Tag: Childcare

What Would It Look Like if the Workplace Was Built for Women?

The number of women leading Australia’s largest companies has risen from a dismal 5 percent in 2020 to 30 percent today. Even still, the country’s working women still face many challenges. There is a gender pay gap (13 percent), and a lack of support for childcare and other family support systems, including paid parental leave. These are the same challenges that women face in the U.S. despite study after study recognizing these barriers to gender equity in business.

Two steps forward for Australia is good news. But so many more steps forward are needed for equal representation and economic equity, and for families, communities, companies and countries everywhere to truly thrive.

Women Workers Can Help Rebuild the U.S. Economy—If We Can Solve Their Care Challenges

The United States has significantly fewer supports for caregivers than our peer countries. We lack paid family leave and public childcare. Our long-term care infrastructure is a mix of private and public, means-tested programs. Persistent low wages across the care industries have ensured that supply is unstable and insufficient.

If the U.S. is serious about bringing women into the workforce permanently, we need a robust suite of care policies—including fully public childcare, reentry programs for women who have taken time out of the workforce for childcare, and more robust long-term care options.

National Survey: Americans Call for Childcare (March 1987)

From the March 1987 issue of Ms. magazine: “An overwhelming majority of Americans want employer-sponsored childcare programs, regardless of whether or not they have preschool children or are currently employed, according to Ms. magazine’s national survey. … But small percentages of those surveyed indicated that their employer currently offers any of these childcare services.”

Today, 35 years letter, America’s. social safety net remains woefully inadequate: The U.S. is the only country in the developed world that does not offer any paid maternity leave, and it ranks 39th worldwide for overall child health and well-being.

Celebrate Mother’s Day by Listening to Guaranteed Income Recipients

When it comes to policy decisions that affect low-income families, Congress should listen to those most affected: low-income Black moms, who disproportionately bear the brunt of unemployment, wage gaps and unpaid childcare and domestic labor.

In the Front and Center series, Ms. and Springboard to Opportunities’ Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT) team up to give low-income Black moms in Jackson, Miss., an opportunity to share their story. Each MMT mom receives a guaranteed income payment of $1,000 per month for a year, with no strings attached. Now in its fourth cohort, MMT has changed hundreds of lives and proved that unrestricted monthly payments empower women to do what’s best for their families.

Without the Public Infrastructure Needed to Support Families, Moms Will Continue to Feel Like Failures

Let’s call it what it is: Moms are in a mental health crisis. Even before COVID, one study found that more than 90 percent of moms reported feeling lonely after having kids, over one-third said they cried regularly, and more than half suffered from anxiety.

After the pandemic hit, fully half of American moms with young kids reported feeling “serious loneliness”; the same number noted a marked mental health decline since the pandemic’s onset.

Blowing the Whistle on the ‘Mommy Track’ (July/August 1989)

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From the July/August 1989 issue of Ms. magazine:

“Sooner or later, corporations will have to yield to the pressure for paid parental leave, flextime and childcare, if only because they’ve become dependent on female talent. The danger is that employers—no doubt quoting Felice Schwartz for legitimation—will insist that the price for such options be reduced pay and withheld promotions, i.e. consignment to the mommy track. Such a policy would place a penalty on parenthood, and the ultimate victims—especially if the policy trickles down to the already low-paid female majority—will of course be children.”

We Can Create a Fair, Feminist Tax Code

If we want an economy where women thrive, we have to start with fair taxes. Taxing wealthy people and corporations and using the revenue for paid leave, childcare, education, healthcare and college would transform America for girls and women of every race and family type, in every corner of this country. 

War on Women Report: World Athletics Bans Trans Women; Maternal Mortality on the Rise; E. Jean Carroll’s Rape Case Against Trump

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U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

This month: The FDA is set to review the application for the first over-the-counter birth control pill; World Athletics voted to ban all trans women from elite athletics; Republicans have introduced bills that would bring homicides charges for abortion; and more.

Groundbreaking Exhibition on Minerva Parker Nichols, America’s First Independent Woman Architect

A new groundbreaking exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives recovers the story of a 19th-century architect named Minerva Parker Nichols (1862-1949). She was one of the country’s first woman architects, practicing in Philadelphia in the 1880s and 1890s. Over her lifetime, she designed over 80 buildings across the country, but Nichols has been largely forgotten.

The exhibit hopes to change that. It runs from March 21 to June 17 at University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives and will then travel to University of Massachusetts, Amherst next year.