DE Talk | Combatting the “She-cession”: Creating Equitable Opportunity for Women

Season 3 • Episode 4

The pandemic changed the U.S. workforce virtually overnight. More than a year later, its impact lingers on, continuing to drive more women out of the workforce. Decades worth of slow progress made by women to catch up to men evaporated in just one year – and the question remains, how many women will return to work? And how does this threaten our economic recovery? Tune in as gender economist Katica Roy, CEO and Founder of Pipeline, shares the setbacks women’s labor force participation has experienced and how equitable skilling and opportunity in the workforce can aid in providing a way for the 2.6 million women to return to the workforce.

Subscribe

Apple • Spotify • Google • Stitcher • iHeartRadio • Stitcher • TuneIn • Overcast • Pocket Casts • Castro • Castbox • Podchaser • RSS Feed

…or your preferred Podcast provider

About DE Talk

For DirectEmployers, it’s all about valuable connections and meaningful conversations. This monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

Hosted by Candee Chambers, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association.

Episode Guest

Episode Transcript

Candee Chambers:
Welcome to the DE Talk podcast. Tune in for dialogue between HR experts to amp up your HR strategies. Don’t worry, we’ll mix in a few laughs, as we know you need it.

Not only did the pandemic shift the way we work, but it also shifted the narrative for many women as their personal and familial obligations drove them out of the workforce. And this phenomenon has become widely known as the she-cession. While grappling with gender equity, pay disparities, gender biases, and more many women struggle with when and how to return to the work force. To talk about the impact the she-cession has had on business growth and innovation, as well as the future ramifications on female representation within the workforce, I am happy to have Katica Roy, CEO and founder of Pipeline, a Denver-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to address gender equity gaps within or organizations. Katica is a gender economist, former Fortune 500 global executive, programmer and data scientist with more than two decades of experience in technology, healthcare and financial services. She even fought for pay equity twice, and won with the help of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Welcome, Katica. We are so happy to have you join the DE Talk podcast today.

Katica Roy:
Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Candee Chambers:
Oh, good, good. We’re happy to have you join us. When I first heard the term gender economist I have to tell you, I really, I wasn’t real sure what it was. So I had to learn little bit more about your career and your company. So why don’t you share with our listeners just a little bit about your background?

Katica Roy:
Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I can tell you what a gender economist is-

Candee Chambers:
That would be great.

Katica Roy:
… for anybody who’s wondering as well.

Candee Chambers:
That would be wonderful.

Katica Roy:
It means that I view the economy through the lens of gender. And then actually I look at things through an intersectional gender equity lens, which is gender plus race, ethnicity, and age.

Candee Chambers:
Okay.

Katica Roy:
And so, it gives a new perspective. Just to of kind of spell that out for folks. Typically we believe that policies or solutions are gender neutral, but they’re not, they’re often gender ignorant. And of course, I know we’re going to dive into this.

Candee Chambers:
That’s a [crosstalk 00:02:41], I like it.

Katica Roy:
And we saw that happen last here. And I know we’ll dive into the details, but it’s really important to understand the economy through the lens of gender so that we can ensure when we put policies into place or practices, decisions, et cetera, that they actually aren’t intentionally disadvantaging one gender or the other, or non-binary folks. So, that’s a little bit about what a gender economist is. Yeah, so it provides just a really different lens. The other piece of a … And this is just more economics in general, but also looking at gender equity through the opportunity, the economic opportunity or the economic upside, rather than only just the right thing to do.

Candee Chambers:
Interesting. Yeah, there’s a lot, I mean, gosh, there’s so much about this in the news every single day, and there’s so much I think that people don’t understand. So I think this is going to be very interesting for our listeners. What led you down this career path?

Katica Roy:
That’s a good question. I mean, I really, I think there’s the career path and that’s ultimately what led me to Pipeline. So how I sort of ended up here was a series of a few different things. My undergraduate degree is in political science.

Candee Chambers:
Okay.

Katica Roy:
So I have that lens and that background, I have two master’s degrees, an MBA as well as a master’s degree in computers science and cognitive science, so sort of all these different pieces together. But ultimately what led me to Pipeline was three things, which I’ll tell you quickly. One is my family history. The second is my place in my family. And then the last is my experience in the labor force. The first is, I’m the daughter of an immigrant and a refugee. And so my mom was actually born on the Isle of Guernsey, which is in closer proximity to France then to mainland England. And she was born in 1939. And I will tell these stories quickly, but I think they’re important in terms of people just understanding a little bit-

Candee Chambers:
I’m interested.

