I worry a great deal that we have gone backwards. On female
labor participation, we've gone backwards on poverty reduction,
we've gone backwards on a number of very important objectives for
everybody. I hope that if the government and companies support
society on childcare that this is temporary and reversible, it
should be this is not hard to solve. This is not an
engineering problem. This is a resource problem. And it's a
perfect place for private public partnerships.
Women rushed into the labor force starting back in the 60s
and 70s. But but actually starting about 10 years ago,
their participation rates peaked and they started down. And and
as I say, I think right now, they they have gotten a further
push down with the pandemic, and the necessity of staying home to
take care of, of children, and so on and so forth. So we
probably are going to see a continuation of these trends.
Women are the one who tended to go outside of there and leave
the labor force, I do think it's gonna take a long time to go
back to normal. Why do I know that? Well, we have an
experience of Rosie the Riveters during the war, many men were
taken out of the workflow and woman, workforce and woman took
their jobs. And in those places, which had a lot of employment
for women as a result of the war, woman labor participation
remained higher for years to come.
I think a lot of the progress we've made in all kinds of ways
as a society have gone back in during Covid. And of course, it
hit women and minorities very badly. But I don't think it's
because of the differential learning process. I just think
that, you know, family that were remote, when they had to make a
choice, lots of them chose for the woman not to work,
businesses often fired or furloughed, more women. So lots
of things like that happened, it was something that we knew. So
we knew it was going to happen, it was not a surprise, it
happened. The intensity surprised even me, like if you
look at the actual numbers, they're they're very dramatic
differences. And I think that companies need to make, figure
out a strategy about that, it's, you know, I don't know how many
years of progress we've erased, but it's a substantial amount.
There will be, I think, a wider conversation about what it is to
have children, who is responsible for taking care of
these of these children, and whether it's the family alone,
or whether it's society as a whole. And now the US is a
little bit behind in comparison, for example, to continental
Europe, where it is understood that children are taken care of
by society, not just by the family, and in particular by the
woman. So I think we are moving in this direction, the childcare
discussion is moving in this direction.
Childcare, we've identified major major gaps in our
childcare proficiencies. And we've seen how that impacts the
labor force, how that impacts women how that is, this is
disastrous, it's a calamity for single parents. And I think that
we have to pay a lot more attention. I call it part of
infrastructure. And I know that people disagree with me, but I
think of infrastructure as enabling physical activity,
human activity and technological activity. And if you want to
enable more people to work and work well, you've got to provide
support on childcare.
You know, once schools open and it feels like that's starting to
happen in other, in many part of the country, we will see
any women come back into the workforce. I mean, a lot of
the exit of women out of the workforce during a pandemic
was to take care of kids because kids couldn't go to school,
couldn't go in person, well you know, now that they can go
back, I think we're gonna s e those, those moms go back to
work. And actually it's a lot of dads too. If you look at the
data, male participation in ki d of the, in that age group in
heir 30s and 40s also declined because they stayed home and
took care of kids. So they'll all go back into the workforce.
We might worry that they are, you know, sticky effect of
having taken a woman of the labor force its gonna take some
time for them to come back, because they have made different
arangements with childcare, and so on and so forth. And we are seeing,
for example, that a lot of black and brown communities are
very concerned about sending the kids back to school and they
think that they should continue with the remote schooling. And that
of course, is going to have huge implication for women labor
force participation, we might also see something like that
at the other end, among the ultra rich that where women have,
you know, gone home and started to take care of their children,
and then you lose the flow, you lose your job, you lose
your friends, you lose your colleagues, and it really could be
difficult to go back.
It's gonna be really important for the government to think very
clearly about things like childcare. Like other things to
make sure that the labor force doesn't segment, because one of
the dangers for society of the new workplace is the further
segmentation of the labor force between the haves and the have
nots. And that is a real risk. And it's a risk for all of us
not just for those in that are less fortunate.
We, I think we realized that in the current system, it's just
not very workable. It's it's works just badly works. You know
the woman sustain themselves by by pulling on their own
bootstraps, in the best of time, and then we were not in the best
of time, and that the bootstrap just like crashed.
If you think about all the policies that are being
implemented, a lot of it is centered around trying to make
it easier for women to go to, to go to work, you know, all the
childcare benefits. So I think there is a very strong effort by
the administration and this Congress to provide the kind of
support, financial support that's necessary to allow women
to go back into the workforce and stay in the workforce for
longer. And I expect that, that those policy changes to make a
big difference.
There is certainly a tendency in the United States for putting a
lot of weight on extremely long hours for no particular reason.
And as the, you know, Claudia Goldin has shown, this has been
one of the major hindrance standing in the way of women
succeeding in carriers. So women are less likely to succeed and
even start career, that demand a very large number of hours, like
being a surgeon or a lawyer or, and one thing that. You know,
the next revolution in woman's participation in the labor
market, as Claudia Goldin argues, is getting rid of this
idea that a good worker is a worker that puts 90 hours a
week, maybe it is just not needed, neither for men nor for
women, maybe we can all work a little bit more reasonable and
more flexible hours. And I think the pandemic might have helped
with that. Because people had to adjust necessarily. I'm curious
to see whether it's gonna stick or not, I think I hope that the
conversation in the media will help it stick because I think it
will make everyone happier.