How COVID-19 Is Setting Working Women Back

In early October, the United States Labor Department reported that women were leaving the workforce at four times the rate of men. A few months earlier, a report from McKinsey Global revealed that while women made up just 43% of the workforce, they had borne 56% of COVID-related job losses. This data — and much more — led one news source to call this moment “America’s First Female Recession.”

What exactly is going on? Why are women losing and leaving jobs more than men during this global pandemic? And what can we do about it?

Here to answer these questions is Colleen Ammerman. Ammerman is the director of Harvard Business School’s Gender Initiative. She is also the co-author of an upcoming book Glass Half Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work.