
Maggie Jo
Buchanan
Senior Director, Women's Initiative
The Women’s Initiative develops robust, progressive policies and solutions to ensure all women can participate in the economy and live healthy, productive lives.
Abortion rights are under attack. Our proactive agenda provides a road map for state and federal lawmakers to develop and enact policies that ensure equitable, safe access to abortion. In coalition, we will push back against restrictions that impede access to this critical health care service.
People are more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes in the United States than in any other high-income country. Working closely with partners, we develop policy interventions to curb the maternal health crisis, eliminate racial disparities, and advance investments in maternal health care.
To address pay disparities, especially for women of color, our comprehensive work advocates for measures such as the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA). The PFA would strengthen equal pay protections, prohibit employer retaliation, and limit employers’ reliance on salary history to make hiring decisions.
Women are crucial to a thriving economy and families’ economic stability and must be at the heart of any economic recovery. We research solutions that maximize women’s economic participation and respond to competing demands of work and family, such as a national paid family and medical leave program.
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Senior Director, Women's Initiative
Senior Vice President, Rights and Justice
Managing Director
Associate Director, Women's Health and Rights
Policy Analyst
Policy Analyst
Associate Director, Women’s Economic Security
Research Assistant
The Women’s Initiative works to secure women’s health and bodily autonomy, economic stability, equality, and access to equitable opportunities and uphold other reproductive, civil, and human rights. We firmly believe that the diverse experiences of women across race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, faith backgrounds, and other factors—and the challenges they face—must be at the center of the national policy debate.
Responding to the judicial overreach of a radical Supreme Court majority will require long-term structural reforms to the courts and immediate action to mitigate the harms caused by their wrongly decided decisions.
The right to abortion has been denied—but the fight for basic freedom and dignity continues.
For generations, Americans have known abortion to be a fundamental right; if Roe v. Wade is overturned, some states will quickly make it a crime.
American voters overwhelmingly want to keep the constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade and strongly support legal access to early abortion medication for all women.
Everyone deserves access to abortion, but care is being restricted on all fronts.
Lowering the cost of prescription drugs would ensure that women and their families are able to access needed health care while also bolstering their economic security.
Counting part-time and part-year workers in wage gap calculations is essential to painting the full picture of the gender wage gap.
As the country awaits the Supreme Court’s final decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, this column highlights the myriad ways in which opponents of abortion are pursuing unprecedented incursions on that fundamental constitutional right.
Expanding access to safe abortion in whatever ways possible is more critical than ever—and a central way of doing so is to make medication abortion more easily accessible.
Since Roe v. Wade, extremist politicians have enacted more than 1,300 restrictions to take away abortion rights and access.