Katica Roy:
… about me. Yeah, about me and sort of our life experiences and our family history certainly shaped who we are in the decisions that we make. But my mom was born in 1939, the year that World War II began. And in 1940 when France fell to the German forces, Prime Minister Churchill doubted his ability to defend the channel aisles, and so he evacuated them. And my mom was actually on the last ship off and they separated children. They sent 5,000 children to the mainland, and my mom was 18 months old, the youngest of five children, separated from her mom and her four siblings. Placed into an orphanage and adopted a year later. And she came to the United States when she was 21 for equality and opportunity. So that’s my mom.

My father escaped from Hungary. He was a refugee. He escaped from Hungary after the fall of the 1956 Revolution. And he escaped with my three elder sisters who were three, seven and eight at the time. And with the help of Hungarian freedom fighters, they actually walked across a minefield and across the border and arrived to a refugee camp in Austria. And less than two months into their stay in the refugee camp, President Eisenhower sent Air Force One to bring 21 Hungarian refugees to the U.S. on Christmas day, 1956. And they were on the plane.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
And so, for me, I have the opportunity to start Pipeline, to sit down with you today and talk about where we are in terms of gender equity, particularly in the economic fallout from COVID-19, because someone in a position of power said, “Not on my watch.” That person happened to be President Eisenhower, but he said, “Not on my watch. This will not happen, these people matter.” And so for me, when I had the opportunity to use all the education and the experience that I had had, that I took it. Because it was my opportunity to say, “Not under watch,” and to ensure that men and women coming up behind me had more opportunities than what I had.

Candee Chambers:
Wow. Wow. I’m really just kind of in awe of your background and the experiences that your folks and your siblings had to deal with. My goodness. And actually they were the lucky ones, I guess. I mean, they were able to … And that’s something to think about too. So that’s very, very interesting. We are an organization as well that obviously promotes equity and inclusion. And so obviously I very much support what you do with Pipeline to make gender equity achievable within organizations. And that’s something that our members talk about all the time. Share with us a little bit about what Pipeline does and what the services are that you offer?

Katica Roy:
Yep. And for the linear listeners, I’m going to just tell you the two other pieces and then I’ll tell you what Pipeline does. Because I didn’t, so one is then-

Candee Chambers:
I guess we didn’t hear.

Katica Roy:
It’s okay.

Candee Chambers:
I was just so curious and excited to hear about the background. So go ahead.

Katica Roy:
Yeah, no, it’s okay. The one piece is my place in my family. So I’m the youngest of six kids, obviously three were born in Hungary, three were born here. And I watched, and it’s five girls, one boy. So I watched my sisters and their families be impacted by the lack of opportunity for women, and really the legacy and the work that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked toward to ensure, for instance, women could get a business loan without a male co-signer. Women could get an apartment without a co-signer. Women could get a credit card without a co-signer. I watched all of those things before they were fixed, actually impact my sisterhood. And I could clearly see, and their families and could see that. And then the last piece is I’m a breadwinner mom who fought to be paid equitably twice in one. And so I understood the impact that this can have and thought, “I can do something about that.” So anyway, I just wanted to finish that so that for the linear listers are like, [inaudible 00:09:37].

Candee Chambers:
No, and I would have thought later, “Oh, darn it. Why didn’t I?” So no, I’m glad you got that out. And that actually adds a little more explanation as well. That helps me understand a little bit more about you and about Pipeline. So talk about Pipeline, and the services that you offer through pipeline?

Katica Roy:
You bet. And so people often think about gender equity as the right thing to do, and it is, but it’s actually a massive economic opportunity. And that’s where Pipeline started. So we started with a research study across 4,000 companies in 29 countries. And what we found was that for every 10% increase in intersectional gender equity, so gender plus race ethnicity, there’s a one to 2% increase in revenue. So that’s the model-

Candee Chambers:
Interesting.

Katica Roy:
… that Pipeline is based off, which is not equity is the right thing to do. So it is, and we believe that, but actually as a massive economic opportunity. What we actually do is we’re augmented decision making. So much like you would use Google maps or Waze to get from point A to point B, we do the very same thing, but for companies, people decisions. So typically companies, there’s five, essentially five big buckets of decisions that they make across their talent, which is internal hiring, pay, performance, potential, and promotion.

What we do through technology is API into HR systems, intercept those decisions before they’re made, run them through our algorithms and then make recommendations. So that before for instance a pay decision is made, we’re actually putting that decision through our algorithms and ensuring that there’s an equitable range, right? That those folks are within an equitable range. Or for performance reviews we actually use natural language processing to read through perform reviews, call out any bias phrases and then calibrate the ratings. What’s really interesting about, there’s many things that are interesting, but one of the things that we’ve found is that, and there’s been a lot of talk about the gender pay gap. But one of the things that we have found is they can’t close the gender pay gap by turning the pay. And the reason is that pay is the symptom, it’s not the disease. So in other words, pay is the quantitative value that companies place on their talent. But the actual value happens before that in performance and potential.

