Why Should Companies Care about the Supreme Court Decision on Roe?
Why Should Companies Care about the Supreme Court Decision on Roe?
By Jessica N. Grounds & Kristin Haffert
Founders, Mine The Gap
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to end the constitutional right to an abortion fundamentally matters to the health and ability of our workplaces to succeed. Here’s why. Central to the ability to access abortion, is a woman’s ability to decide about how, when, and with whom she decides to start or expand a family. The decision to have a child is not small – it is shockingly huge. Anyone with children will tell you, it is life altering and impacts all aspects of life.
In the workplace, we do not live in silos where our work lives are somehow separate from our lives at home. The COVID-19 pandemic blurred these lines even more, it revealed that our lives inside and outside of work are inextricably linked, this accelerated as more of us worked from home. Women are disproportionately impacted by the responsibility to carry, raise, and care for children and care for aging and sick family members. Research shows that 2.3 million women left the workforce in 2020. In the first 12 months of the pandemic, women comprised more than half of those departing the labor force.[1] We have witnessed a massive exodus that has interrupted the career trajectory of millions of women who now have gaps in their progress.
As much as we are moving to share responsibilities with our spouses and partners, family care continues to fall to women much more often, and many families are run by single parents, often women. This impacts women’s ability to move into leadership. Look around – there is not a single sector that has more women in top leadership compared with men. In our original research about solving barriers to workplace culture for women, we saw that flexibility and the ability to move up ranked among women’s top reasons for leaving companies prior to the pandemic. And we are still – just now – adopting policies in the workplace, like paid leave and hybrid work teams, and considering mechanisms to improve pay equity.
“We work with organizations across sectors, in companies that are big and small. The companies that are the most successful make the personal lives of workers a central consideration for their workers potential to move up a leadership track. This is enhanced when they focus on women whose family dynamics become more complicating, a labyrinth to navigate. For men the support they tend to receive at home gives them the ability to rise to the top. The realities are not the same and they have far-reaching consequences.”
This court decision will continue to squeeze the progress we are making to advance women into leadership roles – particularly women of color who are disproportionately impacted by access to safe and affordable reproductive health care. This decision isn’t just about abortion – it is about striving for equity and the values of liberty. It is about building a culture in our society, and in our workplaces, that allows for everyone to be supported to make major life decisions that are best for them. The Supreme Court’s decision puts an even greater responsibility on employers to develop the values, policies, programs, that address this imbalance, these barriers for women. The companies who address this well, will effectively tap the talent and potential of our workforce.
[1] What We Lose When We Lose Women in the Workforce. McKinsey 2021.