Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO, Moms First; Founder, Girls Who Code, Christy Turlington Burns, Founder and President, Every Mother Counts Moderator: Jennifer Fields, Fortune
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00:00So we're having a conversation about the state of motherhood and all of the challenges that come along with that
00:06But I first want to start with the reality that so many women will not survive pregnancy and childbirth
00:14Christy you've done so much work around maternal health maternal mortality. Can you sort of set up for us the stage?
00:20Where are we fighting against this crisis?
00:23Good morning, everyone
00:26Yeah today in the United States we are in the midst of a maternal health crisis
00:32And this has been
00:34Pretty much the status quo since I started advocating on this issue more than 15 years ago
00:40The United States is one of just a few countries that have a rising maternal mortality rate
00:46we lose a
00:48woman every two minutes in this country from a pregnancy or childbirth related complication and
00:54Black women are three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy or childbirth related complication
01:00indigenous women right behind them
01:02and
01:04This is
01:06You know a real devastation
01:08catastrophe honestly and something that
01:11While we are seeing more recognition and more stories come to light and more headlines
01:16The numbers really aren't shifting and probably will not do so
01:20Given the rollbacks that we've seen in the last couple of years
01:25So there's a lot left to do on that unfortunately
01:29Freshman I want to turn to you
01:31Another crisis has been looming for quite some time and that's around our declining mental health
01:37The Surgeon General even issued a per an advisory about parental pressure
01:42Can you talk a little bit about what it is that companies need to do?
01:45What do businesses need to do to really address the state of mental health and motherhood?
01:49Yeah
01:50I mean
01:50I think the Surgeon General report was so powerful because I think it made clear what we all know which is that
01:56mothers are broken and
01:58you know, they say we don't break but we do and
02:01Part of the reason why I think mothers are broken is I think during the pandemic we realized that wait
02:07It's not just that we are not balancing motherhood and being a worker
02:12Everyone is collectively all 85 million of us are and
02:16Yet, you know, we live in a country where you know
02:19One out of four women and we live in the only industrialized nation doesn't have paid leave
02:22You know one out of four women go back to work two weeks after having a baby
02:25Christy just shared some really powerful important stats on maternal health
02:29You know, we are the wealthiest nation that puts the least amount of money into child care. We don't have a gender pay gap
02:36We have a motherhood penalty
02:38You know men get a 6% salary increase for every child that they have we lose 4% for every baby so
02:45Structurally women are not set up to succeed
02:50We're not set up to survive much less thrive
02:54But yet we've been told decade after decade that we're the problem
02:58That we're the reason why we're not free or equal
03:02It's because we don't have enough confidence because we didn't find a mentor because we didn't color-code our calendar
03:09right
03:10That the problem is us
03:14Well, that's a bold-faced lie
03:17right
03:20And it's a strategy that has been used to keep us
03:25Not just from not reaching a quality in the workplace
03:29But now it's a strategy that is dramatically affecting our mental health, you know as per the certain general report
03:36So at Moms First, right we are leading the fight for American motherhood
03:39We are organizing the 85 million moms to kind of you know
03:43I I believe that motherhood is you know is is the final fight for gender equality, right?
03:50It's the thing that is standing in the way of us
03:53Truly being equal and truly being free and mental health also factors into maternal maternal health and maternal mortality
04:00It's actually one of the leading causes of death and maternal mortality
04:04Christy do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, we now know that
04:0860% of the deaths that are related to maternal or to pregnancy and childbirth actually happen postpartum
04:13So from the day after you deliver to a full year post delivery
04:19That's where we're really seeing it in mental health is one of the key factors in that equation
04:26Before we knew that information there has been this real emphasis on prenatal care and delivery care the 24 hours of delivery care
04:33But now that we have the data and can really look at that long span after mom is a mom
04:40And try to really, you know build in
04:44Resources for her to be able to feel supported when she goes back to work when she's planning her next child
04:50All of the things that become very isolating and very frightening for women to be able to handle on their own
04:56And again, many of them not having access to mental health services along that journey. I
05:02Just want to let everyone know we're gonna ask, you know, take some questions
05:06But so get them ready, but I have one more question for you before we do that
05:11We're a couple of weeks away from a really intense presidential election
05:15I'm not gonna ask you who's gonna win like I did last night
05:19But I am gonna ask you
05:20Can you talk a little bit about how motherhood has factored into this into the shaping the priorities in the election?