Candee Chambers:
I have to tell you. I am so happy, honest to God. So happy to hear you say that, because we deal with a lot of people that want you to do pay equity studies, and the department of labor wants equal pay and all of that, and actually the law says that pay, you have to look first at pay decisions, which is basically what you just said. It’s the decisions that are made that affect the pay. It’s not the pay as it is today. It’s like, what decision did you make that got that pay to where it is? And you have to look at the pay decision. So I’m really excited. Please continue.

Katica Roy:
Yeah. Well, and it’s very interesting if you begin to model. So I guess one example, one of the things we found through our implementation is that it’s through just looking at performance, about a third of all performance reviews contains bias. And then that leads to 4% of the time women receiving lower performance ratings and people say, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like that much.” If you actually begin to model that out, you actually see that that impact, for instance, at women have a 21% promotion gap compared to men. That’s another thing that we found. One of the things through an intersectional lens, we’ve actually found that that gap actually doubles when you look at two or more intersections. So specifically for black women, their promotion gap through our implementations what we’ve found it’s actually 42%. That is, men are promoted at a rate of 42% greater than black women.

So that 4% doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you actually begin to model that out in terms of the impact that it has on potential, so how we develop future leaders, the projects we give them access to, the visibility we give them, the development we give them. That it impacts that number. It impacts the promotion gap. And then you begin to see for instance why women are 57% of all college graduates, but then they’re only 47% of the labor base and 7% of Fortune 500 CEOs. It’s all of those little pieces that actually lead to these much bigger gaps.

Candee Chambers:
Wow. I’m just kind of sitting here with my mouth hanging open. I mean, there’s a lot of really good information in there. So I have to ask, I’m sure you work with both large and small companies. What is the most shocking thing that you’ve seen or that you see on a regular basis?

Katica Roy:
That’s a great question. One of them certainly is that people think they can close the pay gap by only focusing on pay. I would say the other thing is … While pay equity studies are well intended, the issue is that they’re like a balance sheet as of a point in time. So you could do a pay equity study, close your pay gap, and then the very next day you could actually reopen it with a decision, right? So those are, I think that’s certainly something else that we’ve seen. The other piece, which is sort of shocking, but in a good way, is that we’ve found that there’s three key decisions that companies make across their people each year, which is performance, potential and pay. And the average Fortune 500 company has 60,000 employees.

So for the average Fortune 500 company, that’s 180,000 opportunities to move toward equity each and every year. And for our customers that are actually operationalizing Pipeline, what we found is that on average they actually improve equity by 67%-

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
… in the first three months on the platform. So when you look at what’s happening in the labor market, and we can talk about the left job support and how many woman have left, and the lack of labor supply, cetera, and you look at that in the last year we’ve actually added 11 years. We’re now 258 years away from gender equity in the workforce, in the labor force. That is all completely solvable with technology at scale. We have the opportunity to essentially hard wire equity into our companies by using artificial intelligence and cloud computing like Pipeline offers. We are at a moment in history that we have not been at before. And that moment is twofold. One is the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We catapulted forward five years in digital acceleration last year during the pandemic. And then you couple that with the fact that we’ve actually seen the impact that the economic fallout from COVID-19 had on women in particular. You put those two together, we now have a solution to solve for that. We actually can catapult our way forward.

Candee Chambers:
Well, I’ll tell you what, the pandemic I think has brought out a lot of interesting issues, not necessarily good issues. I think we’ve seen so many women be affected because they tend to be the one that takes care of the kids most often, if it’s going to be the man or the woman, and to your point on the gender equity, a lot of times they are paid less. And so if one person is going to leave the workforce, it will most likely be the woman in those familial situations. So, and I’m sure you’ve done lots of studies as a result of the pandemic. Have you figured out, or have you heard, or do you know how many, approximately how many women have actually left the workforce since the pandemic hit?

Katica Roy:
I do.

Candee Chambers:
Oh, good. Somehow I knew you would.

Katica Roy:
Yeah. And we can talk about some of the reasons why, childcare and caregiving is one, but it’s not the only. And we can talk about also women that don’t have the option to leave. So anyway, we can talk about that.

Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah, no, you’re exactly right.

Katica Roy:
But 2.67 million women have left the labor force-

Candee Chambers:
Dear God.

