Transcripts For ALJAZ The Stream 20240712

Paris the french president announcing the frogs is going back into lockdown for a least a month it could be longer depending on the Health Situation and whether that improves now imagine what karl said that this time the lockdown would be a little bit more flexible if you like in that schools will remain open universities will shots however people still be able to go for medical appointments and Public Services will remain open so those are things that were shot during the april march april may lockdown so little bit more flexibility but still it sounds as if it will be a very strict lockdown. Well germany is also heading into a month long lockdown with restaurants bars and james ordered to be shot for monday people will be asked to not travel but schools and shops will remain open chancellor Angela Merkel has announced an 11000000000. 00 Relief Program in the past they both italy and spain of also announced more than 20000. 00 new cases. Azerbaijan has accused armenia of the deadliest single incident in their months long conflict the government says 21 people were killed when armenian shells hit the town of barga near the disputed region of mccormack had about this comes just days after a u. S. Brokered cease fire came into effect the 3rd attempt to end the fighting after the 2 russian agreed to truces failed protests have been hope in several muslim nations against the french president s value to crack down on radical islam it comes as the turkish president lashed out at this gusting cartoons of the prophet mohammad in a french satirical magazine is now starting to sue charlie of dough over a new drawing that mocks him these are the top stories stay with us the stream is coming up next thanks for watching have i. Hi im femi oke a enjoying the stream while women are dropping out of the u. S. Workforce as the pandemic hits the labor market advocates worry that years of economic advancements by winning could be in jeopardy we want to hear your thoughts at experience say so be sure to tweet us at a. J. Strain all leave a comment and i live chat to join the conversation. The coronavirus pandemic has sent the u. S. Economy at a doubt what products forcing many people especially women out of work around 865000 women left the workforce in september compared 2216000 men thats according to analysis of Labor Department figures carried out by the National Womens law center one main reason is that women all over represented in several of the worst hit industries another is the pressure to balance work at home life have a listen to what resign a real stall with the stream about how she lost her job so were here from home with a 4 year old and one year old wasnt difficult enough i was reminded early on by my manager that he didnt want to hear my children on the back on a business calls and went on for months to a point where i asked if you wanted me to walk my one year old in the room alone. And he responds with. How to greet you can do you need to hear that coming from a father to employee whos working hard doing 2 full time jobs i reported the discrimination that i encountered for months and i was fired. So here i am sure a Global Pandemic where millions are out of jobs and im still looking for jobs to support me. Joining us to talk about americas female recession in washington d. C. Nicole mason shes the president and c. E. O. Of the institute for womens policy research in florida. Shes an economy reporter with the 19th news and if you ginia economist diane lim hello everybody good to see you all collectively not in your heads and resigned i was sharing her story at diane what was going on the office the resonated with you well yeah its always been hard for women to maintain careers outside the home and to take care of their children at home and its just become even harder during this pandemic because of the merging of home life and work life and its a shame that often women have male supervisors and bosses that may not really understand what the women are going through because theyre not mom she barely has an economy report to you make the figures that we should you put faces on those figures if you were going to tell us a story to help us understand what those figures actually mean for households and women for families what story would you tell us. Well yeah the figures are astronomical right you said it 865000 women this year in those 1st few months of the pandemic some 11000000 women last year jobs from february to may its difficult to understand just what a huge number this is and how this is affecting folks so theres one story that really stands out to me theres a woman i spoke to earlier this year here in austin texas and shes a consultant she has 2 sons her husband is a doctor and early on in the pandemic in march she was offered her dream job i mean talk about timing right so she was already dealing with the challenges of having her kids at home and realizing very quickly that this was not a sustainable situation for her or her family so she had to turn that job down actually and as the months wore on in the beginning of the year she realized even the job that i have right now had a part time consulting position even the job i have right now is not sustainable and you know i was the a the assignments you know piled on for her sons her husband was working with covert patients he was on the front lines his job was certainly essential and she started to realize if were going to have to make a choice its going to have to be me and unfortunately my job is central to who i am its not separate from from who i am as a person it gives me autonomy independence and she was facing for the 1st time in her life the reality of having to let it go and wondering how long are the decisions that i make right now because of coping 19 going to follow me into my professional future because i would love you to help us understand which is some of the hardest hit businesses jobs areas of the workforce where women