Millions of Americans lost their jobs because of the pandemic. While men have returned to their pre-pandemic level of employment, a million women are still missing from the workforce. Without access to paid maternity leave and affordable child care, women are choosing to stay home – or being forced to. It’s time for a more inclusive economic recovery. Reshma Saujani, the Founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms, has a plan to get us there.
Reshma Saujani is the founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms. She’s also an author of several books, her latest is called Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think)
Twitter: @reshmasaujani
McKinsey – Meeting the challenge of moms’ ‘double double shift’ at home and work: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/sustainable-inclusive-growth/future-of-america/meeting-the-challenge-of-moms-double-double-shift-at-home-and-work
The Business Case for Child Care: https://marshallplanformoms.com/childcare-report/
Marshall Plan for Moms https://marshallplanformoms.com
Pay Up https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pay-Up/Reshma-Saujani/9781982191573
House Resolution 121 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/121
Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com/
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics
Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer
Nick Hanauer:
Hey, Pitchfork Economics, gang. We are doing another AMA, ask me anything episode. And so if you have a question about something, ideally economics related, leave us a voicemail by calling (731)388-9334, and Goldy and I will answer your questions.
David Goldstein:
Employment has not fully recovered for women since the start of the pandemic.
Reshma Saujani:
Childcare is not a personal problem, it’s an economic issue. And we have a childcare crisis, it’s unavailable and it’s unaffordable
Nick Hanauer:
Women lost their jobs relative to men at a three to one ratio, 100%, effectively, of the kids having to stay home explains a lot of that.
Reshma Saujani:
It is an abject failure that the government has bailed out airlines and has not bailed out moms.
Speaker 4:
From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
David Goldstein:
There’s some good news and some bad news about the post pandemic economy, Nick, which do you want first? Do you want the good news?
Nick Hanauer:
Always give me the bad news first.
David Goldstein:
Well, you know what? I’m going to give you the good news first, because the good news is that employment has fully recovered, in fact, passed full recovery. And the bad news is that that’s only for men, that employment has not fully recovered for women since the start of the pandemic.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, and I think the ratio I heard was women lost their jobs relative to men at a three to one ratio. And that, of course, 100%, effectively. Of the kids having to stay home explains a lot of that. And still, childcare is in crisis across the country, and women in our society, mothers in our society in particular are taking the brunt of that.
David Goldstein:
Right. We already had an uneven and unfair division of labor before the pandemic in which women picked up much more of the responsibility for childcare and for housework and so forth. And since the pandemic, after the temporary closures of school, but the permanent closure of many childcare centers that-
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, for sure.
David Goldstein:
… have not been able to reopen, partially, because they can’t find childcare workers to fill the jobs, it’s gotten even worse. The-
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. Well, and kids under five still haven’t been vaccinated, which creates another layer of worry.
David Goldstein:
Right. So what was a terrible situation before the pandemic has since become a crisis? Fortunately, we have a guest who has a big, bold idea on how to address it.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s true. Our guest, Reshma Saujani, has introduced a Marshall Plan for Moms, and we’re going to hear a lot about what that plan is and why it’s necessary in our interview with her.
Reshma Saujani:
My name is Reshma Saujani. Well, I’m the founder and CEO of the Marshall Plan for Moms and the founder of Girls Who Code. I’m the author of Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why it’s Different than You Think). I’ve spent more than a decade building movements fighting for women and girls empowerment and working to close a gender gap in tech.
Nick Hanauer:
So Reshma, tell us what inspired you to create the Marshall Plan for Moms?
Reshma Saujani:
Look, I mean, I found myself, in the beginning of 2020, as the CEO of Girls Who Code, we had just had a Super Bowl ad, I was going to teach more girls to code than I ever had before, I was having my second child, and I was really excited to take my paternity leave. And then the pandemic hit, and I found myself having to go back to work a few weeks after my son was born, homeschool my kindergartner, and save my nonprofit from being shut down, because the first resources to go in crises are to women and girls. And my entire leadership team was mostly women of young children. And, really, through my lived experience through their experience, saw the fact that so many women, because of the pandemic had to start supplementing their paid labor for unpaid labor.
