In January, Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, posted a full-page ad in The New York Times calling on President Biden and the rest of Congress to approve her Marshall Plan for moms, including $ 2,400 monthly checks to moms for the unpaid labor they do at home. The ad, which was signed by 50 high-profile women, including Women’s March leaders and actresses Eva Longoria, Gabrielle Union, and Amy Schumer, also called on Biden to adopt policies that address parental leave, affordable childcare, and pay equality. as policies that help retrain women who have left the workforce and policies that help to reopen schools safely.
Now, a month later, Saujani and Girls Who Code have published another full-page ad promoting the Marshall Plan for moms. This time, the ad appears in The Washington Post and is signed by 50 male allies, including NBA player Steph Curry, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
“As partners and fathers, we have to do our part at home,” says the Washington Post ad. “As the majority of employers, we also need to create more protection and flexibility for working mothers, and end the ‘maternity sentence’ that punishes them for using it.”
During the pandemic, mothers were three times more likely than fathers to take on most of the housework and childcare in opposite-sex relationships, according to a September report published by Lean In and McKinsey & Company. This overwhelming responsibility to juggle full-time childcare and work has led to an extreme burnout for many working mothers, which, according to experts, is a significant contributor to the more than 2.3 million women who have left the workforce since February 2020. As As a result of this massive exit, the female employment rate hit a low of more than 30 years in January 2021, with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris calling this crisis a “national emergency”.
“Every mom I know is at their breaking point,” Saujani tells CNBC Make It, “because when schools closed, we became teachers, nannies, and support people. So the whole system is broken. Marshall Plan for Mothers is because a Marshall Plan was about thinking big, not thinking small. And if we want to build America back better, we need to rebuild motherhood better. ”
Saujani’s proposal is named after the Marshall Plan enacted by the US in 1948 to provide financial aid to Western European countries after the devastating impact of World War II.
“This is important to me as the founder of Girls Who Code, because we need to send a signal to our girls and boys that women’s work counts,” she says, “and that their dreams and careers should not be taken for granted. populist mother movement. “
Although Biden has suggested to his parents a child discount of up to $ 3,600 per year in his $ 1.9 trillion Covid aid plan, Saujani says his proposal is just a “down payment on a mothers’ Marshall plan.”
“It will put money in the hands of mothers who need it,” she says of Biden’s plan. “But that’s not the 360 plan we need, and we can’t just stop doing that. We need to pass legislation such as paid time off, affordable childcare and wages.”
Likewise, she says Senator Mitt Romney’s proposal to pay parents up to $ 4,200 a year is also a “down payment” that does not provide mothers and working parents with the full support they need.
In early February, Congressman Grace Meng presented a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for the implementation of the Marshall Plan for mothers to “restore and revitalize mothers in the workforce.”
Even before the pandemic, Saujani says, mothers struggled to find a balance between work and unpaid work at home. Now, she says, “you see me on my Zoom screen with my 5 year old and my baby and you see how much unpaid labor I have been dealing with in my life.” And even with this visibility, she says she doesn’t trust companies to take it upon themselves to hire mothers and create more equitable workplaces where they can thrive. “We will be penalized even more,” she says. So what are we doing about it? How do we hold it [companies] responsible? “
While Saujani has been criticized for her Marshall Plan for mothers – including that it will only encourage more women to leave the workplace, encourage more fathers not to work from home, and exclude fathers who are also primary caregivers – she says . the backlash has not changed her mind about the focus on policies that specifically benefit mothers.
“I think all caregivers matter, but not all caregivers are fined for being parents,” she says. Mothers face a motherhood sentence. And I think there is a difference between focus and solution. We are focused on mothers because in the past we don’t value mothers. It does not mean that we exclude other care providers. ‘
In addition to being responsible for most of the housework, mothers are also twice as likely as fathers to be concerned that their job performance will be negatively assessed for their caring responsibilities during the pandemic, Lean In and McKinsey & Company report.
“I feel this is also the CEO of Girls Who Code,” said Saujani, who announced this month that she will step down from her CEO role in April. “People always ask, ‘Reshma shouldn’t teach all kids to code? Why focus on girls?’ Well, we’re targeting girls because we had a huge divide in terms of women and women of color in the tech workforce, and if we didn’t call it Girls Who Code we wouldn’t have focused on girls and we wouldn’t have did not create programs that were intended to put them in the [tech] workforce. And we wouldn’t have started a conversation about why. “
As with the Marshall Plan for Mothers, Saujani says her focus is not just on creating programs and policies that benefit mothers, but she also wants to start a conversation about, “How did this happen?”
“We have an opportunity in this crisis,” she adds. “And I often feel that as women we always ask for the least controversial … And I think now we have a chance to put it all on the table, for everything.”
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