Katica Roy:
… since February 2020. And 309,000 were in September, were last month. What’s interesting about that, there’s two things that are interesting, just to kind of put that in perspective for people. There’s a lot of talk about lack of labor supply or the mismatch between folks that are looking for work and this skills needed to fill the jobs, that are open. We currently have 10.4 million jobs open in the United States, and we have 7.67 million people looking for jobs. So we have a 2.73 million person gap, basically between jobs that are open and people looking for jobs. That is almost the same. Oh, and I can go through it again. Do you want me to go through it again?

Candee Chambers:
No, no. I was just going to say, that’s a lot of the business that we actually are in, and we’re just kind of dumbfounded because there are so many jobs available, but what we’re seeing is, what are they calling it? The Great Resignation and that people are just leaving in droves.

Katica Roy:
And some of the Great Resignation is people leaving their existing work, but not dropping out of the labor force. That’s actually, that is like moving from-

Candee Chambers:
Point A to point B.

Katica Roy:
Exactly. And that’s the biggest that it has ever been. That number is the biggest it’s ever been. But what’s interesting. If you look at that gap, that 10.4 million jobs open, 7.67 million people looking for jobs, and that’s essentially a 2.73 million person gap, if you will, that’s almost the same as the number of women that have left the labor force since the beginning of the pandemic, which is 2.67 million, about 600,000 difference.

Candee Chambers:
Interesting.

Katica Roy:
So that’s one. The second is that in the labor force participation rate, what we found, what happened during the pandemic is that we actually fell back 33 years to 1988 in terms of women’s labor force participation. And that’s not only an issue of fairness or a concern, it’s actually an economic issue. Because since 1970, from 1970 to 2016 women actually added $2 trillion to the U.S. economy through their increased labor force participation, we have lost almost all that progress. It’s about $1.4 trillion in progress, just in labor force participation of women. That should concern us because our economy cannot grow if we don’t have people to work.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah. I mean, I was literally just having a very similar conversation about this, I think yesterday or the day before. I mean, it’s so scary right now. It really is. I mean, men and women both have been impacted by job losses.

Katica Roy:
Oh, for sure.

Candee Chambers:
And it’s just, you sit here and then to hear that we’ve gone back basically 30 years in time, what effect is that going to have on forward progress? And that’s very unnerving I think is the best way to put it.

Katica Roy:
It, yeah, it should be.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah, it really is. You were just describing the issues and the loss that women, the job losses that women have felt and experienced through the pandemic. Where did the she-cession term, I mean, would you say that that’s appropriate for what the entire United States is experiencing, or where did you coin that phrase or, or did you?

Katica Roy:
I did not coin that phrase, I did not. But I did write one of the most popular articles.

Candee Chambers:
Okay.

Katica Roy:
But it is essentially, and it is actually something I talked about in the very beginning of the pandemic. I published one of the earliest articles talking about what needed to happen from a policy perspective as the trillions of dollars of economic stimulus was being pumped into the economy last year, and that we needed to ensure that we offset the impact on women and their families. Not a lot of that was done, and we’re seeing the results of that.

Candee Chambers:
Tell me how that works?

Katica Roy:
Yeah. I mean, in the Great Recession, so in 2008, that was actually called a man-cession because it disproportionately impacted men. This is actually she-cession because it disproportionately impacted women. And there were a number of different things. One is that women are overrepresented or represent the majority of the labor force in the industries that were most impacted by the pandemic. So things like restaurant and retail, et cetera. They also are the caregivers and their unpaid work increased by 153%-

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
… during the pandemic. The other piece of that is that women also represent a lot of folks that would have been impacted by the pandemic. So for instance, they’re the majority of all, so they’re 53% of all minimum wage workers, 70% of all below was paid workers in the United States. In the United States they make up the majority of all, those who do not have health insurance, et cetera. And so when you just looked at what was happening in the very beginning of the pandemic, that was going to disproportionately impact women. The issue is we really haven’t acted fast enough in the United States, both in the economic stimulus that we pushed out. So this is what’s often called gender mainstreaming. This is more from a public policy perspective, but we haven’t acted fast enough to actually apply the gender lens back to the who, what is a gender economist, to the stimulus and the policies that we are putting forward to ensure that women and their families don’t bear the brunt of the impact of COVID-19.

And anytime you have an economic recession, anytime you have an economic pullback, there’s really two pieces to that. The first is all the economic stimulus that is pumped into the economy, obviously we saw that last year. The second is, at some point we have to pay for that.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly.

