## Finishing the Fight

## Source details

**Canonical URL:** [Finishing the Fight](https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/finishing-the-fight-saujani-bhatia)

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## Bibliographic details
- Authors: SABINA BHATIA
- Published: March 8, 2022

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### Interview overview
- 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.

### Pandemic impact and key statistics
- 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…”

### Policy recommendations for governments and finance ministers
- 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.

### Employer and private-sector actions
- 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.

### Education, digital divide, and girls’ human capital
- 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.”

### Narrative on failure, leadership, and inclusion
- 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.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/finishing-the-fight-saujani-bhatia_