What could make a difference for mothers as employment booms

By Kevin J. Delaney

Co-founder and editor-in-chief

Featured in today's newsletter:

• What’s behind the remarkable headline numbers around women’s employment.
• Options amid the public retreats on DEI and ESG.
• Why you should start a “manager club.”

AI and Work Radar

• AI will bring about more meaningful (and potentially longer) meetings, predicted Aneesh Raman, a LinkedIn vice president and workforce expert, in a conversation with Charter Pro about the 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn. “It’s going to change meeting time,” he said. “My basis is that people-to-people collaboration is about to matter more than ever before.”
• Belgium has launched a citizens’ panel to make recommendations for AI policy. The group of 60 Belgians, chosen randomly from a pool of 16,000 citizens, cuts across age, gender, education level, and other demographic criteria. Guided by professional moderators, the group has been tasked with disscussing AI’s impact on a number of issues, including the workplace, health, education, and security, in order to help policymakers gauge public opinion on the issues. 
• Verizon and PwC have rolled out AI-powered internal talent marketplaces. PwC’s “My Marketplace” uses AI to match leaders with internal candidates and give employees access to projects and skill development opportunities. Verizon’s effort has taken shape as an organization-wide job taxonomy, which helps map out employee progress and potential growth opportunities across teams and functions. 

Focus on Assessing the State of Work for Women

On the face of it, women’s employment in the US has rebounded remarkably from the pandemic, hitting a record high last month. Economists point to a number of factors, including a strong job market and the availability of flexible work. 

But women’s job satisfaction (60%) lags behind that of men (65%), according to a recent survey from the Conference Board. That’s largely due to dissatisfaction with wages, benefits, and bonuses—all signals that systemic strains and inequities remain unresolved. 

To assess where things stand, we reached out to Jessica Calarco, associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Calarco has been researching the reality of work for women, including mothers, and has a new book coming out next month titled Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for space and clarity:  

When we spoke in November 2020, I asked you, 'What do we know from the pandemic so far that can make a difference for working families? What can employers, friends and colleagues do?' Coming back to those questions, what have we learned about them from the past few years?

 Unfortunately, one of the lessons that we've learned is that we are willing to sacrifice women for the good of the economy, and that we are willing to exploit labor where necessary essentially to fill jobs that no one else wants to do and push women into doing that work. And also not provide the kind of support that is necessary so that we can essentially treat women's labor as a toggle switch that we can turn off or turn on or move up or move down depending on what the economy needs. 

We had this moment where we thought we were going to build back better in terms of putting in place universal childcare, putting in place universal paid family leave, raising the minimum wage laws, raising the minimum wage in many states. Certainly some states have done so, but women hold 70% of the lowest-wage jobs in our economy. Yet we have not taken substantial or universal steps to improve the conditions for women. 

If anything, we've made the situation worse in many cases for women, chipping away at the social safety net and the protections that we have for women, particularly on the reproductive options front, but also in terms of the accessibility of things like Medicaid, the accessibility of things like welfare. Those have been further eroded in the wake of the pandemic. At the time, there were lessons we could have learned, but we decided to follow the trajectory of what we've done in many other points throughout our history and opt to deprioritize women's wellbeing instead.

Certainly we've seen rising rates of employment among women in the wake of the pandemic. But I'm not entirely convinced that we should be celebrating that increase in employment in part because so many of the women that I've talked to who have gone back to the workforce, have done so in ways that are not sustainable for themselves or for their families and that are taking a serious toll on their wellbeing. I've talked to families, for example, who are working a split shift where mom is home all day caring for the children and then working a night job after caring for the kids all day because they can't afford childcare or they can't access childcare in their communities. So that is the only way to make it work. 

Yes, she's back in the economy, but is that really good for her or her family or her kids? Oftentimes the answer is no. We have to be careful about celebrating this return of women to the workforce, given that we haven't seen also a rise in the availability of childcare or a rise in access to the kinds of workplace protections that women would need to make this work in a sustainable way.

What can employers do to address these issues?

One of the big things that employers can do is lobby for better policies, using their collective power as powerful actors in our economy and our society to say, 'We need better support in supporting our workers.' It's much easier for employers to act if there are policies in place that either require them to do so or that facilitate them doing so, whether that's mandatory paid leave or universal childcare. If we are willing to solve these problems collectively, it takes a lot of burden off of employers to have to figure out these solutions individually for their employees. 

