The Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress focuses on developing and promoting robust, progressive policies and affirmative solutions to ensure that all women can participate fully in our economy and live healthy and productive lives.
We firmly believe that the diverse experiences of women across race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and other factors —and the challenges they face—must be at the center of the national policy debate. We work to secure women’s health and bodily autonomy, economic stability, equality, and access to equitable opportunities and uphold other reproductive, civil, and human rights.
The Biden administration should restart the collection of employer pay data, convene a new interagency equal pay task force, undertake an initiative to promote greater pay transparency, and designate more funding for enforcement of equal pay protections in order to regain lost ground and make progress for working women.
A comprehensive effort to secure equal pay must include limiting employers’ reliance on salary history in hiring and compensation decisions, as this practice can result in wage disparities and pay discrimination for women and workers of color.
Policymakers must go beyond baseline legal protections to treat abortion as the essential health care service it is, ensuring meaningful access to abortion for all and removing barriers put in place to circumvent Roe v. Wade.
Immigrant women are integral members of U.S. society, working across industries that serve all communities and spur economic growth. As the pandemic continues to disproportionately affect women in the workforce, future policy must consider the contributions and needs of immigrant women.
Without equal pay, AAPI women will continue to endure some of the harshest economic effects of every crisis.
Policymakers must closely examine economic data on the experiences of AAPI women, before and during the coronavirus pandemic, in order to surface key barriers and shed light on effective policy solutions.
Women make up the majority of workers who would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, as they are overrepresented in tipped and low-wage jobs.
Because the majority of minimum wage-earning mothers are breadwinners, raising the federal minimum wage would strengthen economic security for millions of families.
To ensure that LGBTQ individuals are included in paid family and medical leave policies, lawmakers must design the policies to cover diverse family relationships and allow for caregiving of chosen family.
The disability rights and justice movement and the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements must come together for nuanced discussions of the silent epidemic of sexual violence against disabled people.
Conversations around sexual violence must use justice frameworks to center the intersection of gender and disability violence.
The United States urgently needs a comprehensive paid family and medical leave program that will boost the health and economic well-being of American workers and families.
Expanding leadership opportunities for women, across race and ethnicity, and rooting out systemic biases used to shut women out of leadership roles must be a priority for every institution in order to promote equity and fairness.
Women, particularly women of color, have borne the brunt of job losses and caregiving challenges during the coronavirus pandemic and need structural policy change to ensure their full recovery and economic security.
Women—particularly women of color—continue to make noteworthy gains at all levels of government, but bold policies and structural changes are still needed to reach gender parity in U.S. politics.