Katica Roy:
And that comes through not only taxation, but also can come through in cuts in programs. Not now, but at some point in the future. And the issue, when you look at history, if we don’t apply the gender lens to the decisions that we’re making, and I know we’re mostly talking about companies, but this is sort of more broadly, and it does impact companies. Not only, basically women are paying twice, right? Women and their families are paying twice. They’re paying in the initial piece of it because the stimulus wasn’t equitable. And then they tend to be the ones who are mostly relying on social welfare programs, et cetera. And so they also will be impacted once we actually have to pay for everything that we’re doing.

Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah. I mean, that’s a whole nother discussion that we all keep having around here. Dear God. I mean, let’s just print more money, you know what I mean, [inaudible 00:27:00]. Christmas we’re going to have to pay for that. And it’s going to come out of our taxes. So, speaking of which, number one, I think you need to run for office. Number two, I’m serious, but you know, the U.S. isn’t alone. I mean, the United States, Canada, Italy, Japan, those are other countries that have seen some of the worst labor force declines for females. But other countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and the Netherlands have actually seen the gender gap shrink. How, did they do it? I mean, what’s going on there?

Katica Roy:
Yeah, I’ll go through that. I’ll qualify it by saying, of course, anytime you’re looking country to country, you have to make sure you’re controlling for variables so you’re doing an apple to apple comparison, if you will. But if you sort of broadly look at that, the resilience of women’s labor force participation in the country, for instance, that you mentioned UK, Denmark, Australia and Netherland really has been programs to support female dominated industries or sectors. So, that is both benefits, so social welfare programs, and I’m not talking about Medicaid or those, I’m talking about which often what people think about in the United States, I’m about paid leave, paid childcare support. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about when we’re, what we think in the United States is if you fall below a certain income level you get things like Medicaid or, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m about infrastructure essentially when it’s often talked about in the United States as human infrastructure. So things like kid leave and childcare.

Katica Roy:
So they had that coupled with things such as employment protection and rules around protecting workers, particularly for those minimum wage workers, which tend to be part-time. Part-time, contract, temp, et cetera. And so when you put those in place, what you actually then safeguard is women’s labor force participation during the pandemic. And that was really the main, we don’t have a lot of those in the United States.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly.

Katica Roy:
Not as a benefit for everyone, it’s only if you fall below a certain income level. And then of course, you actually have to try to get the benefits yourself, which is a whole nother podcast.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly, exactly. Or a lot of companies don’t provide medical benefits for part-time employees, or if they do the cost is astronomical. So yeah, that’s a difficult-

Katica Roy:
And so, if we put some numbers, I’ll just give you some numbers of the lens in the United States of what was actually the situation, so from a female labor force perspective. In the U.S. 40% of U.S. households with children under the age of 18, women are the breadwinners. There are 16 million breadwinner moms in U.S. They support 28 million children. They also have the largest gender pay gap of any cohort of women in the United States, which is 66 cents on the dollar. So when you talk about buffer for not working, they have less of a buffer. There’s also 15 million women, and this is pre-pandemic, 15 women million women and 12 million children who live in poverty.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
And 13 million women and 4.3 million children without health insurance.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
And so that was the state of affairs, if you will, before the pandemic. And then they coupled that with the majority of all children in public schools are free and reduced lunch. That is, if they don’t go to school, they don’t eat or they don’t have enough food. Like the whole, yeah. So when you begin to look at that, when schools closed down, when we don’t have, people can’t go to work, there is not a buffer to support that happening. And so absolutely we’re going to see what happens during the pandemic.

Candee Chambers:
That’s honestly, that’s, I mean, it’s not something I had actually thought about, but that is. I mean, I know that kids weren’t getting fed, but I hadn’t thought about the overall statistics, you know what I mean? You just hear about it in your city and that’s really all you hear, you don’t hear about it across the nation. Oh shoot, there was something I was thinking about when you were speaking, of course, I’ll come back to it with [crosstalk 00:31:53].

Katica Roy:
Yeah. No problem. That’s fine. No problem.

Candee Chambers:
Well, one thing I was thinking when you were talking, because I mean, some of the numbers that you were throwing out, I mean are just astonishing. But what I’ve been learning or hearing is that the inequalities for women obviously are one thing, but for women of color it’s even worse.

Katica Roy:
Yeah.

Candee Chambers:
Right. I mean.

Katica Roy:
Yep.

Candee Chambers:
It’s, why do you think that is? Just because they don’t have that much of the opportunities in the first place? And so when they lose their jobs it’s more noticed, or what do you think is going on there?