are losing their jobs to have to give up their jobs im going to start by paying you a little clip from plane at pollini is from the National Domestic Workers Alliance this is what she told us a little bit earlier and take a look. Domestic workers are house cleaners nannies and caregivers by definition the work is done from other peoples homes so they dont have the option to work from home this means a pandemic has had a unique impact on this workforce weve just released a report on the impact of covert under mastic workers over the past 6 months which shows that at its worst 7 out of 10 Domestic Workers had no jobs at all more than half of respondents for 6 consecutive months told us they were able to pay their rent almost all Domestic Workers in the u. S. Are women and 90 percent of those we surveyed are also the mothers of intl during the pandemic has been devastating for these women who were already working precarious jobs and yet they are the essential workers that we depend on. You just pick up from where paulina left off about where is the hardest 8 jobs as far as we mimic unsaid. So thank you so much im so glad to be here in a part of this conversation so the 1st thing i want to say is that the code 19 and the job losses have had a disproportionate impact on lower wage workers and women of color and match because they are in sectors such as Leisure Hospitality restaurants they work in restaurants education and health the Health Care Field so those are the sectors that have been hardest hit but its really important for us to narrow that its many of the women who have lost their jobs or were women who were earning less than 40000. 00 a year and many of those for single mom so. And they have to leave their work in order their how their homes in order to get paid and also have caretaking responsibility so i want to be when we are talking about those operate really stretch ourselves to think about the different ways that this is impacting women in different sectors especially women who are not 2 parent households and. You know facing different circumstances because in terms of whos being most most impacted it is those workers the Domestic Workers and the workers who are earning or in the lower wage jobs don we have not yet go ahead and i was going to say you know women of color also have less of a foundation when it when something so drastic as this recession happened right so we know that black women Hispanic Women latinos are less likely are making less on the white male dollar that and then white women we know that they have less than Household Savings less in income in their household they are far more likely to be the primary breadwinner so these are people who are making impossible decisions i mean were talking about women who are sent home and dealing with children and that is on its own an enormous challenge but think about also this other group of women who are making impossible decisions do i leave my kids at. Home and keep my job my at risk of losing my job if i try to figure out something with childcare and miss work i mean these are these are decisions that are really impossible and so what were seeing is people some people are leaving the labor force and some people are really trying to patch it together in any way that they can but when a safety net falls through like it did this year particularly with child care its very difficult to find those solutions. I am just looking at a graph on my laptop and this is put together by. A mccain z. And it is comparing and contrasting how many are doing how women are doing black and white black women in white women and in every category women are doing the worst so he is the legend here gray is excluded blue light blue pressured to work more. Is exhausted so compared to fathers and mothers feeling excluded love as head of father is talking about being pressured to work more senior level men and senior level women here senior level when is seen a leveling much Higher Feeling more pressure to be to work more and then being burned out men doubting here mound about 30 percent of women much higher just over 40 percent it seems to me that what kofi has done and weve so many other issues as well is what we already knew about our society about the come about our communities is now underneath a magnifying glass and the 4 guys are beginning to show even. You for diane. Well one thing i was going to mention is that women do hold those disproportionate jobs that were affected in the sectors that were most of adversely impacted by the pandemic they also are more likely to work part time jobs and to not have a salaried full time job and what that means is that they did dont have jobs where they would normally be provided the benefits that you get with a full time salaried job so these are workers that when they need to take time off they cant get paid for it when they need health care they dont have Health Insurance coverage by their employer so these are always the most precarious jobs to begin with and the pandemic the fact that. Weve had. Women have had to stay at home more with the kids has just made it more and more precarious in terms of economic well being so its time for the fact that you know women rely on other women and especially like schools to be open and. You know childcare babysitters to help them out to help them maintain a work life and now that schools are not open government really has left a hole like government was in directly supporting working women by supporting schools and helping schools open safely and watch the kids during the day so i think its just showing that government. Needs to step in a lot more than they have been because ive got a question for you from each of im going to have lied all right most is the huge gap only because of koval. Why do you mean big gap women may be in the workforce a. Part was that that when we started our conversation with talking about how many more women are leaving the force that the workforce in the last few months compared to men it is it is actually directly a result. More directly a result closers of schools and daycares across the country and there is no strategy at this stage rather or a local level to get schools open so. Ill so its single mother. 