Paid leave is one of the clearest paths to women’s full participation in democracy.
This is part of a new miniseries FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.
It is a fundamental failure of American democracy that the U.S. still has no national paid leave program.
That failure too often pushes women into poverty, out of their jobs and away from participation in public life when they have a baby or care for the people they love. Paid leave must be part of any feminist, pro-democracy agenda because women cannot be equal citizens so long as caregiving is allowed to carry such steep economic and civic consequences.
Let me tell you about Clarissa, a restaurant worker who was denied breaks to express breast milk and had no paid sick time. After developing mastitis and caring for a sick baby, she was forced to take unpaid leave and pay out of pocket for medical care—pushing her family into financial hardship.
Bethany, a film industry worker, had no paid leave as she became a mother for the first time and struggled to afford health insurance, her car payment and childcare.
When Deanna, a counselor, gave birth two months prematurely, she could not afford to take the full unpaid leave available under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), forcing her to return to work while her newborn remained in the neonatal intensive care unit.
And Nathaniel, a public utility worker, exhausted his vacation time in 2023 to care for his wife after she had an emergency C-section; then his employer threatened to fire him if he did not return to work. He couldn’t afford to lose the job, so his wife was left alone to care for their premature baby and four daughters as she recovered. He was not eligible under the FMLA because his employer was too small.
A free and fair democracy cannot treat paid leave and other protections for caregivers as peripheral to civic engagement or as niche workplace perks.
These stories—just a few of the thousands A Better Balance hears through our free legal helpline—illustrate what happens when paid leave is left to employer whim and individual luck.
Women’s ability to stay in their jobs and maintain their income is still profoundly constrained by caregiving. According to research by the Rutgers Center for Women and Work, women who don’t have paid leave are more likely to be pushed into lower-paying jobs or to drop out of the workforce entirely.
In 2024, 68 percent of mothers with children younger than 6 were in the labor force, compared with 95 percent of fathers.
Leaving the workforce, even temporarily, to care for a child can cause long-term damage to a woman’s earning potential: Unpaid family caregiving can cut into a working mother’s lifetime earnings by 15 percent—an average of $295,000 in missed wages—according to a report by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Paid leave is one of the clearest ways to interrupt this cycle and ensure that caregiving does not come at the expense of a woman’s financial security and participation in the workforce.
States with paid leave have seen a 20 percent reduction in the number of women who stop working in the year after giving birth, according to the nonprofit Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Women with access to paid leave are more likely to stay attached to the labor force, and are more likely to report wage increases after giving birth, compared to mothers who have no paid leave.
This is not just a women’s issue. Workers of all genders care for loved ones and need support. But it is the case that men tend to take less leave to care for children and family members, often citing worries about losing pay. When men cannot afford to take leave, women absorb more of the caregiving load, reinforcing gender inequities.
A system that leaves women to shoulder the bulk of unpaid caregiving restricts not only their economic opportunity but also their participation in society overall. U.N. Women warns that unpaid care work creates “persistent time poverty that narrows many women’s choices and opportunities,” leaving them with less time for learning, leisure and civic participation.
Millions of women in the U.S. can barely find the time to juggle their jobs with taking care of their families, let alone to pursue higher education, make their voices heard at the polls, attend town halls or run for office. Without structural support for caregiving, women lose not just economic opportunity but visibility and civic power.
The Trump administration and its allies are advancing a vision of family policy that would push women and their voices further out of public life. Project 2025 explicitly calls for “restor[ing] the family as the centerpiece of American life,” endorses a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family, and argues that public funding should help parents, particularly mothers, stay home with their children.
The fight for paid leave is a fight for the democratic principle that women should be free to participate equally in the workplace and in public life—not forced back into a traditionalist fantasy of womanhood.
So how do we make paid leave a reality? We build from where progress is already happening.
Over the past decade, 14 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted paid family and medical leave programs, providing a blueprint that works.
Lawmakers should understand that paid leave is not just sound economic policy—it is one of the rare issues that commands overwhelming public support across party lines, with 80 percent of voters backing it nationwide.
Incremental progress is also possible and meaningful, as many conservative states are passing paid parental leave for their public sector employees.
We must also expand existing federal rights—for example, leveraging the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover more workers and provide additional support. And Congress must pass a comprehensive, national paid family and medical leave program that protects all workers as they care for themselves and their loved ones.
Of course, protecting caregivers in the workplace must not end with paid leave—and necessarily includes infrastructure for child- and eldercare, both of which provide essential support for families that have to balance work and care duties. More and more women are part of the “sandwich generation,” caring for their parents and their own children, which often presents an avalanche of costs and challenges. We all deserve to live in a country where a culture of care is fully seen and supported.
A free and fair democracy cannot treat paid leave and other protections for caregivers as peripheral to civic engagement or as niche workplace perks. Paid leave is the difference between care remaining a private matter that narrows women’s lives and keeps them in a constant state of precarity, or finally becoming part of the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Any policy agenda aimed at building a more democratic future for America should say so plainly: Women cannot be equal citizens without paid leave.
Continue Exploring FEMINIST 250
This essay is part of FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, Ms. magazine’s sweeping series marking America’s 250th anniversary through a feminist lens. Much of the project is already live, including Founding Feminists, which reexamines the nation’s history through the women who shaped it; Feminist Lessons, which explores the defining victories, setbacks and organizing strategies of each decade since the 1970s; and the ongoing Democracy’s Feminist Future section, which looks ahead to the challenges and possibilities facing the next generation. We invite you to explore the full series and catch up on earlier essays, interviews and reported features examining how feminist movements have transformed the nation—and where the fight for a more inclusive democracy goes next.
