How Innovative Child Care Solutions Can Help Narrow the Gender and Equality Gap in the Workforce

While the recent stimulus bill provides millions of U.S. families relief via a historic child tax credit this year, we need a longer-term solution for a critical problem many parents face — childcare.

As a single mom and immigrant to the U.S., quality and adequate child care were a constant struggle for me for the first 13 years of my son’s life, including before-and after-school care. In fact, my success as a C level executive was slowed due to this challenge. In 2004, for example, I was passed for a vice president of sales position because I couldn’t make it to work at the required 6:30 a.m. time due to lack of before-school care for my son.

Imagine being a single parent and a new immigrant to this country and trying to navigate the various childcare services available. Fast forward to today, and many parents face the same challenge. About 80 percent of the childcare struggle is understanding what programs are available. On top of that, many child care Resource & Referral Networks don’t enable parents to access available real-time child care slots in their regions. These outdated and burdensome programs rely on manual input and phone calls to childcare providers, further causing stress and headaches for parents in desperate need of quality childcare.

We must remove the red tape in these programs and organizations that have failed our families, providers and children. How can we do that? The answer is technology.

Existing technology can connect all the stakeholders in real time — parents, childcare providers, employers and even subsidy programs. Free access to information in real time can solve the plight parents face over childcare, even for temporary slots and drop-ins. There are so many different stakeholders involved in the childcare system that parents don’t know where to go. A unified platform will solve that challenge. Much like the digitization of health care records, modernizing the nation’s child care system can streamline the process, making real-time access to critical information a reality.

For working mothers, such a system would also allow them to ignite their careers. Now especially with COVID-19 and the near collapse of the U.S. childcare system, I am terrified that we have dissolved any progress women have made in the workplace. For the first time in three decades, women are suffering the consequences of a system that still treats them unequally.

Consider this: Over the course of the first 10 months of the pandemic, millions of women — particularly women of color — have lost more jobs than men as industries dominated by women have been hit the hardest.

Since March 2020, Black and Latina moms have stopped working, either voluntarily or due to layoffs, at higher rates than white moms. Many are single moms who need childcare but can’t access it during the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, single moms had higher rates of unemployment than their childless counterparts in the second and third quarters of 2020.

Experts forecast that loss of skills, tenure, and income among women of color will shape the future U.S. economy. One reason is that insufficient child care could impact their ability to re-enter the workforce, their wages, their long-term economic outcomes, and the overall economic recovery.

Like many of these single moms of color, I too, once struggled with chasing the “American Dream” due to child care challenges. Black, Latina and immigrant mothers will continue to lose jobs due as the nation’s child care crisis grows, unless we adopt modern tools and policies now. Brown and Black women hold the fabric of our communities together by building and sustaining critical support systems. It’s our turn to give them support by re-engineering the nation’s failing childcare system. We can transform the antiquated childcare industry with modern technology. This digitization would enable high quality and affordable early childhood education while helping our nation recover from our first ever “female recession.”

Let’s enable a true gender-equitable recovery for our nation now. Future generations depend on it.