05:27Yeah, well, first of all, this election is boys against girls
05:30And it's fascinating right that it's become about that and this election is also about the obsession about motherhood
05:37You know six out of ten women who get an abortion our moms
05:40You know are the reason why they're getting an abortion is because again, we don't have paid leave. We don't have child care
05:45We have huge risk for maternal health
05:48And you know in the other, you know, the other big issue is we don't have affordable child care
05:53You know 40% of parents are in debt because the cost of child care for the very first time we were talking about inflation
06:00but the cost of child care is actually rising faster than inflation and so for the very first time in
06:06Every single state the cost of child care is now more expensive than the cost of rent
06:14Okay, so this is the thing so I have been working on this issue for the past couple of years and every time I would
06:21Meet an elected official. I would say I don't get it
06:24Like why are we not fixing child care or passing paid leave?
06:29In each one of them would tell me the reason is is because child care is number 16 on the list, right?
06:35It's far behind China and AI and trade and so and if we're going to pass it
06:41We need to increase it from a priority perspective. And so at Moms First about six months ago. We said, all right
06:47Here's what we're gonna do. We are gonna make child care a
06:51Number a top-tier issue in the presidential campaign and we did we started with basically a petition with
06:5815,000 moms that signed to make sure that child care was asked at the very first debate that was on CNN and
07:05They asked it
07:06Unfortunately, both of those candidates spent most of their time talking about their golf game and zero time talking about what they were gonna do
07:12About child care. So we said, okay, we got to do it again. I got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
07:18I'm on the board of the Economic Club of New York and they had invited Trump to come speak
07:22So the protocol was that they would ask two Democrats and two Republicans to ask a question
07:26So, of course the moms at ECNY called me up and they said do you want to be that Democrat?
07:31I was like I sure do
07:33And they said and I'm said but I want to ask about child care and they're like go ahead
07:38So when you know former President Trump comes to give his big economic turns out he was gonna release his big economic plan
07:45There's like 200 reporters in the room
07:48he's not expecting to be asked about child care, even though he should have been because he was told and
07:53He gets I asked my question, which was very simple and he botches it word salad
07:58No one knows what the heck he's talking about, right and it goes viral
08:02But then guess what happens?
08:04Everybody is now talking about child care. How do we fix it? Is it a tariff? Is it a subsidy? Is it a tax benefit?
08:11What do we do about it?
08:13and literally for weeks it then becomes the most it went from number 13 to number 1 and
08:20Then in the president in the vice presidential debate, of course
08:23God bless and the two female reporters ask about child care and they talk about it for eight minutes
08:28They're prepared this time and also after we asked that question
08:32Suddenly both candidates released their child care plan
08:35So it just shows you right like again the power of us as a collective as moms
08:40the work that Christie's quite frankly been doing for 15 years before anyone was doing it like it just shows you like
08:47What is possible when we actually push and hold them accountable and Christie?
08:53Do you want to talk a little bit about how you're seeing maternal health show up in this campaign?
08:58Yeah, I mean obviously abortion is on the ballot and as I alluded to before these rollbacks
09:03There are estimates that the increase in maternal mortality for black women will be
09:0833% for a Caucasian woman 21%
09:11We're gonna get the first report post-obs in a couple of months through the CDC, but we it's gonna be big and so
09:20mothers and
09:22young women
09:23And families are this is like a crucial issue in this election. I just come from Wisconsin
09:29I spent time with mothers who have had
09:32Anomaly pregnancies and have been forced out of their state to get care life-saving care. They were not particularly
09:39pro-choice people
09:41they have had to experience what this is like with signs the whole way saying turn around and change your mind and it's like this
09:48Is not an option. This is saving my life
09:51And then also with providers who are not able to practice and provide life-saving care to their patients
09:58I mean, this is like cutting off the hands of physicians all across this country
10:03And those are also women and women who are mothers, you know
10:06like providers who are mothers who are you know
10:09trying to take care of people and their own families and
10:12Forced out of state to be able to do what they do and what they've made an oath to do in terms of taking care
10:18of people
10:19Serious I
10:21Want to open it up to questions. I see we have one up here. We'll just wait for the mic handler
10:29Well, I she'd have been if from insignia not the most profound question
10:34But I'm very curious about how you went from modeling to what you're doing and how you got so passionately involved
10:42I think there's a story there that I'm interested in curious about sure. I'll do it very briefly
10:47But you know, I started my career as a teenager
10:51and so by the time I was a young woman and went back to school then I sort of started my actual
10:55Pursuit of life and that really has involved public health and global health pretty much from the beginning
11:01Smoking cessation and prevention after loss of my father and then when I came became a mom
11:06I became a global maternal health advocate because I experienced a postpartum hemorrhage after the delivery of my daughter