So when the school shut down, mothers became the primary ones that were homeschooling their kids. And so in that December of 2020, you started to see millions and millions of women get pushed out of the workforce. And when we started the pandemic, women were the majority. I remember thinking, you can’t lose that many jobs that quickly and not have a plan. And so the Marshall Plan for Moms really started from me being off, sitting in the middle of my bedroom, and just riding in op-ed, which I often do when I see something that needs fixing.
And it was basically just like what me and my PTA moms needed to get back to work. We needed paid leave. We needed affordable childcare. We needed schools to open up safely. We needed retraining for those of us who had lost our jobs because of the pandemic.
David Goldstein:
Well, obviously, we did go into this without a plan and there were devastating consequences. Describe what happened in 2020 and 2021.
Reshma Saujani:
30 years of progress of women’s workforce participation were wiped out basically in nine months. So over 12 million women over the course of the pandemic left the workforce due to the pressures of taking care of children and their families as the pandemic stretched on. Now two years later, America’s moms are still not okay. And that’s because the ratio of caregiving work hasn’t shifted. America does these time and use surveys, and two thirds of caregiving work are done by women.
So now two years after the pandemic, we still have one point one million women that are missing in the labor force that were there two years ago. Women of color have been hit, especially hard. One in three women are considering leaving the workforce or changing their jobs. The Great Resignation is literally led by women. And 51% of women say that their mental health has declined, and the rates of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed.
Nick Hanauer:
Okay. But how many men have left the workforce?
Reshma Saujani:
Men have gained all their jobs. They’re back where they were pre-pandemic levels.
Nick Hanauer:
Okay, interesting. So what’s the Marshall Plan?
Reshma Saujani:
Well, the Marshall Plan for Moms is a nonprofit that is pushing for public and private strategies to make sure that workplaces work for women. It has three legs. We do culture change and thought leadership work. We do work to really shift the private sector and the public sector. And then, finally, we organize moms to ask for what they need. So right now, a few weeks ago, we launched the National Business Childcare Coalition.
So if you look at the latest jobs report, you still have about 700,000 women that are missing from the workforce. And some gains have been made, because employers are allowing for flexibility in remote working. So in the knowledge worker sector, you’re seeing women start coming back, but in the manufacturing sector, for example, in the Midwest, because you can’t work from home, and half of our daycare centers are still shut down, you haven’t seen, you know what I mean, pre-pandemic levels.
And so the number one reason why mothers are not back in the workforce is because of our broken childcare center. Half of our daycare centers are still shut down. The business model of childcare is broken, and the government is refusing to do something about it by passing the bill that would’ve put a ceiling of seven percent on the amount that families spend. And so it’s really up to the private sector. So I’ve been building a coalition to get private companies to start subsidizing and paying for childcare benefits, so women can come back to work.
David Goldstein:
So make the case to business owners, why they would want to provide and/or subsidize childcare.
Reshma Saujani:
Well, childcare is not a personal problem, it’s an economic issue. And we have a childcare crisis, it’s unavailable and it’s unaffordable. And if there’s four point five million people that are quitting every month, and millions of jobs that are open, the only way that parents, in particular, mothers, can come back to work is if they have childcare. And right now it costs more for companies to pay for turnover than it would for them to pay for childcare. And they’re paying for egg freezing, they’re paying for museum memberships, and it’s time to pay us and help us out with childcare. You literally can’t work without it.
David Goldstein:
It’s funny, Amazon, in Seattle, their headquarters, has doggie daycare.
Reshma Saujani:
Thank you for that wonderful story that I’m going to tell to everyone.
David Goldstein:
But I don’t know that they provide-
Reshma Saujani:
They don’t. They don’t.
David Goldstein:
People can bring their dogs to work, and there’s areas that drop them off, but not your child. I’m wondering if you’re torn a little bit by this. I mean, obviously, the government has failed to provide childcare the way most other advanced countries have, but we also have this system of employer provided healthcare, which is terrible. And I wonder if you’re torn about going down that path and trying to encourage employer provided childcare, whether that’s going to lead us to the same sad situation.
