You could be heading to a big meeting, and you get a call that somebody needs to be picked up because they got sick. The school could be closed, or it’s parent-teacher conference day. There are a lot of things that make child care fragile, and that has always been in direct conflict with this culture of overwork that puts an emphasis on face time.” – Leslie Forde

It’s challenging when childcare falls through. It often means last-minute changes to an impossibly tight schedule. And this creates ongoing anxiety for primary caregivers, who are most often Mothers and women.

The pandemic brought this issue forward in an extreme way, but it also forced many companies to adapt and adopt new ways of working. Creating flexibility for employees helps keep caregivers in the workforce.

Although navigating a pandemic isn’t what anyone would choose, it became the catalyst for work/life change, almost overnight. The question is, will companies continue to offer flexibility to employees going forward? It has the potential, executed well, to be game-changing for women, particularly moms, who still carry the majority of childcare responsibilities.

Our founder Leslie Forde had the pleasure of speaking with Laura Colarusso for her Washington Monthly article, “Can Working From Home Fix the Gender-Wage Gap?”