been around.
Speaker 4: So mifa pristone is known as the abortion pill. It's
Speaker 4: one of two medications that is commonly used in the
Speaker 4: US to end pregnancy. It's been around for years, been
Speaker 4: proven to be safe and effective at ending pregnancies.
Speaker 3: What did the Fifth Circuit Court judge rule and what
Speaker 3: happened after that ruling?
Speaker 4: So right now we're in really a status quo situation
Speaker 4: that's because of an April order from the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: So basically, mepha pristone, which is known as the abortion pill,
Speaker 4: is available up until about ten weeks of pregnancy and
Speaker 4: via telemedicine. And that's obviously, you know, in the states
Speaker 4: where abortion is still legal. So the Supreme Court has
Speaker 4: decided they're going to take up a case that is
Speaker 4: going to determine how widely available mepha pristone is going forward.
Speaker 4: And really that's because there was an appeals court decision
Speaker 4: in August that essentially would roll back the clock to
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen and the rules and restrictions that existed around
Speaker 4: mefipristone then, so the cutoff for it was a little
Speaker 4: bit earlier, around seven weeks gestation, and it wasn't available
Speaker 4: via mail or telemedicine at that time. And the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court is going to make a decision on that before
Speaker 4: the end of the term around next June.
Speaker 3: And what would happen if the courts do revoke access
Speaker 3: to it? What's the potential impact? Does that mean you
Speaker 3: just can't get it?
Speaker 4: I don't think we can underplay the impact of mefi
Speaker 4: pristone like no longer being available. The reason being, if
Speaker 4: you look at all the data, more than half of
Speaker 4: abortions done in the US are via medication and early
Speaker 4: in pregnancy. So it is a very commonly used method
Speaker 4: of ending a pregnancy right now, and any curtailing of
Speaker 4: that would have huge ramifications, especially as we've already seen
Speaker 4: abortion access get decimated in the last two years.
Speaker 3: And can you just put that into the broader context
Speaker 3: of access to abortion now? Since the Supreme Court overturned
Speaker 3: Roe Vweight in twenty twenty two, how does this ruling
Speaker 3: on the abortion pill fit into that.
Speaker 4: As of right now, there are fourteen states where abortion
Speaker 4: is pretty much banned. There are exceptions, but so limited
Speaker 4: and narrow that it's almost to the point of them
Speaker 4: not existing. So we look at this as any attacks
Speaker 4: on mefapristone are just another part of this chipping awave
Speaker 4: that we've seen for reproductive healthcare in the US, and
Speaker 4: we're already starting to see data. It's obviously very early
Speaker 4: so far, but just the impact that these abortion bands
Speaker 4: are having. There was a recent study that I just
Speaker 4: rode up which said that as many as one in
Speaker 4: four people that wanted abortions since ro versus Weight was overturned,
Speaker 4: we're not able to access them. Led to uptick in
Speaker 4: berths in states with these bands, and people that were young,
Speaker 4: like in their twenties. Hispanic women were among those that
Speaker 4: were most impacted by those bands. So we're already starting
Speaker 4: to see data around this, and you know, any further
Speaker 4: erosion is just going to compound it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bleak.
Speaker 5: I think the thing to highlight is also that this
Speaker 5: is a drug that is widely considered safe. What they're
Speaker 5: challenging is the FDA's approval of it. So it also
Speaker 5: calls into question, you know, if the Supreme Court or
Speaker 5: court can overrule the FDA and say that they know
Speaker 5: better about a drug that leads us down a completely
Speaker 5: different path than the one we'd been walking down as
Speaker 5: a country until now.
Speaker 1: And while most of.
Speaker 5: The political arguments as it relates to medication and healthcare
Speaker 5: relate to women and reproductive rights because of how controversial
Speaker 5: abortion is, technically this would be a ruling against the FDA,
Speaker 5: and so it really weakens the FDA, and I think
Speaker 5: it makes a lot of people nervous about sort of
Speaker 5: political and judicial oversight of what should be a standalone agency.