Reshma Saujani:
Well, I feel like it has to be a both, and, it can’t just be the… Well, first of all, we can’t do nothing. That is not an option, we have to do something. And the two most obvious actors are either the government or the private sector. And you need the government, because the government will make sure that everyone is covered. And I think you need the private sector, because you need innovation. So I think that part of the problem here, like I said, is the business model of childcare is broken, and there’s not enough entrepreneurs that are going into what we call the fam tech space. And thinking about like, what’s the childcare model of the 21st century of the future, that we’re not even thinking about? How can we do this differently?
And so I think that when you have multinational companies that are starting to pay for childcare, you have more entrepreneurs that want to go into the space and start thinking about how to disrupt it. And that’s when you get economies of scale, and that’s when… We were missing that.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Reshma, I’m just going to push back on that hard. I just don’t think that technology or business processes are going to come to the rescue here. The business community has externalized the cost of childcare onto the society and the way that they externalize all the other costs, including the reasonable cost of paying their workers enough to get by without government assistance.
Reshma Saujani:
I absolutely agree with you. Listen, I don’t think that I don’t think that the private sector is “the answer” to this. And it is a abject failure that the government has bailed out airlines, and has not bailed out moms. It’s an abject-
Nick Hanauer:
For sure.
Reshma Saujani:
… failure that we literally do not… I mean, you just have the baby formula shortage, if you want to have a view about how we care about our mothers, just look at what happened there. But the thing is that we can’t wait for them to grow a heart.
Nick Hanauer:
Oh, but they’re never going to grow a heart. Can we please just stipulate that the idea that companies are going to solve this problem is fantasy, it’s just not going to happen.
Reshma Saujani:
So what’s the option?
Nick Hanauer:
Require it by force of law. No one is going to solve this problem willingly. Companies will be required to pay for childcare in the same way they are required to pay social security benefits, and a variety of other things. In the absence of being compelled to do so, they will not… In all, but the smallest circumstances there are, of course, some industries and companies that are so lucrative, and are so desperate for the highest quality, rare work that they will pay for this. But just in broad terms, it’s not realistic. I’m just incredibly cynical that you can get anywhere by exhorting people to do the right thing. I think you have to-
Reshma Saujani:
But I don’t think that’s the argument I’m making. I think that right now, it’s like, for example when my parents came to this country as refugees, both of them had worked for the same company for 30 years. Both my parents’ bosses knew my name, came to my high school graduation. It was about family, and people stayed. And now, because we’ve treated employees like crap-
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
Reshma Saujani:
… and not invested in their families, not invested in their kids, not invested in them, people leave every eight, nine months.
Nick Hanauer:
A 100%.
Reshma Saujani:
I do think-
Nick Hanauer:
So we’re in violent agreement about that.
Reshma Saujani:
We’re in violent agreement. So I think that there’s a moment, because of the Great Resignation, because there’s so many open jobs, we, as parents, have a little bit of leverage. And I think one example of where you’re seeing this is in, in 22 states for the first time ever, women without children are making more than men. Because they’ve gone in, they said, “All right, you want to fill those jobs? I want to know what he makes and I want double, and your office too.” And so it is a moment, I’m not saying it’s going to last for long. I’m not saying that companies are doing it out of the goodness of their heart. But I think they could be doing it, we have an opportunity to push them to do it, because it makes business sense, because it’s cheaper than the cost of the attrition.
A great example of this is Etsy. Etsy’s been basically providing childcare, Patagonia, again, I’m not going to come up with a hundred examples, that’s the problem. But the ones that you have, have actually made the business case. So they’re not doing it because it’s the nice thing to do. It’s just, it saved them money.