2 year old twins and when the schools closed in march i thought i could just hold on and just make it make it through the summer and then. Came and i was there kids are still out of school and its been just an Impossible Task to manage a 40 to 50 hour week job and also be now home schooling 2 year old twins and i cannot imagine that burden for a lot of other mothers and i feel very fortunate because i can work from home but like i said most women who have lost their jobs or struggling to make ends meet are not moms who can stay at home to work to get paid they have to leave the house and so theyre making impossible decisions and for many women i want to become when they have to choose between taking care of their kids and working they choose to take care of their kids how did how did you manage that transition in the fall nicole im just wondering because a lot of the mothers that i spoke to at the beginning of the year were saying we cant do this for a few months we have no idea whats going to happen in the fall how much longer were going to have to to take on that burden so im just curious how how youve been managing it since School Started again because obviously those numbers in september thats when School Started again thats when a lot of kids went back to School Virtually and at home its not i dont think its a coincidence that we saw that huge drop off happen in september. Absolutely i think youre absolutely right and for me i have to say for going to 3 weeks my kids were great by the way theyve been you know. I blame the parents. And the funny thing is. We are the last thing i think when you all think. That those jokes in full well you have mom with a while so against the although in another the baby on her lap top on a sing me saying. And then trying to do homework at the same time i thought that is not sustainable and we spoke to a number of women who have families and trying to keep their jobs at the same time and this is what they shared with us have a lot. I was a full time and her up until april when i was laid off due to the 19. In the 6 months since then ive realized that the possibility of me reentering full time work force is pretty difficult right now because my husband works outside the home and we have a young child who is in school now and were one of the lucky families hes been able to hire a babysitter for 2 and a half days a week to cover house and assistance with virtual schooling for both children about leaves other 2 and a half days a week where thats something that i have to cover one of my sons has onto his im so its a little bit more difficult for him to sit at the computer for long periods of time and focus and with my business about 90 percent of my client is for events and so right now with a very important decision to decide between my childrens education or going to pick up over another career and were just to provide for my family. So what grade would week of k. Of child care in america right now what would it be a same failing grade because that is that is the issue here isnt it if if mothers picking up the slack we got in childcare how is childcare going to help parents what quite with making dying. I mean i see a day. Yeah do you think thats generous maybe the full time now yeah i mean given that. Yeah all right so how algy way not like the 4 of us if it has solved this but what where were the issues with child care in america. When there are no. 70 because he stopped the primary issue is that we we reported a pandemic we didnt have a strong character structure and many were working mothers were struggling to figure it out on their own and there was no support from either the federal government or employers and so the pandemic hit and it just exposed broken thats of the system and the need for a National Care infrastructure and employers like i said one of the 1st story that youd like it was pretty heartbreaking because i do feel in this moment in the absence of federal action we employers do have a role to play in making sure that women can not only reenter the workforce but are able to sustain employment and stories like are just heartbreaking where women are really doing all they can to keep all the balls in the air and theres a lack of support and understanding to put out a child care in america. And examples what. Companies the there are great schemes where parents like thank goodness this is helpful to me. You know it its hard to think of any because in reality what weve seen is an entire system collapse in a matter of a few months and you know like nicole said child care has been a problem for a really long time what did we have this year that was different because low income families have been dealing with this for a very long time the difference this year was everyone was at home everyone was dealing with it across the socioeconomic spectrum and so now you have a moment where child care is elevated into the National Consciousness because every family has to deal with it in some way when you have one in 5 child care providers have lost their jobs this year you have thousands of centers that have closed and this is an industry that is already really struggling its razor thin margins right the workers make around minimum wage if not less if not a little bit more and that you have regulations insurance overhead costs it makes it very difficult to run this business and so when Something Like this happens it completely collapses and so issues of how are we going to regulate this the industry about insurance about access in child care deserts of the country that barely have any supply these are really really big problems that really theres no time like right now to address them. J w says i cant help but wonder if the pandemic schools and day can an incredibly weak