“Really, it’s not about one single thing.”— Matthias Doepke, an economist at Northwestern, on what’s causing the global “she-cession”In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. After more than a year of on-again, off-again school and day care closures around the world, there’s not a doubt as to who has borne the brunt of the caregiving burden: mothers. We saw mothers working out of their bathtubs with their children playing nearby; we saw children interrupting their mothers on live television; we heard mothers scream into the void. As a result, millions of women — particularly those with children — were either pushed out of their jobs or were forced to downsize their careers, spurring what many economists are calling the world’s first “she-cession.”In the U.S., White House policy advisers and members of Congress have held up women’s enormous job losses as an urgent reason to expand investment in child care by historic proportions, which they argue will jump-start the recovery.

Source: New York Times May 28, 2021 21:28 UTC