David Goldstein:
I mean, I guess, if they really understood their own rational, self-interest, I can’t think of anything that would lead to employee retainment, like providing childcare, because your employees would not want to pull their children out of childcare that they like.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. But as the only business person on the call, let, let me assure you, that is not how we fucking think. Okay. We are just not that sophisticated. And so, look, Reshma, the other thing, the thing that you did not say about what happened to your parents when you came to the United States as refugees, is that, in that day it only took one median worker 30 weeks of work to pay for all of the basic expenses to support a family. And today it takes something like 53 weeks of work to do the very same thing, which is why every married woman in America needs to have a job. Because-
David Goldstein:
Yep.
Nick Hanauer:
… in the absence of it, you will not be able to support your family. And I don’t, in any way, want to push back on your basic thesis, which is we treat women like crap in the workplace.
Reshma Saujani:
No, I think you have a lot… I mean, because I have to, because I’ve lost all my hope in government, I need to have hope in somebody, you know what I mean? And I want to be clear, too, that I don’t think that the private sector is the answer. I think in this moment, and we can make the case and we’ll see how much, right now, less than 10% of companies offer some sort of childcare benefit. So actually, ironically, Amazon has day doggy daycare, but not childcare. So even in one that can afford to do it… So we have to make the case and continue to push… Though, my big point of this, I think, is that I’m trying to take moms from rage to power. We need to start mobilizing mothers, women in the workplace to start demanding this.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
Reshma Saujani:
And not continuing to breastfeed in closets, and like hide pictures of our children, and tolerate the motherhood penalty, which is being paid less for men for doing the exact same job, just because you’re a mother. And so there’s pieces of this that all have to kind of come together in this moment, but it has to.
David Goldstein:
Let’s talk about these pieces a little more beyond just childcare. What are the other pillars of your Marshall Plan for Moms?
Reshma Saujani:
The first pillar, which is about flexibility, remote working, and predictability for hourly workers. You work at Walmart and you, basically, have a kid, you pay for childcare, you show up for your 7:00 PM shift, it’s canceled, your out money. And so the importance of having predictability and flexibility is critical. Paid leave, again, the United States is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid leave. Many companies love to tout their paid leave policies, but they also gaslight men, when they take it. So it’s not enough just to offer paternity leave. You have to basically incentivize, I think, men to take it.
The majority of men take less than 10 days off after having a baby. And, look, my big aha from the pandemic was that, unless you have gender equality at home, you’re not going to have gender equality in the workplace. And unless you build workplaces for single moms, you are never going to get to equality. And so this is about structural change. You just structurally change society in workplaces to make it possible, to work and have a child. And I think some of the tenants of that are childcare, paid leave, support for our mental health, and just basically having the permission to control your day in a way that acknowledges that you just did two and a half jobs at home before you came to work.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. A 100%.
David Goldstein:
You say that you’ve lost faith in government to address these things. A lot of these things would be, like in Seattle, we have paid leave and secure scheduling, not just for women, for men, but obviously, the workforce it’s aimed at is predominantly female.
Reshma Saujani:
I should say I’ve lost faith in the federal government. I think that there’s still… I know where you’re going. Listen, I mean, Massachusetts, New York on paid leave, I mean, it’s been game changing for women of color. So I think we have to look to the states, quite frankly, to take care of their basic… But the thing is, all of this is interconnected. When you think about Roe V Wade, six out of 10 women who get an abortion are mothers, 50% of women who get abortions already have a child. It’s because you can’t force birth in a country that doesn’t have paid leave, affordable childcare, you know what I mean?
Basic investments that may it possible for you to even have a child that’s connected to the baby formula shortage. That wasn’t a priority. So we had no shame in seeing women literally scour aisles in Walmart. In fact, you’ve had to have a network of women who are helping other mothers tell them where the baby formula is. I mean, abject failure. What happened in Uvalde last week, where you have the number one cause of death now for children are guns. And so we are living in a society that has broken in terms of family values. We don’t take care of families anymore. We’re incapable of doing it. So something has to change.
Nick Hanauer:
Can I plant one idea in your head-
Reshma Saujani:
Yes, please.
