Achieving a Work-Life Balance: Post-COVID Possibilities for Policy Change?

• In Event: Parenthood, Marriage, and Participation

Abstract

For nearly 100 years since women’s double burden of both paid labor force participation and unpaid household labor was first identified, feminists and others have examined the second shift, the double day, and even the triple shift. Economists have studied the differing contributions of men and women to household labor, the amounts of “free time” they have, and the amount of hands-on caregiving parents do. More recently, discussion of women, work and family has centered on whether and how women can “have it all,” and how a healthy “work-life balance” can be achieved. Examinations of workforce participation, caregiving and household labor have recently included a discussion of the burden of the “mental load” that many working mothers carry and its negative impact on physical and mental health.

In many countries, recognition of this gendered imbalance within families, and in some cases a recognition of the necessity both of women’s workforce participation and their role in reproduction has led to the adoption of policies such as paid maternity (and paternity) leave, subsidized or state provided childcare, flexible work days, tax benefits, subsidies and others.The US has remained a stubborn outlier in failing to provide such support. The US currently offers no paid maternity leave, only 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act passed in 1993. The US has no federal child care policy, no guaranteed universal preschool or other policies common elsewhere. The current child care tax credit is woefully inadequate compared to the high costs. Despite this, there has been no dearth of scholarly research or popular discussion about this issue, and periodically hopes rise about policy proposals that may finally address the lack of comprehensive policy to support working families in the US.

The publication of Ann-Marie Slaughter’s article in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All” (2012) sparked an extensive round of discussion of just what “having it all” means and its implications for working women and their families. Follow-up debate on-line at the Atlantic in response focused on the “myth of the work-life balance.” Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (2013) further focused attention on the career choices of women, the lack of women in top positions, the impact of family on career and what women need to do to assert themselves in the workplace. From another perspective Katrina Alcorn’s book Maxed Out (2013) looked at the potential negative consequences to physical and mental health brought on by the difficulty of trying to “have it all.” Slaughter further addressed the issue in Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work and Family (2015) sparking another round of work-life balance discussion. One thing that this attention did not do, as has been the case in the US for decades, was lead to significant comprehensive policy changes to support women and families.

Just five years later, COVID shutdowns in 2020 led to work and school closures putting unprecedented pressures on families and on working mothers in particular. Women were disproportionately employed in the sectors of the economy most negatively impacted by closures. For those who did not immediately lose their jobs, working from home with children learning from home, quickly became an untenable situation for many. The COVID shutdown experience revealed the precarity of the work-life balance.The disparate impact on working mothers is evident in the higher numbers of women leaving the workforce (and their slower recovery/return to it). Additionally, men seem more likely to have enjoyed and benefited from working from home in ways that women did not. These experiences have once again raised calls for comprehensive policies to support working families. However, Federal legislation introduced in the 117th Congress stalled and legislation introduced in the 118th has yet to achieve much progress. In 2022, a bill in California which sought to expand employment protections for workers who were attending to family matters failed, though new legislation has been proposed this session.

This paper will revisit the discussion of women’s workforce participation and the work-life balance in the context of the impact of the COVID shutdowns. For women, their families and indeed for the US economy, women’s participation in the workforce is not optional. However, the experience of the COVID shutdowns served to highlight not only the particular challenges brought on by the COVID crisis, but also the on-going obstacles and burdens working women and their families face. The alarming rates at which women left the workforce during COVID spurred renewed calls for policy changes. This paper will consider the possibilities for long-sought federal policy as well as emerging efforts at the state and local level which seek to address the needs of women and their families.

Author

• Tracy L. Steffy, CUNY: Kingsborough Community College