What does the future of work look like for women? A quick scan of headlines on any given day in 2020 would paint a bleak picture. The coronavirus-induced recession has hit women the hardest, especially women of color. As of September, close to 1 in 9 Black women and Latinas are out of work, and millions more women—disproportionately Black women and Latinas—are risking their lives every day to go to jobs that leave them underpaid and inadequately protected from COVID-19.
Even before this year, reports about the future of work would too often posit that all our jobs will soon go to robots, impoverishing even more people while continuing to enrich a very few. And as the pandemic has raged on, billionaires are in fact raking in unconscionable sums—taking advantage of technological advances and a global recession to keep people competing for too few jobs that pay too little.