economy amaze any families rethink having children that is a pretty depressing thought right that diane. I know that youve got growing up kates if you had younger kids would you be looking quite so together right now about. The way that i live and i greet as well. And ive often said that if just happened 20 years ago to me when my kids were little i would have had to end my career at that point i mean and i think that in terms of. You know Silver Linings i can find find one here right now is i think that. Economists are starting to pay more attention to the essential function of the caregiving part of our economy which you know has never been properly valued by economists in terms of contributing to g. D. P. You know a lot of caregiving work is either unpaid or vastly underpaid and so i think the fact that caregiving is the foundation of our people which means that its the foundation of our economy i think were starting to realise that if we dont have a good character giving infrastructure the whole economy above it is going to crumble and so i think that is good news in terms of opening economists i used to the reliance of our entire market based economy on women and caregiving i want to i think thats a great point because i spoke to an economist this year who just said this is an issue of diversity and representation we would not be in the situation that we are in right now if there were more women economists if there were more women of color in that industry in that field if there were more women in positions of power right childcare would not be on the backburner. If that had happened then so here we are now sort of reaping the unfortunate result of that i also spoke to economists quite recently principal column is the Us Census Bureau at a little bit earlier and this is what she shared with the stream its almost like these figures are a warning now what are we getting have a listen to misty it is generally just too much to bear for mothers to maintain increased informal labor work in the household and still work outside of the home the longer this goes on the more difficult it will be for these mothers to really get back in a labor force which have the potential to exacerbate. Generating quality in the workforce in the long run weve been given a very clear sign about what may happen with women in the workforce. So in the united states. Yes i want to share this thought with you this is from sarah sarah is on the cheap hi sarah thanks for being part of our conversation she says this pandemic only highlights gaps in gender inequality i myself feel like im at a disadvantage as a young woman than men at my workplace more and im very wired that i will be laid off nichol advice for sarah what would it be. There are so some of really the issues that you raise are really important ones issues around pay equity and also economic preparer to your job and security and thats an issue that many women in the workforce myself included are struggling with. You know our whole careers but even more so in this moment so the only. I dont know if advice is the right word but i think having the conversations and speaking out and also engaging on the front lines with many of us here im who are doing those record on pay equity and creating more equitable workplaces for women. My my big thought right now in this moment is that it really provides us an opportunity to think about gender equitable recovery an economy that works for women women are 50 percent of the workforce and we have not been treated no assets and employers and workplaces have not accommodated women in their needs in the workplace and i think its about time that we start having those conversations about what women really need to be successful and advance in their careers and we just havent had that site and diane. Last thought on this topic do you feel that now that we know the numbers. That the federal government will help women law. I think that the federal government is going to focus a little bit more on the care infrastructure as nicole referred to and the importance of investing adequately in that people infrastructure if we really want to see our economy not just recover but thrive in the future is theres going to have to be some change about and some recognition of the value of the caregiving part of our economy. Diana into ballet and they call we really thank you so much for being part of this conversation we appreciate you and co we back on live at 20 that aint g. M. T. All day away wednesday yes fantastic and youll be out to talk to a little bit more why im plugging future stream events look out for this 1 october the 30th at 2100. 00 g. M. T. G. M. T. We will have a one hour episode and we will look at some of the big issues facing the u. S. Ahead of the president ial election you are invited you are pundits i look forward to seeing you then take everybody. Business away to work you know brush. Business away to work to find the bright spot. Aljazeera world goes inside the military wing of hamas gaining access to key players and previously unseen footage and lest we create a different political reality must go through it really to. Look with new shifting alliances we are asking the palestinians to meet the challenge of peaceful coexistence what next for gaza and the pianist in gaza and the middle east on aljazeera context these are the things in storytelling around the biggest issues weve done but had to do you should do it again. Hello im Barbara Starr in london these are the top stories on aljazeera france will return to lock down as the race of corona virus infections there soars president manuel mccrone said his country was being overwhelmed by new infections as it recorded a record one day rise of more than 36000 cases ours in restaurants will be forced to close down and movement will be limited the reason paris for us is the french president announcing the frogs is going back into the low down 4 and least a month they could be longer depending on the Health Situation