Speaker 3: After the break, Kelsey and Claire tell us what stories
Speaker 3: they're watching for twenty twenty four. So I want to
Speaker 3: talk about what we should watch for in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and what's ahead for equality issues. I'm particularly interested
Speaker 3: in childcare. I know that you both have written a
Speaker 3: lot about that. Claire, briefly, what is the funding cliff
Speaker 3: that the US childcare industry experienced in September? Can you
Speaker 3: tell me more about that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to roll back for a few years.
Speaker 5: But if you remember in twenty twenty, when the pandemic
Speaker 5: started and people were pulling their children out of daycares
Speaker 5: and childcare centers because of fears that they would catch COVID,
Speaker 5: and all of these childcare centers started falling apart essentially
Speaker 5: and going out of business. The federal government put a
Speaker 5: lot of their money into the pandemic relief efforts, into
Speaker 5: the Cares Act specifically, I think, into propping up this industry,
Speaker 5: because this is an industry that was failing before COVID
Speaker 5: came along, and it just gutted them, and so they
Speaker 5: gave them a bunch of money, and businesses were able
Speaker 5: to stay open. And then when families came back after
Speaker 5: the pandemic, they were struggling but open. But then the
Speaker 5: pandemic relief money ran out, And the fundamental problem is
Speaker 5: that childcare workers are so underpaid that many of them
Speaker 5: left the industry because they could get a better paying
Speaker 5: job at McDonald's. Essentially, so childcare centers may be technically
Speaker 5: in business, but they literally can't hire enough workers. And
Speaker 5: the only way that they can hire them is to
Speaker 5: raise prices. But the prices are so high already that
Speaker 5: then people are leaving. And it's just this like slow
Speaker 5: crumbling of an entire industry, and unfortunately, it is the
Speaker 5: backbone of our entire economy because women make up half
Speaker 5: of the economy.
Speaker 3: And what are the potential on the ground effects in
Speaker 3: the coming months with this funding gone.
Speaker 5: I think what you're seeing is a lot of daycares
Speaker 5: closing or limiting the number of students that they can take.
Speaker 5: You know, I think it'll be a while before we
Speaker 5: get statistical data on it, but I anecdotally have already
Speaker 5: been talking to people.
Speaker 1: I talked to one woman in Indiana.
Speaker 5: Who had to quit her job because she called I
Speaker 5: think sixty daycares trying to take her eighteen month old
Speaker 5: and they said they didn't have a spond so she
Speaker 5: just quit.
Speaker 1: So you're going to.
Speaker 5: See a lot of women leaving the workforce. We're going
Speaker 5: to see a lot of people also leaving the workforce
Speaker 5: because of the spots that are available. Their prices have
Speaker 5: risen so much that families can't afford it, and so
Speaker 5: one of the parents is going to stay home, and
Speaker 5: it's almost always the mother, and it's just I think
Speaker 5: it's going to get pretty.
Speaker 3: Bleak and Kelsey on this story. What are you looking
Speaker 3: for in the next year with the childcare industry in
Speaker 3: the situation?
Speaker 1: Some of the research that.
Speaker 4: We've seen gives us a sense as to what the
Speaker 4: projected impact could be. Potentially seventy thousand childcare programs closing,
Speaker 4: which means three point two million kids could be left
Speaker 4: without spots in childcare. That's potentially millions of families that
Speaker 4: are going to have their care disrupted. And what we've
Speaker 4: seen already, even since September, is that backup plans are
Speaker 4: not that easy to come by. I wrote about this
Speaker 4: in our newsletter. A person who had already spent months
Speaker 4: and months trying to find a spot for her toddler
Speaker 4: in daycare so that she could return to work after
Speaker 4: like a five year break to be.
Speaker 1: At home, and.