Another thing is acknowledging the inequalities and the fact that just putting a policy in place doesn't mean that it will be used equally or viewed equally by all of their employees or that it will automatically make life better for everyone. They should be thinking strategically, getting feedback from their employees about how these policies are actually being used. How is this benefiting or actually making things more challenging? Keeping those lines of communication open, being willing to listen and adjust if those policies aren't working or aren't working as well as they could be. And certainly not getting rid of the flexibility that we've had, but maybe not treating that as the only solution to the challenges that we're facing right now.

Read a full transcript of our conversation, including discussion of the impact of flexible and remote working on women, as well as the potential consequences of AI.

Pre-order Calarco’s book Holding It Together.

What Else You Need to Know

Organizations are increasingly rebranding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in light of political and legal backlash. In this year’s shareholder reports and regulatory filings, public companies including Eli Lilly, Starbucks, and Duolingo have removed phrases like DEI and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. 

• In many cases, companies have kept diversity initiatives in place, but have worked with general counsels to make policies more race-neutral in order to protect them from potential legal issues. Instead of naming DEI directly, disclosures mention “creating a culture of belonging,” or fostering an “inclusive culture.” 
• Mentions of ESG and DEI have also plummeted in earnings calls for S&P 500 companies, according to a report from Business Insider. Mentions of both topics began to rise in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the outbreak of the pandemic put greater pressure on companies to speak out on ESG and DEI issues. After peaking in 2021, the mentions have steadily declined, falling again to pre-pandemic levels. 
• Previously, Charter has covered strategies to shore up DEI programs in the midst of increasing legal pressure following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on affirmative action in college admissions, including auditing existing programs and reframing programs to be more universal.  
• MIT will no longer require job applicants for faculty positions to write a statement about how they would support the university’s commitment to diversity. According to Wharton’s Stephanie Creary, these kinds of diversity statements were largely performative in the first place and failed to achieve their stated goals. 
• “If you really want to bring in a different kind of faculty,” Creary told Charter Pro, “just allow the people who really care about this to write in their research and teaching statements that they really care rather than this different statement.”

Future of Work Speed Round

• Participating in Gaza-related protests on campus may impact students’ future job prospects. Some employers have stated that they will not hire recent graduates who have participated in protests, and others have previously rescinded job offers to leaders of student protests.  But some business leaders have voiced support for protesters, like Hims CEO Andrew Dudum, who tweeted that many companies would be “eager to hire [student protesters], regardless of university discipline.”
• Some 81% of organizations plan to add or improve benefits offerings to boost retention and recruitment, according to a recent report from benefits platform Lively. A recent survey from Bright Horizons reveals the most important benefits to retain working parents in particular: 40% of respondents wanted unlimited remote work, 45% requested more flexibility in scheduling, and 46% asked for help paying for child care. 
• Millions of Americans are working while experiencing ongoing symptoms of long Covid. Long Covid—with symptoms that range from severe fatigue and cognitive impairment to pain and neurological issues—affects 6.9% of U.S. adults as of March 2024, and 65% of adults with the illness have stayed in the workforce. Employers can build on existing disability accommodations to support employees with long Covid, with policies like flexibility in hours and work location,  part-time schedules, and workplace design that reduces noise and distractions. 

Here are some of the best tips and insights from the past week for managing yourself and your team:

• Rehearse tricky conversations with ChatGPT. Ahead of a negative performance review, a request for a raise, or another high-stress conversation, build your confidence by walking through different scenarios with a generative AI chatbot. In your prompt, ask it to play the role of your interlocutor, giving it background on their potential positions and demeanor. After going through the conversation, ask it to give you feedback on how you might improve your responses—then incorporate those and rehearse again.  
• Discuss your family’s communication style with potential business partners.  Before going into business with a new co-founder or other close colleague, ask them how their family communicated and dealt with conflict growing up. The conversation might reveal instincts that inform interactions going forward, especially in stressful situations. 
• Start a manager club to highlight excellent team leaders. Red Hat, an open-source software company owned by IBM, plans to roll out a new manager club, modeled on its recognition program for top salespeople. The best managers will be recognized for their team leadership skills and have an opportunity to attend a retreat for members of the manager club. 
• Invite more experienced colleagues to chime in during presentations. Create opportunities for audience members to share wisdom you might not have by asking them to share experiences related to prior projects in a similar area, additional perspectives that might differ from your own, or answers to audience questions that you don’t have the answer to. 

Coda

Presentations go beyond the boardroom. PowerPoint nights have ballooned in popularity among Gen Zers. Instead of preparing slide decks about objectives and key results (OKRs) or project proposals, attendees make slides about fun or lighthearted topics. 

• PowerPoints immortalized on TikTok include “A couple things from the Twilight saga that give me the ick,” “Best public places to cry,” and “Top 10 worst dates.”