For Mothers in the Workplace, A Year (and counting) Like No Other | McKinsey

While the pandemic has impacted everyone, I have posted extensively on the negative effect it has had on working mothers. These impacts range from women downshifting their careers or dropping out of the workforce entirely (LeanIn.Org report) to being less optimistic about their career prospects than before the pandemic (see Deloitte report). This new and in-depth article by McKinsey underscores the challenges facing working mothers. It provides recommendations firms can take to help these women get back on track in a post-pandemic workplace. A few recommendations include adjusting childcare-related policies and programs, resetting norms around flexibility, and implementing ‘returnships’ to help women reenter the workforce gradually but without losing prior progress. Another tactic is to remove/minimize bias in performance reviews that inhibit the progress of mothers by including less relevant markers of performance (e.g., always requiring someone to be accessible even if it is not a key performance criterion). Several other ideas are discussed.