Creating Equitable Workplaces with Caregiving Data

In a country with zero national paid family leave, a broken child care system further strained by the pandemic during return-to-office mandates, and the rising 'Silver Tsunami' that is aging care, working mothers in the U.S. face layers of inequity in the workforce - which is why motherhood is the top driver of the gender pay gap. Yet caregiving status is the largest talent segment missing from corporate diversity measurement. Tech companies making public pledges to solve the gender pay gap will never do so without better data & insight about their caregiving workforce. For example, Black mothers in tech are making $0.52 on the dollar, yet employers have little knowledge, incentive, or current capability to track this intersectional employee experience. Recently, the US Dept of Labor reported "the estimated employment-related costs for mothers providing unpaid care averages $295,000 over a lifetime, based on the 2021 U.S. dollar value, adjusted for inflation. Unpaid family caregiving reduces a mother’s lifetime earnings by 15%, which also creates a reduction in retirement income." In the World Economic Forum's '2023 Future of Jobs' report, employers are being advised to prioritize child care for working parents as a "promising way to increase talent availability" in tech and beyond, despite little action by business leaders. A shifting trend as the US federal contractor workforce now defines 'parents, caregivers, and pregnancy discrimination' as a designated DEI talent segment (February 2023), a flag for any tech company with federal contracts. A recent AARP poll found "nearly three in four Americans across the political spectrum believe the difficulty providing care for the older adults, children, and/or disabled people has become a serious societal problem in this country today."

We're solving tech's gender equity gap by partnering with companies to measure their caregiving-employee data within measured DEI talent strategies and cultures. PTA achieves this in guiding talent data collection with HRIS and employee surveying software, and leveraging the federal EEOC's online data portal for annual EEO-1 reporting, the gold standard of corporate diversity data used to produce ESG impact reports. We also provide virtual resources to expedite education and thought leadership as we grow.

By measuring the caregiving-employee experience alongside gender diversity data, we're serving the millions of young women considering STEM careers or just beginning their path and will likely be a caregiver in the next few years, the millions of working parents facing bias and burnout in our industry, and employers who are invested in creating equitable workplaces that fully enable women to care for their families and their careers. As a data-driven industry leading our fourth industrial revolution, business leaders can't solve what they're not measuring.

For HR teams, one practical use of collecting aggregate caregiving-employee data is forecasting competitive benefits & reward packages. Most companies are planning benefits-usage in the dark, like budgeting for the amount of subsidized child care credits per employee or forecasting how many will request parental leave in the next few months. This data provides a holistic view of reoccurring life moments and stages impacting a majority of employees who will or are already caregivers.

Because Parents in Tech Alliance consists of tech workers, startup founders, and HR leaders directly impacted by this problem, we collect and curate direct stories & practical solutions from tech teams across the country that get decision-makers to take action on this missing data link. We lean on our strong partner ecosystem and expert peers whose shoulders we stand on.

PTA continues to serve as an industry catalyst for positive change in closing gender equity gaps, and has positively impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of tech workers since founding on top of Twitter's rooftop in 2017.

Parents in Tech Alliance serves hundreds of members and partners directly, who are impacting hundreds of tech companies and their hundreds of thousands of tech workers within their orgs. PTA engagement has steadily grown month-over-month since expanding nationally in 2021. Recently, PTA has reached millions of print & online readers with news features & op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, SHRM, and HR Brew.

• Seeking capital for operational growth, national marketing
• Expand our professional network and knowledge
• Expertise on grant applications

Sarah Johal (she/her) is a working mother in tech and early founding member of Parents in Tech Alliance. Outside of PTA, Sarah has 15+ years experience building brands & belonging with beloved Silicon Valley startups, and has launched several employee resource groups (ERGs) dedicated to gender and workplace equity for working parents. As a working mother who is the sole earner for her family and was recently impacted by tech layoffs, alongside her national tech network who is experiencing similar industry challenges, Sarah is passionately dedicated to make tech work for working families.

Parents in Tech Alliance is the only organization proposing this data-driven solution, and the first to successfully influence a handful of tech companies to take this action. As we often see in tech, once one company makes a bold move to advance its DEI progress, others soon follow. Given recent guidance by the EEOC and Department of Labor on related issues, we believe this data measurement will soon be required by large companies. Instead of waiting to catch up with compliance, PTA provides teams with this competitive edge.

Parents in Tech Alliance measures its shared success by ensuring tech employers are actively working to increase the health & wealth of working families, from cradle to career. Success metrics include but not limited to - increased hiring & workforce participation; management training completion-rates on the motherhood penalty; retention & promotional rates among working mothers; decreased filings of pregnancy discrimination cases; increased family healthcare benefits; increased child/elder care subsidies; sense of belonging in the workplace; access to mentorship and sponsorship.

Parents in Tech Alliance uses the OKR measurement framework to track our quarterly progress - objectives and key results. For example, we set quarterly pipeline goals on how many orgs/employers we meet with, increase percentages in membership, social engagement goals, press hits, etc.

Website, email, video streaming, and social media serve as our primary tech platforms to plan, communicate, engage, and execute our operations. Our specific solution is reliant on big data across various HRIS software systems (ex. SAP, Workday, Indeed), aggregate employee data, employee survey data, and the EEOC's online data portal for annual employee data reporting.

Parents in Tech Alliance has three voluntary steering leads. No paid full-time or part-time staff at this time.

Six years - Parents in Tech Alliance founded in 2017, and our proposed solution was defined in 2019.

Parents in Tech Alliance is a woman-founded, woman-owned nonprofit, steered by women and women of color in tech. Our PTA community is diverse in socioeconomic status, genders, ethnicity, accessibility, military veteran service, professional experience, and in different life stages, chosen family status, and parenthood identities. PTA membership is free and open to all.

Our business model serves to consult members and organizations with related industry news, trends and practical tools to implement change within their workplace. PTA provides its members free resources like curated digital libraries for parents, managers, and B2B marketplace solutions, monthly newsletter updates, virtual live programming, and mentorship. PTA also provides direct consulting to organizations and participates in corporate and conference speaking events.

Parents in Tech Alliance is currently transitioning its employer tax status to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Once complete, this status will unlock our fundraising roadmap including strategic partnerships, grant writing and donation campaigns.

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