I’m Reshma Saujani, the Founder and CEO of Moms First, a national non-profit leading the fight for America’s moms. I also founded Girls Who Code a little more than a decade ago. I founded Moms First in the wake of the pandemic, a time when women were being pushed out of the workforce at record speed. Since then, we’ve built a community of over 1.1 million moms and supporters. Our mission is simple: fight for a world where moms are valued and supported in our workplaces, communities, and culture.
Two of the biggest challenges we face right now are the motherhood penalty and the child care crisis.86% of women will become mothers by the time they are 45. But, we live in a society where women are punished for having kids. For every child a dad has, his salary increases by 6%, while moms experience a 4% loss for every single kid. We make it impossible for moms to catch up. And then there’s child care. We know that businesses can’t work without women, and women can’t work without child care. The reality is, 40% of parents are in debt because of the cost of child care. The vast majority of child care providers are women. In two-income families, when tough choices must be made about who’s got to cut back their hours or who’s got to switch jobs, because the cost of child care is bankrupting the family, guess who has to step back? It’s women. I truly believe that motherhood is the unfinished business of gender equality. To achieve true parity, we have to finish that fight.
Bravery over perfection.
I wish people understood, and I especially want mothers to recognize, that none of this is our fault. We live in a country where the structure has always set up women, and especially mothers, to fail. For so long society has told women it’s our own shortcomings that hold us back.We give women the hollow advice that if we simply color-coded our calendars, got more mentors, or just leaned in a little bit harder, everything would be fixed and gender parity would magically unfold. But let me be crystal clear: Women are not the problem, and we’ve never been the problem. The issue has always been the structure. Why is the school day 8:30 to 3 and the work day 9-5? Why is the U.S. the only industrialized nation without paid leave? Where 1 in 4 women go back to work just two weeks after giving birth. Where child care costs more than housing in all 50 states. These are structural issues that have worked against moms for decades. And it’s high time that we fix the structure rather than trying to fix the woman.