Nick Hanauer:
… about all of this? Because our team at Civic Ventures has thought as carefully as we know how about the childcare crisis. And of course, not everyone lives in cities, but most Americans live in cities, and one of the huge pressures on childcare in most places is real estate, like where to put the childcare places. And it turns out that the places where the most people actually physically work is the place where it is most expensive to rent space for childcare, right? I mean, it is just-
Reshma Saujani:
Yep.
Nick Hanauer:
… a natural function of the way in which real estate concentrates and works. So I think my view is that a big thrust of any solution is to require large landlords to put aside reasonable amounts of space, effectively, for free for childcare in every place. So there is no earthly reason why giant office buildings don’t have half a floor devoted to childcare in every single one.
Reshma Saujani:
So this is what we’ve been doing with our business coalition. So we have a handful of companies that are now turning their open office space into building childcare centers. That’s exactly what you said. It didn’t make sense from a business perspective before, but now you have all this open space. People are not coming back to work five days a week, but you want to know what’s a good way of getting parents to come back into the office. Having daycare for their kids.
Nick Hanauer:
Childcare.
Reshma Saujani:
Yes.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. No, that’s a good point.
Reshma Saujani:
My mayor, I was like, “You should be having these companies build childcare centers. Let people work from home. Who cares? But you want to do something with that space, do something for our kids.” And I think that’s absolutely right. And the other part of this, from a data perspective, is I bet you, if you look at Disney, Google places that actually have childcare centers on site, they too have lower attrition.
Nick Hanauer:
No, it has to be the case. It has to be the case. So what else should we do?
Reshma Saujani:
I think that we have to really… Some of this feels to me as, it’s just deeply cultural. It’s deeply embedded in American culture. We think about childcare as a personal problem or families as a personal problem that you have to solve. And we have to really just deeply, deeply reconsider how culturally we’ve looked at the role of women, the role of mothers in society, and acknowledge that it’s broken. Every time women take 10 steps forward, we pull them back 10 steps. Any society that takes away rights from people, is a declining democracy, and that’s just about what we’re about to do.
And so we need to, I think, really examine this. And this is where I think… People always say to me, “Well, what do men say about this?” I was like, “Men want the exact same thing I want.” It’s been two years, people have spent more time with their kids. They’ve taken their son to school, played soccer with them. They have lower diabetes, heart attack issues. It’s good for society when both genders partake in care taking. And so men are not the problem. But I think that we have an opportunity here for men to really stand up-
Nick Hanauer:
I actually do know some men who are the problem.
Reshma Saujani:
Some men are the problem. Thank you. I met as a species. But it’s interesting, like, for example, and I’ve talked to lots of employers about this, even if you’re a 55 year old who works in a bank and doesn’t want to commute, you’re not saying that to your employer, because you’ll be gaslit. And so we need men to really speak out more about the structural changes that we need to make, that will benefit the lives of women, but that will also benefit their lives.
Nick Hanauer:
I’d be very interested if you could articulate, if you were in charge, you put politics aside, how would you deal with, in nuts and bolts, the childcare challenge the nation faces? What would you do? How would you organize it?
Reshma Saujani:
Well, I think the first part is we have to acknowledge that someone needs to pay the subsidy. And so I think what Biden had proposed to do in Build Back Better, which was like have ceiling at seven percent was a good idea. I also love Elizabeth Warren’s idea about having universal childcare. It doesn’t make sense that we have K through 12 education and we don’t have universal childcare, when we know that so much of your development begins at the earliest of possible ages. And so we should be providing childcare, quite frankly, for everybody in this country.
Nick Hanauer:
But has your team thought through the particulars? Like who pays? Where are the facilities, et cetera?
Reshma Saujani:
You mean from a government solution or private sector solution? I mean-
Nick Hanauer:
No, I don’t care, whatever you want to do.
Reshma Saujani:
Right now, we’re focused on a private sector solution. And what we’re doing is convening companies together to say, “What are you doing? What works for you?” So for example we have a company, Fast Retailing, which provides childcare subsidies, not just to its salary workers, but its hourly workers. And so we are connecting them to other retail organizations who didn’t think that they could actually provide childcare benefits to store managers, because it didn’t make economic sense, so part of it is sharing that. Same thing with Etsy and Patagonia that are leading the way in tech, in both paid leave benefits and childcare benefits, how they’ve basically mandated that both men and women take it at the same rate, the effect of that in terms of general quality in their family.
