✊Boss Betty ✊ Newsletter: Poof goes a decade of progress

The pandemic has wiped out at least a DECADE of women’s progress in the workplace. Probably more.

And the really scary thing is that because there is so much craziness going on in this country — Robin Williams’ description of Canada as a “really nice apartment over a meth lab” was never so apt — the 🚨🔔alarm bells 🚨🔔are not ringing as they should be. And that means things will get way, way worse. For everyone.

A new “Women in the Workplace” report out this week has added substantially — alarmingly — to our regular litany of #SadStats, as did the September jobs report. Here’s a few key takeaways to keep your socially distanced weekend cocktail conversations fiery:

About 25 percent of women are considering either leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers because of the challenges presented by the pandemic.

Mothers are three times as likely as fathers to be responsible for a majority of housework and childcare during Covid-19 and twice as likely to worry that their work performance is being judged negatively because of these responsibilities.

About 865,000 women dropped out of the workforce in September, compared to 216,000 men. About 60 percent of all the jobs white women have lost this year have returned, but, for Black women, only 39 percent have come back.

It is a sad truth that when the sh*t hits the fan, as it most certainly has on pretty much all fronts, initiatives that push for equality — whether in regards to gender or otherwise — get sidelined. Which is actually crazy and stupid because a more equitable world, e.g. one not just run by white men, is a better functioning world. Study after study has proven it. “Inclusion and diversity are at risk in the crisis — but are critical for business recovery, resilience, and reimagination,” reads a McKinsey report on the subject.

Bizarrely, one of the first things the U.K. threw out the window when the coronavirus hit was mandatory reporting on the pay gap. How does that even compute 🤔? “Oi, since we have a pandemic, we don’t have to worry about paying people fairly any more, cheers!”

Then again, the Brits actually had government mandated pay gap reporting in the first place — under the Trump administration, plans to collect the data were shelved. However, California picked up the slack on that just this week with a bill requiring companies to report pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity. Notably, California also just enacted legislation mandating more diversity on corporate boards.

Speaking of corporate board diversity (yes, we know, we frequently do), we were very happy to get a call from Warner Music Group yesterday letting us know that they had finally appointed a Black woman, Ceci Kurzman, to their board. We’ve been continually reporting on the fact that the company had zero people of color among its top executives and board members — and just one female director — so that was welcome news. “What gets measured [reported!] gets managed,” as the old adage goes — another argument for collecting pay gap data.

Onward! Read the full newsletter here.  

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