John —

We have long known our economy fails to value certain work — particularly jobs that are typically filled by women, such as child care, nursing, and home care. This has only gotten worse since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially our child care crisis, and it’s led to a devastating number of women leaving the workforce.

That’s not just a problem for women — it’s a disaster for our economy.

Today I’m rolling out my plan to tackle this crisis. We have real steps we can take here to better value women in our workforce, address the child care crisis, and help support women business owners. In the Senate, I’ll get to work to tackle the steps we should be taking right now:

• Raise the minimum wage: I’m proud that in my time as Chair of Pennsylvania’s third-largest county, we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for county workers. We can and should do the same on the federal level. This commonsense step will help all workers, but particularly women and workers of color.
• Guarantee paid leave: As a doctor, I know that paid family and medical leave isn’t just good for our economy, it is also critical to public health. In Montgomery County, all county workers have access to gender-neutral paid parental leave. We need policies like that nationwide.
• Universal child care access: Right now, child care is out of reach for too many families — we have a severe shortage of child care workers due in part to low pay, and the cost of care itself is out of reach for many families.
• Invest in the caregiving economy: Our child care providers aren’t the only ones with wages that don’t cut it. We know our nurses, nursing home aides, and home health aides need better wages and safer conditions.
• Support women-owned businesses: By increasing access to capital and expanding workforce training for employees, we can better support and enable women to start and grow strong businesses that provide good-paying jobs for Pennsylvanians.

This is just the beginning — but by taking bold steps to actively invest in helping women get back to work, we can transform our economy, support working families, and help our kids get off to the best start possible.

By making investments like these, we’ll be able to create real change for Pennsylvanians and Americans all across the country. If this feels like a plan you can get behind, chip in $5 to help me get this done.

If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

Thank you,

Val