Katica Roy:
Well, what we know, I talked about intersectional gender equity, so gender plus race ethnicity and age, but what we know from the research, and I can talk even just about the last labor, about the last jobs report. I can also talk about breadwinner moms, et cetera. But what we know is that from research that anytime you intersect two or more diverse factors, so gender plus race ethnicity, so black women, Latinas, Asian women, or women gender plus age, so women over the age of 45, that they tend to be farther behind younger white women. That anytime, and that phenomenon shows up in things like black breadwinner moms who support the majority of all black children in the United States have the largest gender pay gap of any women in the workforce. It’s 44 cents on the dollar.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
Yep.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
And then you look at just even the last jobs report that came out on October 8th.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah, we report on that every or month.

Katica Roy:
Do you?

Candee Chambers:
Yeah.

Katica Roy:
Yeah. And so, people say, “Oh well, the unemployment rate shrink.” That either it’s a good thing or not a good thing, because it’s a rate. It is calculated from a numerator and a denominator. And most of the reason that it shrank was because the denominator, that is the percentage of women participating in the labor force shrank, not because more people got jobs.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly.

Katica Roy:
And that’s a real issue. And if you look at, for instance, like adult Latinas, so Latinas over the age 20 years and older gained zero jobs last month. None.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah. Well-

Katica Roy:
And 62,000 left the labor force. So you start to look at the adult black women. So 20 years and older, 31,000 jobs gain. It’s that lens that matters.

Candee Chambers:
Oh, well, yeah. And the numbers of people that are going into the long-term unemployed ranks, and you can’t classify them any longer, because you don’t even, you can’t access them. You don’t know where they are. And that whole expectation over the last couple of months has been largely minimized from what I think the economists were hoping to see. And so, yeah. It is interesting, because I’ve heard a lot of economists on TV, on the news, on the radio talking about the disappointing jobs report. But then you’ll see various skeptics and they’ll say, “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal. Or, why does it matter?”

Obviously I sit there and I scratch my head and think, “Well, they don’t really get it, you know?” It’s one of those things that I think we’re going to have a lot of issues that we’re going to actually see if we don’t get women back to work. Can you speak to that a little bit and kind of give us an idea of what the impact of that will be, and how it will also impact the gender wage gap long term?

Katica Roy:
Sure. You know, the-

Candee Chambers:
I love how you kind of laugh.

Katica Roy:
Well, I just, it’s like math, it’s just math. I mean, it’s like it’s logic and it’s math. This is not, it’s math, it’s numbers. And so the idea that having women leave the labor force and having this almost three million gap between people looking for jobs and jobs open, that is not good. And it’s not that it’s just bad for women. It’s actually bad for everybody. So I’ll talk about it sort of generally, I’ll talk about it more specifically in the labor force. But the other thing that’s also important to understand is that if you look just at from an economic perspective at just the gender pay gap, that will actually impact things like social security and the solvency of that program.

Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah.

Katica Roy:
There are many pieces where the impact will be felt, and they’re not only, like it’s not just the narrow lens of the jobs report, if you will. And then we saw-

Candee Chambers:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of times even their amount of life insurance, if it’s based on their salary. Or various other benefits, stocks or whatever that might be based on your salary as to how human resources departments disseminate those various benefits. So, yeah, that could have-

Katica Roy:
Yeah. So, prior to the pandemic, we could have added $2 trillion to the U.S. economy, and that was, we’re really made up of three big factors. One was, lit women’s increased labor force participation. That was 789 billion, 512 billion of that was closing the gender pay gap, which was 81 cents on the dollar before the pandemic. And then the last was the mix of sectors and jobs and full-time work, that kind of thing. And that all added to $2 trillion. With what I talked about before, in terms of women’s labor force participation being set back to 1988 levels. So we’ve lost almost all the progress that we have seen since 1970, that comes at about a 1.4 trillion cost approximately. And so we now have at least $3.4 trillion that we could add to the U.S. economy, simply by focusing on equity in labor markets, both in pay, participation and which jobs women actually hold.

So that’s, the gender pay gap if we look at that, that actually was set back 23 years during the pandemic. And so the equal pay days that we recognized this year in 2021 were actually based on 2019 numbers.

Candee Chambers:
Interesting.

Katica Roy:
And what we saw was that gender pay gap went back five cents. So it went back to 76 cents on the dollar, and that was actually 23 years. So it was back to 1998 levels. And so that, and then you look at things like I talked about 40% of U.S. households with children under the age of 18, women are the breadwinners, 71% of U.S. households with children under the age of 18 moms contribute to the economic wellbeing of the household. So that’s mortgage or rent, healthcare, food, clothes, etc. That’s a real impact. And then when you start to look at what are the spillover effects, we just, there was just a huge increase in social security benefits. That program is at risk. Social security is at risk. And one of the things, and it was at risk before the pandemic-

Candee Chambers:
That’s for certain.