Speaker 4: That very first week, the child's care center closed for
Speaker 4: a week because it was a home daycare and the
Speaker 4: person had, you know, their own family emergency. So this
Speaker 4: person then had to go scramble and find backup care,
Speaker 4: which wasn't necessarily the easiest thing to do and ended
Speaker 4: up being more expensive than her typical care. So I
Speaker 4: think we're going to see a slow drip drip. You know,
Speaker 4: all those seventy thousand centers didn't close on October first,
Speaker 4: But we're going to see some close over time, some
Speaker 4: raise prices to try to make it work, some cut
Speaker 4: down the number of kids it ca intake, and ultimately
Speaker 4: we're going to see this ripple into what parents and
Speaker 4: specifically moms are able to do at work, whether that
Speaker 4: means cut their hours, change the industry that they're in,
Speaker 4: or leave work altogether.
Speaker 1: That's the biggest thing I'll be watching.
Speaker 3: I'm also really curious about the battles over return to
Speaker 3: office versus work from home and how those are hurting mothers. Claire,
Speaker 3: you've written about the push by some companies to have
Speaker 3: people back in the office and how that can affect mothers.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about the moment we're in right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And before where I start, I want to start
Speaker 5: with the caveat that, like, this is for a subset.
Speaker 1: Of our labor force.
Speaker 5: You know, this is primarily a college educated, white collar
Speaker 5: dusk workers. But among that group, as you're well aware,
Speaker 5: during the pandemic, there was the shift from jobs that
Speaker 5: had been in person five days a week, nine to five,
Speaker 5: nine to seven, let's be honest, and you know, make
Speaker 5: those fully remote. And it stayed that way for two
Speaker 5: and a half to three years. And talking to working
Speaker 5: moms during that time, they discovered that while it is
Speaker 5: never possible to have it all quote unquote, they could
Speaker 5: have a lot more of it than they did before.
Speaker 5: They were able to pick their kids up from school,
Speaker 5: they were able to eat dinner with their families, they
Speaker 5: were able to make the school plays in the soccer games,
Speaker 5: and basically be a full time employee and a more
Speaker 5: present parent. And so then in the push to go
Speaker 5: back into the office, there can learned have been I
Speaker 5: would say, largely ignored when you look at surveys like
Speaker 5: McKinsey does their annual Women in the Workplace survey that
Speaker 5: they do every year, and they don't focus specifically on
Speaker 5: working moms, but so many women after a certain age
Speaker 5: are mothers that in their survey, it's like eighty percent
Speaker 5: of women rank having the option to be remote or
Speaker 5: having flexibility in their schedule as only the second most
Speaker 5: important thing in their job after healthcare. So they need
Speaker 5: health interns, and then they need to be able to
Speaker 5: also be a mom. And yet when you talk to employers,
Speaker 5: only forty percent of employers even recognize that this is
Speaker 5: an issue for them. And so I think you're seeing
Speaker 5: an increasingly vocal push among working moms to ask for
Speaker 5: that flexibility and to retain what they already had, Like
Speaker 5: they're not asking for something new, they're asking to.
Speaker 1: Keep what they had had for the past three years.
Speaker 5: And anecdotally, I've interviewed a lot of women who have
Speaker 5: just flat out with their jobs. That's not possible for
Speaker 5: everyone because financial constraints, that need for healthcare. Maybe they're
Speaker 5: the only breadwinner or the primary breadwinner in their family
Speaker 5: and they.
Speaker 1: Have to keep their job.
Speaker 5: But I have to tell you, they're an awful lot
Speaker 5: of women who are like, Nope, I'm not doing this
Speaker 5: because I value my family and my children way more
Speaker 5: than commuting into the office.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a conversation that.
Speaker 5: We aren't really having, which I find really interesting, which is.
Speaker 1: Why I'm writing about it. So that's what I'm keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on.
Speaker 3: And Claire, what are going to be the key data
Speaker 3: points that you are going to look for on this
Speaker 3: story that really tells us what is happening over the
Speaker 3: next year.
