Candy Kirby
With a heartbreaking number of women leaving the workforce due to the pandemic and related economic crisis, 50 prominent men — including business leaders, athletes and actors — are publicly supporting a proposal that would pay moms $2,400 a month for their “unpaid labor at home.”
The group of men, some of whom are fathers, published an open letter as a full-page ad in The Washington Post, calling on Congress to pass the “Marshall Plan for Moms” that will get women back to work.
The letter includes NBA star Steph Curry, former NFL player Victor Cruz, actors Don Cheadle and Colin Farrell, craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Reddit co-founder (and husband of Serena Williams) Alexis Ohanian, and former presidential candidate-turned current New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang.
“When more than 30 years of progress for women in the workforce can be erased in 9 months, the underlying system is broken. It’s time to create a new structure that works for women, that respects and values their labor,” the letter reads. “Men have a role to play. As partners and fathers we need to start doing our share at home. Studies show we are failing.”
The Marshall Plan for Moms — proposed by Girls Who Code CEO Reshma Saujani — calls on the Biden administration to pass policies like paid family leave and pay equity and retraining programs for women to return to work, in addition to the stimulus checks to moms,
The proposal also calls for plans to safely reopen schools five days a week and a task force to properly implement the Marshall Plan for Moms.
Last month, 50 women signed a letter in the New York Times in support of the Marshall Plan for Moms, including actresses Alyssa Milano, Eva Longoria, Julianne Moore and activist Tarana Burke.
The pandemic has continued to intensify inequalities in our economy, including a large gender gap. Industries that employ a lot of women, such as hospitality, retail and education, are particularly struggling during the pandemic and have suffered tremendous job losses. Women also are more likely to shoulder the burden of caretaking responsibilities at home.
In January, women in the U.S. had lost 5.4 million jobs since February 2020, right before the Covid-19 pandemic began, as compared to 4.4 million job losses for men. The U.S. economy lost 140,000 jobs in December — all of which were held by women.
That’s a staggering statistic.
Women ended 2020 holding 860,000 fewer jobs than their male peers, according to CNN, when men and women had started the year on roughly equal footing, with women holding about 50.03% of jobs. Saujani told CNN last month that it could take decades to get women back to making up more than 50 percent of the labor market participation if there’s no real plan to get women back in the workplace.
“No woman made a choice to stay home and take of our children in this crisis, that choice was made for us,” Saujani said in an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “We are not America’s social safety net. And as many of us have been essentially replacing paid labor for unpaid labor, and nobody asked us. They have put a zero value on our labor, and it’s time to put a value on it.”
Asked if she’s heard from the Biden administration, Saujani replied, “I know Joe Biden cares about mothers. This is an issue that he cares about personally, and so I have no doubt that this administration will do the right thing and put together a Marshall Plan for mothers.”
The Marshall Plan, as you likely know, is in reference to the post World War II US program, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, that gave massive amounts of aid to Western European countries.
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