Caregiving Crisis: Let's Step Into Our Power ⚡
💡Aha moments at the UN, child poverty at record lows and... REGISTER TO VOTE!!!
This issue is sponsored by CareForce: the driving force in reimagining how we care. Bringing together builders, storytellers, funders and leaders to create the infrastructure of care we all need for the 21st century. Learn more.
Hey everyone,
I had one of those “pinch me” moments this week. I also had one of those “omg why are there so many steps climbing out of the subway and how can I possibly go anywhere this sweaty?” moments.
After attempting to cool down in a (very large!) coat closet, I entered a room full of leading thinkers and doers in the caregiving and gender equity space. Real-life members of the CareForce, academics, policy experts, activists, and more had assembled amid the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Hosted by the Ford Foundation, we were gathered to watch the documentary “Fair Play” by Jennifer Siebel Newsom (also First Partner of California) and featuring author Eve Rodsky. Jennifer and Eve were there in person, along with a tremendous panel of experts to talk about the ways to move forward, change systems, and build a future that benefits everyone.
It was amazing to see that these issues are being noticed on a broader scale by world leaders. In fact, gender equality and women’s empowerment are one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
There were so many insights and comments from the panelists that had us all applauding and nodding, yes yes we can do this. For me, one really hit home.
“There's very little space for women to step into their full power in the world if we don't have men stepping into their full power in the home.” — Eve Rodsky
Such powerfully simple framing. We can go out and achieve when there is support at home. It’s a give and a take. But it’s also a give give. Everyone steps up. Everyone benefits. Shoutout to my husband who was on kid duty so I could be there. He had to endure what I hear was a difficult Slurpee incident. And I loved how Ford Foundation’s VP for Girls and Women Strategy Michelle Milford Morse thanked her husband, who was home in Austin, also on kid duty.
💡That was my biggest light-bulb moment of the night. Read below for more ‘aha’ moments1 from the panel, a look at jaw-dropping (in a good way) child poverty numbers, and an Angry Mom Summer update..
Thanks for being here. Please message with your thoughts for future issues. Our next monthly issue is October 28th. We’ll talk ways to make your family’s matching Halloween costumes from scratch with one hour’s notice. JUST KIDDING IT’LL BE JUST DAYS BEFORE MIDTERMS.😬 Scaregiving Crisis!2 See you soon.
What To Know About the Caregiving Crisis This Week
NEWS WATCH: ROUNDUP — Keeping tabs on legislation, regulation and conversation:
WILL MID-TERMS BE ANOTHER 'YEAR OF THE WOMAN?' — Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa.) says the fallout from the Supreme Court's rollback of Roe v. Wade will inspire women voters to turn out in record numbers to support candidates for abortion rights. She told the 19th it could be another "Year of the Woman" for Democratic candidates, which sent a record number of women (like Murray) to Congress in 1992 following Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, despite allegations of sexual harassment. “People are stunned, and angry, and we’ll see that in the elections,” Murray said. The 19th points out early signs that Murray is right: how Kansas voters soundly rejected a state constitution amendment that would have left abortion rights
unprotected, and there has been a "surge" of women registering to vote in swing states. Politico reports that yes, more Democrats (and women) are registering, but Republicans have been making gains over a longer period of time. Murray says the fight to preserve federal abortion access needs all voters.
“A certain generation really understands it — they didn’t have it before,” Murray said of abortion rights. “But young women now are beginning to really realize that this impacts them too and the only way they can change this is through their vote.”
U.S. WOMEN’S JOBS IMPROVE, BLACK WOMEN FALL BEHIND — The number of women in the U.S. workforce has reached its highest level since February 2020 aka The Before Times. Bloomberg reports that Labor Department data from August showed 77.4 million women holding jobs and the labor-force participation rate for women at 77.2%, the highest in 22 years.
But the improvements are uneven, the 19th notes. While white women, Latinas and Asian women over the age of 20 all saw higher labor force participation in the month, Black women were the only group to decrease their participation - meaning they were not working or looking for jobs. This difference shows how Black women face hurdles in getting "sustainable" work opportunities amid economic recovery, Emily Martin, with the National Women's Law Center, told the 19th. Reports have found that women of color, especially Black women, face more stress and deeper wage gaps, which prompt them to leave the workforce.
