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When the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns struck the United States in March, Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code and a mom of two, saw the impact play out in her own life, as well as the lives of her employees, who are predominantly women and working moms.
“I saw the struggle play out in their living rooms and in my living room where we’re trying to not dampen our dreams, but we have to log our kids onto Zoom at 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock,” Saujani told “Good Morning America.” “We’re doing laundry in between calls. We’re making breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are constantly caretaking and mothering.”
“We’re teachers, we’re counselors, we’re nurses, we’re cleaners, we’re nannies, and no one ever asked us,” Saujani said of the added roles working moms took on when schools switched to virtual learning and offices went remote. “It wasn’t even a choice.”
Saujani said with no stimulus check for working moms, no help with child care and seemingly little consideration for moms’ careers with school closings, she quickly saw that the invisible work done by mothers was not valued, saying, “I mean that literally, that our labor has no economic value whatsoever.”