Katica Roy:
But it was at risk before that. But now the increase, the issue is, if you just look through a gender lens, if we close the gender pay gap in the U.S., we would actually close the social security savings gap by a third. That’s just one piece of the importance that we must focus on both getting them back into the labor force, ensuring that they’re paid equitably, and ensuring that they have equity of opportunity. That is that the jobs that they work in pay well and pay a living wage, and that they have equity of opportunity to move up. That then affords us to do other things like ensure the solvency of social security.

That’s just one example, but that, ensuring that people are not living in poverty during retirement, because women are twice as likely to live in poverty in retirement, or 56% of children living in households headed by women live and poverty. So all, and we pay for that. That’s the thing-

Candee Chambers:
Exactly.

Katica Roy:
We cannot choose if we pay for people, that’s not the way our system works. That’s not the way an economic system works. We can’t choose if we pay for people, we can choose how, which is, this is an issue for everybody to focus on, because it actually positively or negatively, depending on what we choose, impacts everybody.

Candee Chambers:
Well, exactly. That was well spoken. Well played, as my daughter would say. So what do you think are the biggest barriers or roadblocks that women will face as they try to return to work? And what is you think the answer to encouraging or for encouraging women to go back to work?

Katica Roy:
Well, I think the first piece we should say is that most women work. That’ll be the first thing. I think-

Candee Chambers:
I figure I have several jobs. I know exactly what you mean by that.

Katica Roy:
That is if you just, so all women work, not all women get paid, right? They’re stay-at-home moms, don’t get paid, but they certainly work very hard. But the majority of all women are participating in the labor force. The two pieces that we need to focus on in order to bring more women back into labor force. So at the very least those 2.67 million women that have left, but actually even more, that’s just the baseline, it should not be the goal-

Candee Chambers:
Exactly.

Katica Roy:
… is we need to focus on two things. One is equitable skilling, and the second is equity of opportunity in the workforce, in companies. So what we, and I’ll talk a little bit about both of those. One of the things that we saw that happened during the pandemic was that digital acceleration actually catapulted forward by five years. So when we talk about people going back to work, some of the jobs that that folks had before the pandemic don’t exist anymore.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly, I know. I’ve been reading about that as well. That’s a story.

Katica Roy:
And so we need to focus on equitable skilling, and that really has two component parts. One is, is ensuring that when we’re skilling people, whether that’s upskilling, reskilling, whatever that looks like, that we’re actually focusing and ensuring that we’re doing that equitably. So if you look at just occupations that are male or female dominated and where the job growth is, whether that’s in manufacturing jobs or in fourth industrial revolution jobs, things like artificial data scientists, et cetera, we should ensure that our skilling efforts are actually being used to skill equitably and begin to have women equitably represented in those jobs. I’ll give you one example. The only two of the eight jobs of tomorrow as rated by the World Economic Forum have actually reached gender parity. And if you look at artificial intelligence professions, there’s actually a 28 point global gender gap in those professions.

Candee Chambers:
Wow.

Katica Roy:
That is women hold only 22% of those jobs. And the issue with that is not only an issue of fairness, but we have already seen bias in AI come up. So for instance, Amazon’s bias hiring app, the Apple Card underwritten by Goldman Sachs. Both of those have bias against women. So we need that so that we’re ensuring that we’re actually not hardwiring our biases into artificial intelligence. But that’s-

Candee Chambers:
I wholeheartedly agree. Commissioner Sonderling from the EEOC spoke at a conference I was at this summer, and he just did a listing session for our members. And he’s actually doing a lot of work with artificial intelligence. And he did make a very interesting comment in August. And he said that, “Artificial intelligence done right is very useful and very helpful in the workplace.” But when it discriminates with bad AI and biased AI, it will discriminate on a level that no HR professional could ever do.

Katica Roy:
That’s right.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah. It’s just-

Katica Roy:
At scale, basically. It’s biased at scale.

Candee Chambers:
Exactly, exactly, so wow.

Katica Roy:
So we need to ensure that piece, right? That we’re actually scaling people equitably. And then the second piece is that they have equity of opportunity to apply those skills. And that actually ties to the second piece that I talked about, which is we need to ensure equity in workplaces. So for instance, 50% of women will leave STEM careers in the first 10 years because of a hostile work environment. We need to ensure that when, for instance we are closing that gap in AI professions, there’s also manufacturing jobs. I mean, there’s a lot of those jobs when we look at the growth of jobs and where women should be represented. We need to ensure that we’re actually putting them in environments where they have equity of opportunity to both apply those skills and be successful.

