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March 23, 2022

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Katie Haun raises the largest-ever fund for a solo VC, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings continue, and theSkimm’s founders learned that transparency is crucial when it comes to paid leave. Have a great Wednesday.

Today’s guest essay comes to us from Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, cofounders and co-CEOs of media company theSkimm. In October, theSkimm launched the social media campaign #ShowUsYourLeave, after hearing firsthand accounts from working women whose jobs did not offer paid family leave. The campaign is an effort to push employers to publicize their family leave benefits. In this piece, they share why transparency is a crucial first step to improving paid leave for all. 

– #ShowUsYourLeave. When paid family leave was cut from the Build Back Better bill, we were too frustrated to just sit back and do nothing. As a women-led company geared toward millennial women, paid leave has been important to us at theSkimm since long before we had any expectant parents on staff. But we know not every company has those same priorities—with dire consequences. For women without access to paid family leave, nearly 30% dropped out of the workforce within a year of giving birth. One in five did not return for more than a decade. 

We candidly shared our feelings on our Instagram in October, and asked our audience to #ShowUsYourLeave. The response was overwhelming. We received hundreds of messages from women sharing their own experiences and stories about paid leave, or lack thereof. These stories were heartbreaking accounts, and all driven by insufficient or nonexistent paid leave policies from their employers. Some of those who wrote in were among the one in four women in the U.S. who are forced back to work within 10 days of giving birth—a reality that disproportionately affects low-income families and people of color, and is directly tied to poor infant and maternal health outcomes. It was a wakeup call that there was more we could do.

We wanted to amplify a conversation about this crucial issue facing parents and caregivers within the private sector and shed light on why paid family leave is imperative to get millions of women back into the workforce. Men have already recouped pandemic employment losses, while 1.1 million fewer women are participating in the labor force than the previous year. At this rate, we are looking at a timeline that reverses decades of progress for women’s participation in the workforce.

We publicly shared theSkimm’s own leave policy—18 weeks of paid leave (adoption, surrogacy and fostering included), bereavement leave for pregnancy loss, phased return to work, and backup childcare assistance—and with the #ShowUsYourLeave hashtag, we called on other companies to do the same. Nearly 500 companies have publicly shared their policies so far, including American Express, Bombas, Etsy, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Snap, and Zoom. In an effort to help more Americans in the workforce make informed decisions about their career path, theSkimm has compiled the information publicly shared through our #ShowUsYourLeave initiative into a viewable, easily accessible database. This provides a look into the benefits and policies other employers are offering, and serves as a benchmark to reference when advocating for change within one’s organization.

But this is just the first step. Here’s what else business leaders, decision-makers, and citizens of this country must do to bring women back into the workforce: 

Publicize paid family leave policies. Providing transparency around paid family leave benefits helps employees and job seekers make informed employment decisions, gauge a company’s commitment to supporting women, and better equips them to lobby their companies for policy change. Simply put, woman want access to paid leave information.

Understand the financial impact.  Companies with strong paid leave policies are better able to attract female employees, bringing more women into the workforce—a win for businesses and the economy. Research suggests that companies with women in senior leadership positions are more profitable, more socially responsible, and provide better customer experiences. According to the World Economic Forum, driving more women to the workforce can bring more economic gains than an equal increase in male workers. It’s imperative that companies formulate a paid family leave policy from day one with budget allocation.

Listen to next-gen women. Millennial women are prioritizing benefits, flexibility, and work-life balance, and they want to feel supported by their employers. Benefit packages are no longer viewed as perks or nice-to-haves, but as important factors in negotiations and a telling indication of how companies value their employees. We’re currently dealing with the Great Resignation, and we won’t achieve the “Great Retention” without listening to women. 

Use family leave as recruiting tool. Companies that participated in the #ShowMeYourLeave campaign are now using those policies as recruitment tools. We’ve also seen companies begin to craft additional policies that support all phases of their employees’ lives, including birth, adoption, surrogacy and fostering; infertility, pregnancy loss, and childcare; and caregiving for a loved one or mental health leave for an employee.

We cannot continue to leave women behind and idly wait for a national policy. The private sector needs to take action, company by company, leader by leader. And we encourage employees and business leaders to continue to #ShowUsYourLeave.

– Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, cofounders and co-CEOs of theSkimm

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