11:11Who's gonna be 21 next week? So I've been really advocating on
11:16Child birth and healthy options safe options for for moms and families for 21 years
11:27Yeah, I mean I think it's so powerful how like your own experiences leads to like your work and your activism
11:32You know, my parents came here as refugees
11:34you know, I grew up as a working-class kid with not a lot of resources and
11:39As a brown kid in a in a white working-class neighborhood where there weren't a lot of brown kids
11:43And so I experienced what it was like to be the other
11:46Pretty much since I was a little kid
11:48And so I think as I got older I got I got obsessed with the ways that we can actually give women and girls power
11:54So first it was girls and coding because you know
11:57Those are the jobs of the future and quite frankly technology is so key to something
12:01It showed me the problems that women face and then it was childcare and now I'm you know
12:06This today actually launched a podcast called my soul called midlife
12:10Because after I turned 45, I just became obsessed with the con of midlife
12:16right like
12:18Why is George Clooney hot when he gets salt-and-pepper hair and the same grays and wrinkles that we do
12:26But we're obsessed with the mirror in reverse
12:29That doesn't make sense
12:31Why does like our ambition why our opportunity is closed off to us the older we get but men just seem to get more and more
12:38Powerful and so as I started digging in like it really is a con and
12:44it is it and it is it is a very dangerous con and
12:49So I've launched a podcast to really talk to incredible people like to you know
12:53My podcast launched today with Julia Louis Dreyfus who is like the woman right who has really just gotten finer
13:00Like wine the older she's gotten
13:02To Katanji Brown Jackson next week, you know and really talking about her experience
13:08You know in in really staying steadfast to where she knew she was meant to be
13:13to divorce experts to sex experts to you know
13:16Everyone who's gonna really just I want to plan and part of it's my journey. Like I want my toolkit, right?
13:21How do I make sure that this is the best time of my life and I'm not just trying to live through it
13:27But I'm trying to live it
13:28That's great. I know we have another question
13:33I'm Hillary Cobbler McAdams from NEA, which is a venture capital firm
13:37Thank you for all your work you're doing for maternal health for women for moms
13:42I guess I have a question about on child care
13:45A lot of us in this room have patched together child care strategies that we think and hope are working
13:51And I'm curious if there are models or countries or frameworks that you've seen
13:57Yeah, you could point us towards yeah, let's understand what that policy at the federal level or state
14:02Yeah, or even at a company. Yeah might look like. Yeah. Listen, I think this is a great question
14:07So so and I think the women in this room will understand it child care as a business model is broken
14:13Right. There's both a demand and a supply problem 50% of
14:18Americans live in child care deserts. So most people just can't even find child care, right?
14:23Or if they sign up for it, it's like they're on a two-week long waitlist
14:27Part of the reason why you have a supply problem is we don't pay child care workers enough
14:32They're the they're the least paid, you know, so they can't make a living
14:35So and these are women often women who love children
14:39They're the exactly the people that we want to be taking care of our kids and we need to pay them fairly
14:44But if parents can barely afford child care and child workers are like I don't can't go into this profession because I can't put food
14:50On my own table you have this issue. So when you have a market fail, it's a market failure
14:56You need intervention. And so the question is is like is it the government? Is it the private sector or is it both?
15:03So right now it's gotta be the government, right?
15:07They have to and but there has been an utter failure because I'm just gonna be honest
15:12The vast majority of people that are running our country are men
15:16Who had women take it staying home taking care of their kids. They never experienced this
15:20They don't understand why we should be investing in it
15:23And that's changing a little bit because guess what they have daughters and they love their daughters more than they love their wives
15:31And they're like wait a minute what child care
15:36I'll take it. Okay, so and then the same thing is happening in business because for the very first time
15:44Companies are recognizing that they have tight labor markets because women are downshifting in their careers
15:51Because they don't have child care. So we did a first-ever report there
15:56So but there was no date on this before so mom's first at the first ever report with BCG
16:01Showing what the ROI was and it was as high as four hundred and twenty five percent it paid for yourself
16:06You lose the average employee every nine months, but you provide them child care subsidies or benefits
16:12You keep them for 18 months you make money
16:16so
16:16This is basically what people and I hope everybody in this room who who runs a company who works the company who actually is
16:23Able to make these kinds of decisions just really recognizes. I'll say it a hundred times child care pays for itself
16:28So not only do we need companies to be investing in child care
16:32I need y'all to pick up the phone and call your elected officials whoever wins
16:36This November we are so damn close
16:41To getting child care done in America so close
16:46So close I can smell it
16:49But we need
16:51Business leaders because they listen to you to call your elected officials whether they're Republicans or Democrats
16:56This is not a partisan issue to say I need you to do this. You want to compete with China, right?
