The Next Lockdown Doesn’t Have To Deepen The She-Cession (This Time, We Can Be Ready)

Are you ready for the fall?
17 April 2020, Bavaria, Kaufbeuren: ILLUSTRATION – The mother of six-year-old Jakob and … [+] four-year-old Valentin works at home on a laptop while her children paint and look at a book next to her. In the Corona crisis, more parents will be entitled to emergency care for younger children – but for the time being there will be no uniform nationwide regulation. Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa (Photo by Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/picture alliance via Getty Images)
dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Its an odd time we find ourselves in (though when is it not at this point?). The little signifiers of a potential return to normal are thrilling (who would have thought that would be a way to describe back-to-school preparations), and yet those same developments have many holding their breath, because we still dont know whats going to happen.
Getting the kids ready for the school year is fantastic and all, but the real question is whether youre ready for what happens when cooler autumn temperatures, 100 million some-odd unvaccinated Americans, and a country rapidly running out of patience with pandemic restrictions all collide with delta, the massively virulent strain of SARS-CoV-2 thats currently the dominant form of the virus across the United States. According to the CDC, delta is as contagious as chickenpox and can be easily spread asymptomatically by both the unvaccinated and vaccinated. Inoculation against the virus dramatically reduces both the likelihood of infection and the severity of the following illness, yet tens of millions continue to refuse, providing plenty of bodies in which the virus can continue to spread and mutate. 
Despite President Bidens commitment to keep schools open, it looks likely to this writer (who, it must be stressed, is not an epidemiologist) that further setbacks are in the offing. Jurisdictions across the country are reinstituting pandemic restrictions or introducing new ones; New York State recently launched the Excelsior Pass, a digital vaccination record required for activities like concerts and indoor dining. Come colder weather, there is every reason to expect waves of lockdowns in the hardest hit areasor, even without them, waves of parents unwilling to send their children into viral petri dishes five days a week. And for moms, the inevitable outcome of such a course of events is a repeat of 2020, with millions of women, some of whom only recently returned to full-time work, forced out of their jobs by the assumed obligation of primary childcare. Whether theyre laid off or withdraw voluntarily, the outcome is the same: the loss of decades more progress in womens workforce participation, ascent to leadership positions, and financial independence.
Unlike the beginning of 2020, however, business leaders dont have to be caught by surprise. Were a year and a half into this pandemic, we know how to work remotely, we have plenty of vaccines and an existing support infrastructure in place, if a wildly insufficient one. Businesses across the United States ought, in any reasonable universe, to already recognize the heavy burden placed on their employees by school and childcare closures. But, as the saying goes, nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the human race; the current threat from delta came about as a result of short-sighted reopenings and premature victory laps earlier this year, among other factors, and the cost for outside childcare has nearly doubled over 2019. And thats when you can find it at all. What happens come October if cases are still accelerating? Or if some new variant is able to best the vaccine? 
I take some heart from the simple fact that we know how to do this. Weve already proven that the work-from-home economy is every bit as productive as the office economy was two years ago, if not moreso.Its been a huge adjustment for everyone, but some combination of comfort, flexibility, and that famous American inability to ever admit that were off the clock means that our working moms should be able to prioritize childcare without affecting their output, at least before accounting for burnout, which those households with two parents could handle through a more equitable division of household labor. Between Slack, Zoom, Google Docs, the omnipresent smartphone, and the experience of the last year and a half in putting those tools to work in much more intensive ways, this doesnt have to be a crisis. It doesnt have to deepen the she-cession that continues to plague women as a class, to introduce further job instability or create more and more resume gaps. It doesnt have to further widespread social regression through the re-imposition of outdated gender roles weve spent decades chipping away at. We just have to do the work to make sure of that.
There is every reason to be afraid that, despite our manifest ability to tackle this with forward thinking, medium-term planning, and managerial (and c-suite) flexibility, we will instead simply crash into this crisis the way weve crashed into all of the other ones. But pessimism is such a waste of time and energy, a self-fulfilling prophecy that tells us there is no point in trying which, of course, simply ensures the bad outcome will come to pass. The genius of the American economy has always been its unbridled optimism. Sometimes, that optimism has been to our detrimentsee the 2008 financial crisis amid the collapse of subprime lendingbut at its best, its the can-do attitude that electrified the Tennessee Valley, built the Hoover Dam, and created the most vibrant, most productive economy in the history of human civilization. One need only think about the Great Depression to see what happens when America bands together to tackle common threats to our thriving and prosperity and pull ourselves back from the brink. The Hoover Administrations hands-off approach to the economic crisis led directly to the New Deal, the reconstruction of the American worker, and nearly a century of growth. We have it in ourselves to solve any problem that comes our way once we collectively recognize it needs solving. This is no different.
There are millions of working moms out there teetering atop the razor-thin edge between career and kitchen. Their departure from the workplace would leave us all weaker; what brilliant minds would we consign to housecoats and slippers? Thats the issue America must take seriously above all else: not simply how to save women, but that women are indeed worth saving.read more