So we’re in a period of like, I’m not rolling out what the gold standard is yet, because I don’t know. And I think what we need to do is look at the shining examples of companies that are actually doing it, and sharing that with one another. And just shifting the conversation that I think the knee-jerk is that, “Well, it doesn’t make economic sense.” It’s not an economic problem. It’s a personal problem. That is fundamental before you say, “Okay, here’s the childcare model of the future that I think everybody should implement.”
Nick Hanauer:
But as you look around internationally, what’s the gold standard?
Reshma Saujani:
Well, I mean, the gold standard is more investment to families. Like the United States, I think what the averages is, it spends $500 per family for childcare. I think the average industrialized nation spends $14,000. I mean, you look at Canada, I mean, both Canada and the UK did not have the same number of women leaving the workforce during the pandemic, because they had universal childcare and paid leave.
David Goldstein:
Do the businesses you talk to, do they understand that if they’re facing a labor shortage, this is the low hanging fruit, bringing women back into the workforce by taking care of the needs that are keeping them out of the workforce?
Reshma Saujani:
In the businesses that we’ve spoken to, I think they get that because that’s the conversation that they’re having. That’s the segment of the population in their workforce that has not come back, it’s mothers. I mean, there’s a million surveys or studies that basically demonstrate why. We just did a study with McKinsey, where we surveyed a 1,000 parents. 50% of the women who left the workforce was because of childcare. And the fact that it was unavailable or my babysitter was quitting, my daycare center shut down. Oh, there’s another variant here, now school’s going to be closed. And it was just impossible to work and have a child.
So I think they know that if they’re going to have that talent, they have to solve that problem. I think the idea of the private sector providing childcare benefits is not controversial. An example of this, quite frankly, is fertility. I write about this in my book, five years ago, nobody was offering to pay for your IVF. But people started coming in, men and women saying, “What are your fertility benefits? What are your fertility benefits? What are your fertility benefits?” And in the middle of a talent war, it became a benefit that people cared about and would go to a company over. That’s what the survey we do with McKinsey demonstrates about childcare.
People are forum shopping for companies that have good family benefits right now. So I think that companies who understand this are going to do the right thing. The deeper problem here, though, for me, that I get frustrated and upset about is what is up with society? There are more parents that are agitated about critical race theory and LGBTQ stories in schools, or now even having mental health centers in their schools that are agitated about the fact that childcare centers are shut down. Or that they don’t have paid leave. You know what I’m saying? We are-
David Goldstein:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Reshma Saujani:
… focused on the wrong things. And to me, we have to ask ourselves why? Why? Why? Why? And how do you shift that?
Nick Hanauer:
I mean, well, there actually is a sociopsychological answer to this, which is that we are wired to care about one thing more than the other. But that does not serve the society well.
Reshma Saujani:
Well, I also think we’ve lost our sense of community. I mean, it’s ironic, a lot of the pushback I get on childcare benefits are from childless women who say, “Well, why should I pay for your childcare?” But I was like, “Well, why should I pay for your gym membership? It’s the same thing. It’s a benefit that you may or may not use.” But the sense of like, even after everything we’ve seen that’s happened to women, that’s happened to children, that’s happened to women of color, we still, as a society, can’t say, “You are my neighbor, and we are stronger together.” And that is something I think that we need to figure out foundationally, how do we get back?
Again, in this moment, if we, as a country, can’t pass paid leave, can’t pass [inaudible 00:30:03] childcare, can’t renew the child tax credit, but we’re, again, bailing out airlines, what does that say about our value system?
David Goldstein:
Well, it says that we’re a totally dysfunctional nation that is sliding into Christofascism, but that’s just my-
Nick Hanauer:
Other than that.
David Goldstein:
… take on it.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. We do live in a neoliberal hellscape.