“Sometimes Black women are the canary in the coal mine, and their unemployment rates and their labor force participation rates can be a signal of some weakness in the economy.”
Sept. 21 was Black Women's Equal Pay Day, the day the average Black woman in the U.S. makes the same amount of money the average white man made the year before. The gap is nine months. Writing in Time, Taifa Smith Butler, president of liberal think tank Demos, says it's clear the economy is not working for all and that it still favors the wealthy who yield significant influence. "If we are to make any progress toward a just, inclusive, multiracial economy and democracy, we must shift power toward Black women."
CHILD TAX CREDIT ADVOCATES LOOK FOR SLOTS IN YEAR-END BILLS — Now that the Inflation Reduction Act has passed — without expanding the popular child tax credit — advocates say they’re looking to year-end tax bills for passage. With inflation at record highs, and conservatives feeling pressure following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney and others have a proposal to distribute monthly cash payments to parents, but with controversial work requirements stipulating recipients must earn at least $10,000 a year. All eyes are on the midterms: if Democrats don't gain seats, advocates will have to reconsider how they negotiate with Republicans and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who "obviously has no qualms about letting it die," one expert told Vox.
Bottom line: Please register and vote in the midterms!
FOUR AHA MOMENTS: THE UN PANEL ON GENDER EQUITY — More from this week’s panel at the Ford Foundation.
A. Inequality is a choice.
Inequality is not inevitable, said the Ford Foundation’s Michelle Milford Morse. Solidarity and political will can help us — as a society — make different choices. And we can choose differently — collectively — if we use our solidarity and political will to make changes.
An example of politics bringing about change: We heard from New York City's Deputy Mayor of Strategic Initiatives Sheena Wright about the city’s new plan to expand subsidized childcare and early childhood education. The investment is worth some $2 billion in just two years and some 41,000 families would qualify. The plan is "blueprinted" and ripe for expansion. It will also mean economic mobility for childcare providers, Wright said.
B. Care is sacred and should be valued.
Speakers made the connection that women and girls are socialized to do care work (which already makes it less valuable) and care work is invisible, so it’s devalued. And it enables massive transfer of wealth… that don’t involve the people doing that work. So they’ll keep doing that invisible work and not breaking out of the cycle.
But really, care work is “no less noble or brave a choice” than working in a factory or an office, Milford Morse said.
Changing mindsets and values are key. Boys and men have been socialized away from caring and having emotions, Jennifer Siebel Newsom said. Her documentary “The Mask You Live In” looks at this narrow definition of masculinity that reinforces our broader gender inequities. But there is value in caregiving, she said: “Our humanity is about love and it is a gift to be able to care, and we should give that to men.” Companies like Optum and Procter & Gamble talked about how they are elevating caregiving conversations. At Optum, managers are encouraged to proactively ask men whose partners are expecting what their leave plans are. And P&G has its “chore gap” campaign.
C. We have to change who makes decisions.
The people making policies are disconnected from real life. They are mostly older, white men with few, if any, caregiving responsibilities. If we want to change what power looks like in the home, we have to have decision-makers who think and live like us, the speakers said.
“We need to be at the tables of power and in rooms like these making decisions and making policies that are long-term, sustainable, and ultimately going to create a healthier society,” Siebel Newsom said. “For all of us, not just the few in power.”
To do all this, we have to change who does the invisible work in the home so that women’s minds are as “unencumbered” as those in power now, Rodsky said.
Some glimmers of hope: The first member of Generation Z is set to be elected to Congress, and that could start to help offset a very "grey" legislative body, writes CareForce member Julianna Goldman in Bloomberg.
D. Valuing time and improving data could crack the code.
This was a big one for me: there are different expectations over how women are supposed to use their time. At home it’s unpaid labor. At work it’s non-promotable tasks. "If we want any systemic solutions, this is really all about how we view and value women's time,” Rodsky said.
