Like two moms, we raised 4 young children among us and looked to start a small business in combination with COVID-19, our efforts naturally happened in suits and we started.
But a few weeks ago, when we had a call scheduled to communicate, we were especially focused on anything else: why parents, and let’s be honest, especially mothers, expected to perceive school and childcare without much information, without flexibility. schools or top employers?
And like that, 45 minutes was up and one of our kids woke up from their nap.
As parents around the country stare down a school year paralyzed by the balancing act of learning remotely and earning an income, most families are making decisions without any real information, left to fend for themselves.
Parents want ambitious leadership, more resources, and a greater sense of urgency. Why in the world’s most complex country are we allowing a generational crisis of women and young people to expand before our eyes?
The truth is austere. It’s very likely that the school will have a recognizable shape again this year. While there is a lot of business creativity, from training modules to parent modules, the maximum features are neither practical nor affordable for most families, adding frontline staff in the country who are more likely to live just above or below poverty. Line. They are more likely to have children at home and are more commonly women and other people of color.
Over the more than two decades of leading and covering the highest degrees of government, we have noticed that business leaders mobilize and attack crises even when the White House and Congress are paralyzed. Take the violence with firearms: When no action was taken at the federal level, Dick’s Sporting Goods converted the value of more than $5 million of weapons from attack into scrap, raised the minimum age for firearms and ammunition customers to 21 and halted the sale of military-style weapons. . Training
My filmed beating: Navy veterinarian Christopher David: Why doesn’t the federal government protect civil rights? We’ll be in court.
Even in the COVID crisis, we saw this ingenuity in action.
Yale University and the NBA have teamed up for saliva-based COVID testing. Pharmaceutical giants are rushing to expand a Covid vaccine. The Bill Gates Multimillion-Dollar Foundation has pledged approximately $500 million for vaccines. All of this is fast and vital, but it solves the other long-term consequences of this crisis.
The mismanagement of the pandemic has also eliminated a safety net for more than 55 million students, leaving young people and mothers running in a COVID crater.
For women, progress over the 70 years and more is fading. Since World War II, women’s involvement in the U.S. workforce. It has increased from approximately 33% to approximately 57%. Today, women are the top or only of 40% of families with children, up from 11% in 1960. –
However, over the past six months, more and more women have assumed a disproportionate percentage of childcare responsibilities. With few affordable alternatives, they reduce their hours of operation, look for fewer opportunities to advance, or abandon them altogether.
Give economic momentum: McKinsey estimates that if COVID trends continue and women’s unemployment exceeds that of men, in 10 years GDP expansion could be only $1 trillion lower.
Simply put, we are allowing a generation in the long term and the existing generation of running mothers to fall behind. Given the economic consequences, we ask: American companies, philanthropic leaders, all who can take credit for their power, their money, their creativity, and their time, where are they?
Companies are taking action. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Salesforce will offer more licenses. Netflix and Amazon pay for workers’ memberships on Care.com, a site to connect with child care providers. Apple and T-Mobile are partnering with the state of California to supply cellular-capable iPads for the school year. But what about the transformation of spaces or even warehouses on primary corporate campuses in classrooms?
A in crisis: COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities in education. Here’s how to fix the problem.
Let’s see how the personal sector and philanthropists can fill the monetary gap so that the school year can last until the summer of 2021 nationwide for young people to catch up. Find tactics to deliver loose Wi-Fi; finance a national tutoring bank. Companies may offer temporary benefits of tutoring, lunch, and paid supplies. Give the most productive educational minds the means to lead a well-funded commission on how to close the educational crater created through COVID.
We suggest that there is a one-time approach. We intend to have all the answers. We’re experts in education.
We are two mothers who also know that we can and will have to do more for the next generation of young people and for our generation of women on the occasion of a leadership vacuum through the federal government. We call on the personal sector, philanthropists and the most productive leaders in the country to build on their strength to think big and make a big commitment.
If we get to this moment, we will fail in our future.
Julianna Goldman, CBS News correspondent and Bloomberg News correspondent at the White House. She is the founder of MamaDen, a space of well-being and coexistence for mothers. Follow her on Twitter: @juliannagoldman.
Jen Psaki is the former White House communications director, President Barack Obama, and a former U.S. State Department spokesman. She is the fo of Evergreen Consulting and a CNN contributor. Follow her on Twitter: @jrpsaki.
Psaki and Goldman are launching a media education service to prepare public and American figures for the new era of virtual communications.