The biggest obstacle facing female founders right now is a lack of childcare options, several female founders told Business Insider. Many had already negotiated an equitable distribution of household and childcare responsibilities with their partners to make time to grow their companies. But the precarious juggling act has now encroached on the traditional workday.
"The conversation philosophically gets back to the idea that work and childcare just do not combine," Kinside cofounder and CEO Shadiah Sigala told Business Insider. "[COVID] exposed the fragile system of childcare in the US and our fragile earning potential. Women depend on childcare to work, and we depend on this system for us to go to work and be at work. When those shut down, there is literally zero infrastructure.
The irony of the sudden halt to childcare is not lost on Sigala, whose startup provides childcare benefits to workplaces across the country. She estimated that roughly 20% of childcare providers will go under as a result of statewide shelter-in-place orders and social distancing measures. If those providers never return to the childcare workforce, that will make the situation only more dire as states begin telling women to go back to work. The mothers may not be able to do so.
"In a two-person household, the caretaker will be the one that ducks out of the workforce first," Sigala said. "If we do not say that we need to support women and create a safety net, we might actually regress instead of advance."
If women are upset that they could lose more money than men perhaps knowing that the virus disproportionately kills more men wil cheer them up.
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