Speaker 5: I'm sort of glad you asked that, because one of
Speaker 5: the things in reporting on this that I have found
Speaker 5: incredibly frustrating is that working mother's, as like a facet
Speaker 5: of the labor force, are vastly understudied. So I've talked
Speaker 5: to so many economists who are like, you know, I
Speaker 5: can tell you how many working parents there are, or
Speaker 5: maybe how many working mothers, but I can't tell you
Speaker 5: how many working mothers who went remote, who came back,
Speaker 5: who were leaving. It's a very nitty gritty question that
Speaker 5: I'm asking. So I'm mostly just frustrated by the number
Speaker 5: of economists who have said, oh, that's something we should
Speaker 5: maybe study, but you know what, we haven't studied it yet.
Speaker 5: When there are surveys about American mothers, they're usually not
Speaker 5: done by the government. There's a website called Motherly that's
Speaker 5: like a media parenting organization, but they put out this
Speaker 5: massive state of Motherhood Report every year where they survey
Speaker 5: like tens of thousands of moms. It's like the most
Speaker 5: comprehensive study, even though it's done by just like this website.
Speaker 5: But this year they saw an enormous uptick in the
Speaker 5: number of women identifying as stay at home moms. It
Speaker 5: was like fifteen percent last year and now it's twenty
Speaker 5: five percent because they're leaving because of the child's care
Speaker 5: problems that we've talked about and because of this push
Speaker 5: to go back.
Speaker 1: Into the office.
Speaker 5: And so I'm seeing it in surveys like that hasn't
Speaker 5: yet started playing out in the official like Fereau of
Speaker 5: Labor Statistics type data. And I also want to say,
Speaker 5: like we're talking about a few percentage points here and there,
Speaker 5: but like I think it's like seventy seven percent of
Speaker 5: mothers of elementary school age children and up work, and
Speaker 5: it's like sixty eight percent of mothers with kids under six,
Speaker 5: which is a nine percent difference. But like you know,
Speaker 5: when the unemployment rate ticks up one percent two percent,
Speaker 5: everyone gets really upset and starts talking about fears of
Speaker 5: a recession. We're talking about a huge chunk of the
Speaker 5: labor force that we're just missing out on.
Speaker 4: You know, the idea of the return to office debates
Speaker 4: and the idea of child'scare are really intertwined because in
Speaker 4: many cases, it's not that women don't want to commute
Speaker 4: to and from work, it's just it's not feasible in
Speaker 4: the system that we have that is crumbling. So childcare
Speaker 4: centers were open far longer pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: They've had to in many cases cut hours.
Speaker 4: So in a lot of instances, a mom may not
Speaker 4: be able to make it work if she doesn't have
Speaker 4: a remote position.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a good point.
Speaker 5: And also, you know, I think when you're talking about childcare,
Speaker 5: school counts as child'scare because your children are being cared
Speaker 5: for while they're being taught. But the school day ends
Speaker 5: at like three o'clock in the afternoon or two thirty sometimes,
Speaker 5: and so usually working parents have some sort of aftercare setup,
Speaker 5: and sometimes it's a flat fee, but sometimes you pay hourly.
Speaker 5: I have two small children and one is in daycare now,
Speaker 5: and it's a flat fee up to a certain point,
Speaker 5: and then it's hourly after that. So the longer I work,
Speaker 5: the more I pay, but my salary is still the
Speaker 5: same and so as these prices are rising, you know
Speaker 5: you're also going to see people make these calculations of like, well,
Speaker 5: we can afford daycare but only to such and such
Speaker 5: time during the day, or we can only put our
Speaker 5: kid in for this many hours.
Speaker 3: Kelsey and Claire, I learned so much from both of you.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for coming.
Speaker 1: On, Thank you, Thank you so much for having us,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: To us here at The Big Take. It's a daily
Speaker 3: podcast for I'm Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more shows from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Bloomberg CarPlay, or wherever
Speaker 3: you listen, and we'd love to hear from you. Email
Speaker 3: us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
Speaker 3: dot net. This episode of The Big Take was produced
Speaker 3: by Michael Falero and Moe Barrow. Raphael I'm se Lee
Speaker 3: is our engineer. Our original music is by Leo Sidron.
Speaker 3: I'm Nancy Cook. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.