The pandemic recession has been labelled a “she-session” because of its differential impact on women. According to the latest Department of Labor statistics, there were 2.2 million fewer women working or looking for work compared to January 2020, and 1.5 million men.

A major factor in this differential effect is that the burden of caregiving and child rearing (now also including home-schooling) still falls much more to women than men. Anything that an employer can do to create a supportive environment for caregivers to allow time or resources to help them facilitate child care, home-schooling, or elder care, will have a major impact. Consider continued remote options if available, offer flexible hours, part-time work, compressed work weeks, job modifications, job sharing duties, and other creative ways of addressing the challenges that women are facing. As we gradually reopen our schools and workplaces, this sort of assistance becomes more feasible. More broadly, many companies already emphasize diversity and inclusion in their hiring and promoting practices, and we would encourage them to redouble those efforts.