By | Leslie Patterson | EY US Talent Leader for Diversity & Inclusiveness
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 2.3 million women have left the workforce since last February, around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021 alone, the unemployment rate for Black women in America rose to 8.5%.
I’ve had the honor of working in the diversity and inclusiveness space for quite some time now, but last year’s events have felt different. We’ve all been impacted on some level, and that has put things into perspective, especially knowing how many women have left their seat at the table. With the calendar turned from Black History Month to Women’s History Month, now is a good time to look at what women, specifically women of color, have accomplished and what we’ve collectively had to overcome.
Many caregiving responsibilities have fallen on women during the pandemic. As a mother of three boys, I related quite a bit to a recent New York Times article[1] finding that working mothers went into overdrive at the beginning of the pandemic — juggling full-time jobs of parenting, teaching and working all at once.
The pressures of these duties have particularly affected women of color. Only 57% of Black women during the pandemic felt that they had the support of their managers if they had personal issues, compared with 73% of white women, according to Coqual research