And that obviously is one of the things that Pipeline does, which is to ensure equity at scale, and not just equity of pay, but equity of opportunity and equity of development. And so that we’re not, it’s not just about going back to work. It’s about going back to work in a job that you can be successful in, that you’re valued equitably, that you can provide for your family, et cetera. And that is the second piece that’s really important in terms of increasing women’s labor force participation.

Candee Chambers:
Wow. Well, you know, Katica, I feel like you and I could probably talk for two or three more hours, but I have to tell you, I had done some studying up about you and Pipeline and that sort of thing, but wow, you provided so much valuable information. And I’m very serious, you should consider running for Senate.

Katica Roy:
Thank you.

Candee Chambers:
Next time I talk with you, hopefully you’ll be Senator Roy.

Katica Roy:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Candee Chambers:
I’m not kidding. I think we would do well to see you in some of those discussions in Congress. Trust me. I’m-

Katica Roy:
Well, I appreciate that.

Candee Chambers:
Yeah, no, this has been a lot of fun. But before we end, I honestly want to do what we do. On every podcast I give you five rapid fire questions, and I want you to say the very first thing that comes to mind. Are you ready?

Katica Roy:
Okay.

Candee Chambers:
All right.

Katica Roy:
I think so.

Candee Chambers:
When are you most productive?

Katica Roy:
When am I most productive?

Candee Chambers:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Katica Roy:
In the morning.

Candee Chambers:
Okay. So am I. What are you currently reading?

Katica Roy:
Atomic Habits.

Candee Chambers:
That doesn’t surprise me. What was your first job?

Katica Roy:
Well, I worked in a health food store and I did inventory. And then I wore one of those signs that directed people into the health food store.

Candee Chambers:
I love it. I would never have guessed that. I love it. Did you dance around too?

Katica Roy:
Well, yeah, I was eight. So I mean, it was probably like, it was like child labor laws. But anyway, what’s interesting is I really just wanted a job and my mom’s friend owned the health food store. And so I went in, and I got to go work there anyway.

Candee Chambers:
Oh yeah. I started at 13, and I got a dollar an hour, so yeah. That was kind of fun. Okay, what’s one thing about you that surprises people?

Katica Roy:
That I’m able to fully unplug from work when I’m off.

Candee Chambers:
Wow. Okay. That, you know what, that is a surprise for me. I would have to say that surprises me too. So what’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given?

Katica Roy:
I don’t love advice, but I will tell you, I don’t, because I think sometimes it just assumes what other people’s … I mean, it’s well intended, but it assumes what other people’s situations are and I wouldn’t want to do that. But I will tell you, however, what I will say is that there are two pieces, and we talked about my parents’ history and being the daughter of an immigrant and a refugee, and the two values that I, and I would pass this on to others, that I was given is to always do your best and never give up. And those two pieces have carried me through a lot of fear and a lot of, like anyone I’m human. I have fear about whatever, if I’m writing something or if I’m doing something. And that has allowed me to reframe to say, “Is this my best work? Did I pour everything I had into this? And if I did that, then I did what I could do.” And to never give up has allowed me to push through, even when things were hard.

And a huge frame for me of that was not only my mom’s experience, that 18 months old being separated from her mom and her siblings, but also my father. Because my father chose, made the decision that it was better to risk my siblings life in pursuit of freedom than to commit their lives to living under a communist rule. And that, they could have actually died when they escape. And so whatever I’m facing, when I feel like giving up, just doesn’t seem that hard. In the face of that it’s like, “This is a luxury problem.”

Candee Chambers:
Yeah, yeah, and I always try to live by saying, “It could always be worse.” And sounds like you’ve basically done the same thing. And that I think is a healthier way to move forward. But I loved your comment about advice. I really loved your comment about advice. Honestly, Katica, I have enjoyed this podcast so very much, this has been terrific. So I really want to thank you for joining us, sharing your valuable knowledge and insight on the she-cession and how it threatens long-term recovery, economic recovery, has just been wonderful. I’m speaking for myself and for the DirectEmployers family of brands when I say that the work you’re doing with Pipeline is absolutely incredible. I think you’ve given a lot of employers in our network a lot to consider as they look at rebuilding their workforce, and making accommodations to women. And if our listeners would like to connect with you, what’s the best way to get in touch?

Katica Roy:
They can go to pipelineequity, two E’s, pipelineequity.com. And on the top right of the website is at get in touch button and they can reach out to us directly. We’d love to talk to them.

Candee Chambers:
Well honestly, Katica, thank you so very much. This has been wonderful. I really, really have enjoyed our conversation today.

Katica Roy:
I’ve really enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much for having me.

Candee Chambers:
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of the DE Talk Podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and subscribe to our emails by visiting DirectEmployers.org/subscribe to receive notifications of new episodes each month.

​