Reshma Saujani:
Yeah. But where I take responsibility is I do think that the people that need fighting for, like moms are exhausted. We’re tired. We don’t have a lot of time, and we’re burnt. And so part of the mission or opportunity here is, how do you activate them? So I kind of feel like, honestly, if I can teach moms how to go into their employer and ask for paid leave or childcare flexibility or support for their mental health, and they get one little win, they’re going to like, “Okay, maybe I can go call my Congress person.” But nobody is feeling like Washington’s going to do anything for them, because they’ve been stomped on for too long. So we have to start building that muscle of activism.
Nick Hanauer:
We always asked this benevolent dictator question, if you were in charge, and could do anything you wanted, politics aside, what would you do?
David Goldstein:
No political or financial constraints, absolutely everything, reshape our country for us.
Reshma Saujani:
Oh, my God. The first thing I would do is I would implement universal childcare. However we pay for it, we pay for it.
David Goldstein:
I’m all for that.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Reshma Saujani:
I really think, it’s like, if we care about women’s equality, at the heart of it is 80% of women will become mothers at some point in their lifetime. So it’s like, this is the thing. And as I write about my book, it’s like, we’ve been focused on, well, you should just lean in and get a mentor, do a power pose, and, no. It’s missed-
Nick Hanauer:
That’s so bogus.
Reshma Saujani:
And I would love to see what America looks like with some of those, again, structural supports. I would love to know what America looks like where it’s a culture that doesn’t gaslight men for doing care. I just think we’re never getting to equality until we solve this, period. Why do we have a nursing shortage? Why do we have a shortage in all these industries that are about care. Men rather collect unemployment than do that, because it’s seen as work that men don’t do. And I think that again is very deeply American and something that we have to also figure out culturally, how to change it. I joke, I’m like, “My goal is to get like Snoop Dogg and LeBron in the next Super Bowl ad to do the laundry.” You know what I mean? But you almost popularize that, men doing care, work as part of our culture.
Nick Hanauer:
And one final question, why do you do this work?
Reshma Saujani:
I’m a Hindu. And in my religion, they say that you’re put on earth to do something. And you have to figure out your life is about figuring out what that thing is. And ever since I’ve been a little girl, I’ve been a warrior. I have just always fought for the most vulnerable. And so for me, it started with girls and giving them… I built Girls Who Code, not to teach them just to code, but to give them economic opportunity. To have them march up into the middle class, to leave homeless shelters, and get jobs in tech, or maybe you could change the… and that happened.
And then I found myself in the pandemic, just looking at, what really pissed me off was the school closure decision. It just really, it pissed me off and it terrified me, that they didn’t even think about us. And they knew who was doing that work. And I have been, as a feminist, as an activist, just fighting for the wrong things, focused on the wrong things. And I want to change the lives and the trajectory of 40 million mothers and to do that, this is my focus, and it’s the next movement I’m building. And I feel just as passionately about this as I did 10 years ago when I built Girls Who Code.
Nick Hanauer:
Well, thank you for joining us. This was-
Reshma Saujani:
Thank you for having me.
Nick Hanauer:
… a fabulous conversation.
Reshma Saujani:
Thanks.
David Goldstein:
And best of luck with your work.
Reshma Saujani:
Appreciate it.
Nick Hanauer:
That was a really interesting conversation, but it just absolutely brings home how, at the root of everything, suppressed wages are for virtually all of our social ills. I mean, again, if you just consider that the median full-time worker in America today, who earns $50,000, would earn close to a $100,000 a year, if they had merely maintained their same share of GDP since ’75. And think about what the impact of that would be on families, and people’s ability to afford childcare or not needing it, right?
David Goldstein:
Right.
Nick Hanauer:
It just staggers the mind.
David Goldstein:
What struck me is what a Hobson’s choice were facing on this issue. On the one hand, Reshma is absolutely right, that it would be stupid to hold our breath and wait for the federal government to address these issues, it’s totally dysfunctional. even if you managed somehow to get a large enough democratic majority in the next election, and even if somehow you got the majority of these Democrats to act and get useful legislation through the Congress, dollars to donuts this Republican Supreme Court would just toss it out, just because, because that’s what they do these days. So the federal government is out of the question.