Economic data assume people choose what they do in their own time. But people who do invisible labor know that’s not true. One partner does too much invisible labor while the other is free to pursue careers, interests, Candy Crush, you name it.
This is why unpaid labor should be added into the GDP, she argues. We need new ways to measure well-being in national surveys because current surveys are too vague and allow for over-reporting. And “they don't give us any data that can actually be used as a tool.”
At the end of the day, what gets measured gets fixed. Many of us were totally crushing on an economist from Latin America talking about a new way to measure time and care. That would help define trends and spot outliers. Stay tuned.
Bottom line: I came home from the panel and without thinking about it, reached for a bunch of blueberries. 🫐🫐 You’ll see why in the Fair Play trailer below. Fight the power, let someone else buy the blueberries! (I did not buy mine.)
U.S. CHILD POVERTY AT RECORD LOW AMID PANDEMIC SUPPORT — New research shows millions more children were pulled out of poverty since the pandemic began because of the U.S. government's economic stimulus and child tax credits. New analysis of U.S. Census data by the New York Times and nonprofit Child Trends shows:
In 2021 child poverty fell to just 5.2%, the lowest rate ever recorded. The drop was felt across every state and demographics like race.
This means the child poverty rate has fallen 60% in the past two years -- and nearly 5.5 million children were lifted out of poverty. To put the changes in perspective: In 1993, one in four kids were in poverty. Today, it’s about one in 20.
Three economic and social justice experts writing in Vox say the change is "nothing short of remarkable." And the reasons were simple:
"To stave off a recession and prevent a spike in material hardship amid widespread joblessness and economic uncertainty, the federal government temporarily reinvented the traditional US safety net, pushing cash into US households."
They say cash-based, unrestricted and universal safety nets work. A decline in rates of food insecurity mirrored the decline in poverty, similarly because of the government intervention.
Bottom line: The experts wonder if lawmakers will seize on these improvements and continue the momentum: “Perhaps, these gains will mark the start of a new era, in which policymakers realize the level of poverty and hardship we tolerate in our society is a policy choice, and that it’s possible to have much less of it.” (Echoing our theme of ‘this is all a choice’ from above!)
REAL-LIFE CAREGIVING CRISIS UPDATE! — We kicked off Angry Mom Summer in July with the story of Erin Fults, a friend and fellow mom in New Jersey. She and her colleagues had been (loudly) fighting a decision by their employer, Hackensack Meridian Health network, to close on-site childcare centers that were a lifeline. The announcement had given them just a few months to line up alternatives. They mobilized online and in the media, and launched a Change.org petition with nearly 11k+ signatures. And! A few days after our story, HMH reversed themselves. (Coincidence?! YES.) They are firmly committed to keeping the centers open and are forming an advisory committee that includes parents. Erin reports some parents had to seek alternatives due to the hospital’s handling of the situation. But otherwise more people are comfortable staying.
Bottom line: Erin sums it up: “The hospital’s new commitment and clearer communication (finally…) has actually kept teachers from leaving and parents are feeling satisfied with the outcome.”
Signing off
Thanks, as always, for reading. Please send feedback, voting plans, ways you're stepping into power, and favorite decorative gourds.3 If you found value in Caregiving Crisis, please share with a friend. See you soon.
This issue is sponsored by CareForce: the driving force in reimagining how we care. Bringing together builders, storytellers, funders and leaders to create the infrastructure of care we all need for the 21st century. Learn more.
Caregiving Crisis is a newsletter written by Emily Fredrix Goodman. We aim to publish monthly but other things may get in the way.
Here’s a different type of ‘a-ha’ moment. Or as my son said when he was younger: “the garbage people video.” He’s not wrong. It’s so good.
Scaregiving Crisis! 👻🦇All my appreciation and adoration to my friend Shirley, who came up with that gem. We will be using the heck out of it.
Oh decorative gourds. 🎃 Greatest McSweeney’s of all time? Caution, NSFW or necessarily in front of literate children. (Still, tbh I can’t wait to show my kid when he’s old enough to appreciate it.)