17:01You want to be the best economy in the world? We gotta fix child care and AI is not gonna do it for us
17:10Or deliver your babies
17:12And and last thing and invest in more
17:16entrepreneurs that are trying to
17:18disrupt the broken child care model because there are a lot of great fam tech companies that are thinking about this and that are working
17:24In this and that need to get funded
17:25So you've talked a lot about the issues the problems the challenges and we have some to do's
17:30Is there something that you're excited about some innovation a person a program that you've seen that should give us hope?
17:36About where we're going with the journey of the challenges of motherhood. I'll start with you Christy. Gosh
17:42I mean, I I am hopeful most days because I think as a mom you have to be right. I
17:49Honestly, we're very much investing in the healthcare workforce and doing it at sort of mid-level
17:55You know the providers of mid-level care doulas community health workers midwives are really essential important
18:01But they're not being reimbursed either to your point about caregiving
18:05Like they also are getting left behind
18:07So even if they are proven to give better quality care have more time for their patients and families
18:13They're actually not getting reimbursed
18:17By the state. So we've been really
18:19Supporting this black maternal health mommy bus bill or set of bills, which are very very comprehensive
18:25And really are looking at all of the different factors that need to be included as we're trying to address this problem
18:32And one of those things is extending Medicaid coverage
18:36most births in this country are actually covered by Medicaid 42% almost 50% and so
18:42Having a full year of postpartum care will actually help catch some of those women that otherwise get dropped the moment that their baby is
18:48Born or until six weeks after
18:50And so that's something that I'm excited about. It's had momentum. There's great leadership
18:56Bipartisan like there's a lot that we can we can come together around
18:59But yeah, we need to take care of people who take care of people right people we need to be people centered
19:05We need to be mother centered
19:07That's the way forward. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I am I
19:13Am excited because I finally realized that we all I think we all realize that we've been getting tricked and conned and
19:20Whether it is again about midlife or whether it is about you know
19:24Our the ability to make our own decisions about our own bodies
19:28I think we realize that we are radically in a different place and and look I think I'm still thinking a lot this this
19:34election cycle has been very fascinating if you take a second to look back and to see
19:39what's happening and
19:41and the resistance right towards women in power and
19:47Into real and I need all of us to really take a step back and to start and to understand and to process
19:55What we're seeing and why they're so damn scared of us and
20:03We now need to
20:05stop
20:06apologizing for
20:08ourselves and take
20:10control and power
20:12Over our own destinies if not for ourselves for our daughters and that doesn't mean guys that and this is the thing
20:19This is the thing that has to happen on November 5th or 6th. It's not a zero-sum game
20:25just because women get more opportunity doesn't mean that men lose and
20:30We've presented it in many ways and I'll take responsibility for this as an activist as a feminist
20:35We've we've sold it as a feminine as a zero-sum game. And so whatever happens after this election
20:41We got to have a radically different conversation
20:44We have to radically think about how we come together and bring men along with us
20:49You know, I mean in a different way and we as women need to put ourselves first
20:56The amount of women who with this at this election and it breaks my heart to say this who are gonna sacrifice their own
21:04Human rights to dictate their body because their husband or their son feels disaffected
21:11blows my mind
21:13blows my mind
21:15But if but if that happens and I won't say what outcome we're talking about
21:19it will be because women put themselves second instead of first and
21:24We got it. We got to really figure out I was talking to somebody yesterday at the Fidelity cocktail party about the amount of women
21:33who
21:34They're experiencing menopause and they rather quit than ask their employer for what they need
21:39The amount of young women who rather downshift in their careers because they look around they think I can't be a mom here
21:45how do we go back to feeling like we can just ask for what we
21:49Want and I saw this last thing so so powerfully in this election you jump it. Sorry
21:54I'm gonna jump in we're we're out of time. But this was a really enlightening depressing, but also
22:04We have work to do thank you so much congratulations on your podcast Thank You Jennifer
22:15You