Where Have All the Women Gone?

Recently there’s been a dramatic shift in the American workforce: The “Great Resignation.” “The Big Quit.” 

In one year, more than 47 millions of people left their jobs. The majority were women.

“It is horrible for our economy when millions of women exit the labor force,” says economist Michelle Holder, CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

While men have regained nearly all the jobs they lost since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re still missing 2 million women.

So where have all the women gone?

We’ll hear Holder’s insights, as well as the stories of two working women whose thriving careers were turned upside down by the rigidity — and sexism — built into the American workplace.

Guests

• Kari McCracken, a mother from Lexington, Kentucky. She had a job she loved, and managed close to a hundred employees. Then the pandemic hit.
• Kiarica Shields single mother of four in Georgia, lost her job as a hospice nurse in the early days of the pandemic, then with schools and child care closed, has struggled to find the care she needs in order to find work.
• Michelle Holder, economist, CEO Center for Equitable Growth who has been named one of 19 Black economists to watch by Fortune. Author of two books, she recently published an important paper on the impact of COVID-19 on job losses among Black women in America.

Resources for Show notes 

• Handling work-family conflicts: future agenda, International Journal of Manpower, 2017
• Work-Family conflict and mental health among female employees, Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
• Measuring work-life conflict among low-wage workers, Nichols & Swanberg, 2018
• The jingle jangle of work-nonwork balance: a comprehensive and meta-analytic review of its meaning and measurement, Casper et al, 2018
• Lower-wage workers and flexible work arrangements, Danziger & Waters Boots, 2008
• When work and families are allies: a theory of work-family enrichment, Greenhaus & Powell, 2006
• Work-family enrichment and satisfaction: the mediating role of self-efficacy and work-life balance, Chan et al, 2015
• “The Early Impact of COVID-19 on Job Losses Among Black Women in the U.S.” Holder 2021