How do employers begin to prepare for a Post-Roe vs. Wade workplace? Texas offers insight into the challenges to come.
Many employers have announced abortion-related benefits. https://lnkd.in/gPEu8V_V. However, as the researcher in this article points out, “Assuming just 10 percent of women aren’t able to secure an abortion, that’s a massive rise in fertility.”
That means employers will need to support more meaningful levels of:
–paid parental leave when a child is born;
–paid sick days to care for children who will inevitably get sick;
–flexibility that will allow not just mothers, but fathers, grandparents and other supportive adults to shift where and when they work to help provide the community of care that mothers will need to be able to continue to work;
–quality, subsidized child care–including infant care which was already nearly impossible to find or afford pre-COVID.
These supports should be widely available anyway, but now such supports are a must–an imperative–as we see a potentially dramatic increase in the number of mothers hoping to stay in the workplace in a post-Roe vs. Wade world.
And, from a future workforce perspective, employers in states with restrictive abortion rights should begin to plan for how they will attract and retain next-generation female talent. In initial discussions with a number of 20-something women, they have all said the lack of abortion rights would influence their decision about where and for whom to work.