The pandemic has dealt a significant blow to women in the workforce.
The majority of pandemic-related job losses have been experienced by women, according to a 2021 report from the National Women’s Law Center. Since February 2020, the report notes, women in the United States have lost more than 5.4 million net jobs. Globally, women’s employment dropped by 4.2% between 2019 and 2020, compared with 3% for men, a 2021 policy brief from the International Labour Organization found. Women researchers aren’t immune to the pressures. Women represent only a third of the authors who have published COVID-related papers, with one possible factor being that lockdowns are forcing women researchers to juggle competing demands (Pinho-Gomes, A.-C., et al., BMJ Global Health, Vol. 5, No. 7, 2020).
Even as the economy rebounds and some sectors face labor shortages, millions of women are continuing to stay home.
The impact of this workforce exodus will be long-lasting, said Eden King, PhD, a professor of psychology at Rice University and past-president of APA’s Div. 14 (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology).
Now, King and other industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists are researching—and speaking out on—ways to bring women back into the workforce and keep them there.
“Opting out” isn’t the reason most women have left their jobs, King emphasized. The oft-used phrase perpetuates the idea that work is optional for women—that their income is secondary, or even extra, instead of a bedrock of support for children, spouses, and older parents. Instead, she said, insidious societal messages that women should be mothers and that mothers should put their families first are helping to keep women home. “Instead of opting out,” said King, “women are being pushed out.”
In addition to these messages, caregiving challenges brought on by school and day care closures, quarantines, and sick family members have also played a key role in forcing women from the workforce, said Kristen Shockley, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Georgia.
In a study of how families are managing responsibilities during COVID, Shockley and colleagues found that couples are falling back into traditional gender roles (Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 106, No. 1, 2021). While some families came up with egalitarian childcare strategies, such as alternating days or shifts, in almost 37% of the families, women handled most or all of the childcare. “Something has to give,” said Shockley. And given the pay gap that leaves women often making less than their male counterparts, she added, it’s often the woman who gives up paid employment to take on that caregiving.
Being forced to leave jobs to become “COVID-induced homemakers” can be a mental health challenge, said clinical psychologist and career therapist Angelica Perez-Litwin, PhD, founder and chief executive officer of Lumin, a group therapy practice in Greenville, South Carolina. In addition to anxiety, isolation, and other mental health issues, marital or relationship problems can result from women losing their status as workers. For many women, said Perez-Litwin, financial power struggles crop up since they can no longer contribute equally to the household finances.
“Psychologists can help women express their frustration, fears, and overwhelm … and listen to and validate their challenging experiences,” said Perez-Litwin. Interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy can also help women reframe challenges and provide coping skills to reduce distress. For women whose health insurance has disappeared along with their jobs or for whom therapy is no longer affordable, local community health clinics offer reduced rates. But even friends and family members, support groups, and Facebook communities of women who have left the workforce can help, said Perez-Litwin. “Just sharing how they feel and what they are going through with someone they trust can be therapeutic,” she said.
Psychologists should also be advocates for working women, said Tammy Allen, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida. This isn’t a problem that individual families alone can solve, she said. What’s needed is access to affordable childcare and paid leave. “The pandemic really exposed just how fragile the infrastructure is that enables women to participate in the workforce,” she said. “When that infrastructure broke down, we saw women leave the workforce in droves.”
To inform policy changes, Allen helped develop a list of short-term strategies for keeping women in the workforce (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2021). The report calls on state and local decision-makers to use federal funds to mitigate COVID’s impact on women workers while laying the groundwork for longer-term improvements. Two areas are key, said Allen and her colleagues: supporting caregivers via financial help, improved childcare infrastructure, and family-supportive policies and supporting workforce development via training programs for women, greater access to male-dominated jobs, and mental health services.
Advocating for the most vulnerable working women is key, said Marc Cubrich, an I/O psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Akron (Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 1–2, 2021). “In the United States, nearly half the workforce are considered precarious or low-wage workers, and women and racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented,” said Cubrich. “That economic tenuousness, unreliable wages, and lack of benefits make simply getting by so difficult.”
Instead of continuing to focus overwhelmingly on white-collar workers, Cubrich said, psychologists—especially I/O psychologists—should instead include low-income and precarious workers in their research, ensure employee selection systems are unbiased, develop training programs to help workers get better jobs, and advocate for better wages and benefits for all workers.
