The Mother’s Day brunch menu: Workplace equity, higher pay, and caregiving support

Don’t get me wrong, I like a good Mother’s Day brunch. But let’s talk about what needs to be on the menu for working mothers if we are serious about valuing them this Mother’s Day and beyond.

When the pandemic shuttered schools across the U.S., millions of working mothers found themselves holding the bag. Left to juggle their jobs with childcare, online learning or even homeschooling, the earliest stages of the pandemic laid bare how difficult it is to be a working mother in America.

Many hoped that the pandemic’s “great reset” would herald in a new culture of work: one that offered flexibility and compassion for workers as they balanced their lives and careers. Three years later, this promise remains unfulfilled for working mothers. In fact, many are in more challenging positions than before. While white men and high-earning white women are benefitting from more flexible work and higher pay, low-to-middle-income Black and Latinx breadwinners have been set back years in their career and financial goals. 

Women experience income declines as much as 30 percent after giving birth for the first time. Across race and ethnicity, mothers are paid just 62 cents for every dollar paid to fathers. Even when you only count parents working full-time and year-round, this figure increases to just 74 cents. Women remain overrepresented in the lowest paid jobs that lack flexibility for family caretaking. And because women take on disproportionate family labor, it means many mothers — in jobs with inadequate family and medical leave policies, or working for employers who refuse to accommodate caregiving responsibilities — are forced to quit their jobs in the face of emergencies.

These impacts are felt even more acutely by working moms of color. Research from Equal Rights Advocates found that, two years after the pandemic, more than 50 percent of Black and Latinx female family breadwinners were struggling to make ends meet. Much of this is chalked up to a lack of affordable childcare options, with 84 percent of those surveyed saying they expected childcare responsibilities to delay any plans they had to improve their family’s financial security. 

This Mother’s Day, there are simple, commonsense solutions that employers and policymakers can implement to increase workplace equity, boost our economy, and ensure working moms have an equal chance at success as they raise the next generation of our country’s leaders.

• Working mothers deserve pay equity and access to the highest paid jobs. Policymakers should follow the lead of states requiring employers to post salary ranges and end reliance on prior (sometimes discriminatory) salary in setting hiring pay. Employers should implement these measures even where not legally required. It’s not just the right thing to do, new studies show pay transparency creates more productive workers — benefiting both employees and employers. Policymakers and employers should also ensure that high wage jobs are hospitable to mothers. As Congress pumps $1.2 trillion in federal infrastructure dollars into creating high wage jobs in construction and manufacturing, we call on these typically male-dominated workplaces to provide sanitary lactating facilities for mothers, paid leave and childcare support, along with concrete policies to address sexual harassment that often runs rampant in these industries.
• More needs to be done to raise the tide for everyone in the undervalued industries where women are overrepresented. Many workers in the service industry are victims of wage theft and bad working conditions. Businesses need to move beyond a subminimum wage for tipped workers, implementing a livable wage plus tips. It is the right thing to do for working mothers and, in a historically tight labor market, it can help attract and retain top talent. 
• Finally, if meaningful progress is to be made for working moms, policymakers need to mandate increased flexibility and compensation for caregiving responsibilities. We need protected and paid family and medical leave policies. States where such policies have been enacted, such as California, have seen positive impacts on children’s and maternal health, wage equity, and improved career outcomes for women. In the absence of federal reforms, employers can offer this benefit themselves, which research has shown saves employers money in the long term. Additionally, strong care economy policies must combine with a commitment from policymakers to defend reproductive rights. 

On this Mother’s Day, go ahead and plan a great brunch. But let’s also commit to a more meaningful menu for working mothers so they can thrive at work and build economically secure futures for themselves and their families. 

Noreen Farrell is a civil rights attorney, executive director of gender justice organization Equal Rights Advocates, and chair of the national Equal Pay Today campaign.