Finishing the Fight

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Marshall Plan for Moms founder Reshma Saujani discusses the pandemic’s impact on women, especially mothers, and outlines policy and private-sector responses needed to prevent backsliding on gender equality.
The conversation highlights the origin of the Marshall Plan for Moms, its advocacy tactics, and a playbook provided to employers to help bring women back to work.

COVID-19 “wreaked economic havoc on women globally, especially mothers,” forcing many to supplement paid labor with unpaid labor and causing women to leave the labor force.
The December 2020 jobs report by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that only women, especially women of color, lost their jobs.
Reshma Saujani: “We can’t lose 30 years of progress in nine months.”
In the developing world, women in the informal economy perform, on average, 86 percent of unpaid labor at home.
Data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics shows women are three to five times more likely than men to hold part-time or low-wage jobs.
Childcare affordability benchmark cited: “Typically, childcare shouldn’t be more than 7 percent of income.”
Education and caretaking: “Nearly 1.6 million girls are also caretakers for their siblings or others.”
Personal financial figures cited: “After graduating with $300,000 in student loan debt” and campaign fundraising “We raised $50,000 from Indian aunties…”

Cash payments for unpaid labor: Governments should compensate women for unpaid domestic work.
Extend benefits to informal-sector women: Provide health care, subsidized childcare, and paid leave for women in the informal economy.
Public investment in childcare: “If we’re providing public education, we should provide public childcare too. We should pay for that as a society.”
Appoint a women’s jobs czar: “Every finance minister should appoint a women’s jobs czar to look at how to get women back to work.”
Promote an equal division of unpaid work: Implement plans and programs to achieve balance in household unpaid work and start a global conversation on gender equality at home.

Provide cash, paid leave, affordable childcare, and retraining to help mothers return to work.
Offer flexibility or predictability: “Women need either flexibility or predictability.”
Tie performance reviews and salary compensation to men’s uptake of paternity leave to change gender roles at home.
Offer flexible hours and childcare benefits: “We allow people to set their own hours. There is no motherhood penalty. And we offer childcare benefits to families.”
Recognize productivity beyond face time: “It’s a myth that having face time and sitting at a desk are the only ways of measuring productivity.”
Private sector should lead to demonstrate value for workers and support both salaried and hourly employees.

Pandemic widened the digital divide: many students accessed Wi‑Fi in public places or shared devices, impeding learning.
Two-generational strategy needed: address both children’s learning and parents’ capacity to support schooling.
Girls Who Code approach: focus on teaching the most vulnerable, including girls of color and those below the poverty line, and use virtual learning as an opportunity.
Policy goal: ensure every child has high-speed internet and learning opportunities irrespective of race or socioeconomic status.
Equity in schooling: “Every organization and government should ensure that the girls in their community are learning at the same rate as boys.”

Personal resilience: Saujani describes running for US Congress, losing, and using that failure to launch Girls Who Code.
Cultural asymmetry in failure: “Failure is something we should be teaching, but it must be accessible to all. In Silicon Valley, failure is very accessible if you’re a male, white or Asian, but not if you’re a woman or a person of color.”
Advice: “Surround yourself with rejection; you will immunize yourself from the fear of failure.”
Coding as pedagogy: coding’s iterative nature teaches failure and builds bravery, which should be made accessible across demographics.

Interview with Reshma Saujani by Sabina Bhatia, March 2022.