On the other hand, you’re absolutely right for being cynical about businesses taking up this mantle. And understanding what the rational self-interest is, which is if they want more women in the workforce, if they want to fill this labor gap that they have, well, then they need to make a possible for women to work. And that means having the type of flexible and secure scheduling that Reshma was talking about, and having adequate daycare, whether that is on the premises or with a subsidy that’s provided to get private daycare. Assuming you can find private daycare, which we all know is very expensive and very difficult to do.
And I don’t know which way you go. Our federal government isn’t working. Businesses just ideologically don’t want to pay taxes to address this issue, and don’t want to pay employees to address this issue. And the hardest thing to do is to change cultural norms. And our cultural norms are working against us.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, no, it’s true. And just our cultural expectations, right?
David Goldstein:
Right. I mean, right on with Reshma with a Marshall Plan. Yeah, we need big bold thinking like that. We need a Marshall Plan. And you know, we talk about this a lot, fighting for policies, even quixotic policies, is necessary to changing the way people think about the economy and think about these issues. And that you don’t get it all at once. It took decades to get to the point where people wear seat belts and don’t smoke in cars around their kids, or don’t don’t smoke at all. I mean, that was the cultural norm/ when I was a kid, everybody did that. My father included, who was a doctor. And it took a few decades and we changed those norms, but it takes decades. And it takes a concerted effort. And it’s not that I’m feeling hopeless about this, it’s just that, oh my God, it’s yet another thing that just, it’s going to require so much work.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. No, it’s true.
David Goldstein:
That said, Nick, other countries not only do it better, they do it right. We have examples out there. And the one that I kept thinking back to was our conversation from, I don’t know, was it a couple years ago with Anu Partanen and her husband, Trevor Corson? Anu, the author of the Nordic Theory of Everything.
Nick Hanauer:
Right, yeah.
David Goldstein:
And she was talking the way they do it in Finland, where they’re living, where nobody pays more than a couple hundred dollars a week for childcare. And if you can’t afford that, you get high quality childcare for free. And all the childcare is high quality, so you don’t have to worry about shopping around. You look for the childcare center that is most convenient to you, in terms of where you live or where you work. And it frees up everybody to participate in the workforce, or not. If they choose to stay home with their kids, which is a reasonable option, they’re free to do that as well.
Nick Hanauer:
Works pretty good. And it works pretty good in almost every industrialized country except ours.
David Goldstein:
And I think this brings up another issue, which I think requires a lot of thinking about. And what we’re talking about is that both men and women should be able to stay home with their kids. Maybe not both at the same time, one or the other, if that’s what they choose to do. I know it’s hard in many careers to take that break, it interrupts with your career path. But if-
Nick Hanauer:
Well, it’s only hard if you’re the only one who does it.
David Goldstein:
Right, again, if we change norms, then everybody is doing it.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s only hard, if only one in a 100 people do it, that will disadvantage the one in a 100. If everybody does it, then it’s not hard.
David Goldstein:
But let’s be clear if we were to pay, if you’ve got a couple of kids and we were to pay one of the parents to stay home and take care of the kids for a couple years, until the kids are old enough to go to preschool, instead of putting them in childcare and going to work, it would be cheaper than subsidizing their childcare. And it’s not a bizarre idea. We already do this in many states, in Washington state with home healthcare. We pay people, we essentially employ people to stay home and take care of relatives. And it’s not a lot of money. It’s not a great living, but it makes a lot of sense, and it works. And a lot of people would rather get paid to stay home and take care of their elderly parents than go to work and spend that money hiring a complete stranger to do it.
Not everybody, some people prefer the other, but it’s an option that I think we need to look at more seriously. If you care about childcare, and there’s people on the right who talk about family values, who think women should stay home with their kids. Fine, if the woman wants to stay home with their kids, pay them.
Nick Hanauer:
Absolutely. Well, a lot of work to do Goldy.
David Goldstein:
Always. Always.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
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