S2 E27: Expecting companies to Pay Up for moms to return to work (Bonus Episode)
with author, CEO and change maker Reshma Saujani about her controversial new book Pay Up and her Marshall Plan for Moms
Key Takeways
I always wanted to be a mom and I always had really big dreams. And I don't know, maybe innately, I knew that those dreams might clash. And so I was very thoughtful about who I was going to spend my life with. I didn't get married till I was 37, had my first kid at 39.
My first son Sean, he was always with me and there. And part of it is, I didn't want to be apart from him, but secondly, I wanted to show the young women that work for me that you don't have to choose between being a mom and having a career and that it's gonna be messy. And I wanted to show them the messiness of it. And motherhood, pre COVID, did not slow me down. Post Covid - a different conversation.
We have worked so hard for that part of that identity, our work. And we've also spent most of our life fearing that part of our identity will be erased or taken from us that we're so protective over it. Even though we know we shouldn't live in a society where it's one or the other.
I feel burnt out all the time. Especially in COVID because I work from home. So I'm like giving an interview or writing something or trying to have some space to think. And at the same time I have a two-year-old: mama water, and this pandemic has been hard for our children. My seven-year-old, has some anxiety, constantly eating his clothes, being bullied at school. My two-year-old is underweight he's two and he can't talk, and I have a speech therapist, so I'm trying to balance what's happened to them and what's happened to me, which has been a massive identity shift.
The CDC released a report saying, 51% of mothers are reporting anxiety and depression, we are the subgroup, in addition to 18 to 24 year olds that have been affected the most from a mental health perspective. I'm exhausted, done tired, burned, traumatized, and I think most moms are too. And I think some of the quick fixes, before I could go for a walk around the block or even spend a night at a friend's house and I'd come back and I'd feel as totally recharged. And now that's not working for me in the same way, and that kind of freaks you out a little bit, because we also have the sense that we are unbreakable. And we are broken.
I know so much of the ratio of domestic work between us is a societal construct. And so it's deep. In trying to figure out what needs to shift but you also do sometimes feel like it's just me. Am I the only one? And then you realize no, everyone's going through the same thing.
With Pay Up in my book and about the focus on workplaces and how do we use this moment to actually reinvent workplaces that have never been built to have this conversation? It is women's history month, international women's day. And there were probably a thousand conversations that happened about get a mentor, get a sponsor, color code your calendar, like fix the women. And not fix the system, but we need to be having these conversations of how can my company create more equality at home? How do I mandate paid leave? How do I tie it to the performance review?
Women are in crisis. 2 million women have left the labor market. 51% of moms are saying that they are facing anxiety and depression. And we have this once in a lifetime opportunity to finally make workplaces work for women. I spent most of my career, telling my students to barnstorm the corner office, that they would succeed if they just leaned in a little harder and girl boss their way to the corner office. And I was wrong, I found myself in the middle of the pandemic with two little kids running an organization and it almost broke me and we've learned the hard way that having it all is just a euphemism for doing it all. So we have to stop trying to fix the woman and fix the system.
This is the opportunity for women to not have to choose between having a job or a child. This is our opportunity to ask for what we need. Flexibility, subsidizing childcare, support for our mental health. This is our opportunity to say, we're not going back to a broken system. So, if you need us, here's what we need.
So if we built workplaces that allowed you to exit and enter without penalizing you, that would be a game changer, not just for your mental health, but for solving the pay gap. But the bias towards working with moms is so innate, so deep, What we want is for everybody if they want to work and to not be penalized, if they want to go back or not go back and to have choice and freedom.
A lot of people believe that motherhood's a choice. You choose, you chose to have kids. So you don't get things from the government or your employer and your partner that's between the two of you. And so what we're trying to say is that it goes beyond it being a personal choice. It is a societal good it is an economic issue. And that we have structural breakdowns that are preventing half of our population from fully participating in life.
Other countries pay parental income. And the ramifications of that from an economic perspective are enormous. Canada, the UK didn't have this large exodus of women in the labor force. They don't have this issue because they provided that support. So that is what we're saying is if you provide the support, then the entire foundation won't break when you have an economic event.
It's not true that if you just work really hard, you'll get there. And I think we just have to start telling the truth. And I think the structural change, the systematic change is not impossible. We can live in a society that has paid leave that has affordable childcare, that roots up the motherhood penalty. The structural change is within grasp.
Build Back Better is dead. And, waiting for Congress to grow a heart is a losing strategy, which is why I've turned to the private sector. I actually think that the change that we were asking for can start in the private sector and then can extend to government. The thing that I'm obsessed with, and this is why I wrote Pay Up is can we start mobilizing in workplaces?
Companies are paying enormous amounts of money for egg freezing and IVF and other types of benefits. So you're going to help me extend my fertility, but when I have a child I don't have support. It doesn't make sense. It's inconsistent.
Marshall Plan for Mom's part of our strategy is to change the gender equation. It's to mandate paid leave for men. That is the mom's strategy.
I really do believe, and I went through this with Girls Who Code is that by we think by naming it we're exacerbating inequality. And I think by trying to gender neutralize, sometimes we're exacerbating gender equality. If I had called Girls Who Code, Kids Who Code, I would not have taught half a million girls to code. We've literally shifted the gender equation in 24 months. That's all about care work. And so by not calling it moms, I think you're making it worse, right now, because you're not having the gendered conversation, which we need to have.
I want to get companies to subsidized childcare. That's like my goal. And we're going to make it happen right now, less than 10% of companies do. And I think the second piece I would say is we're going to start organizing moms and workplaces. And I think we have to show that the private sector in workplaces, and if we can start getting moms to have success in changing policies for them, I think it's game over.
Get my book, sign up to be Pay Up advocate, have it spark a conversation, whether it's with your partner, whether it's with your girlfriends, whether it's at work, and recognize that this is our moment. This is our moment for change. I also want to say to moms, give yourself grace. We've been living through trauma. And we know that moms are suffering and we assume that moms never break, but our hearts really are broken. So many ways I wrote the book cause I wanted moms to feel seen. And I wanted us collectively to commit to not going back to the old normal.
Let's not waste this crisis. Let's not let our pain be in vain. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent the workplace. If you don't know where to start this, pick up our toolkit and sign up to be a Pay Up advocate. We will walk you through it. Tell you exactly what you need to do to not feel like you have to pick between having a job and a kid that you can have both and have both in a healthy way. https://marshallplanformoms.com/pay-up/
Bio
Reshma Saujani is the author of PAY UP: The Future of Women and Work (And Why It's Different Than You Think) She is a leading activist and founder of Girls Who Code and the Marshall Plan for Moms. She has spent more than a decade advocating for women’s and girls’ economic empowerment, working to close the gender gap in the tech sector, and, most recently, championing policies to support mothers impacted by the pandemic. Saujani is also the author of the international bestseller Brave, Not Perfect, and her influential TED talk, “Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection,” has more than five million views.
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