Accelerating Gender Equality by Dismantling Discrimination & Eliminating Caregiving Barriers
What's the Challenge
The gender wage gap is overwhelmingly a caregiving gap: in 2013, in the U.S., single, childless women earned 96 cents on an unmarried man’s dollar, whereas married mothers earned 76 cents on a married father’s dollar. Women of color face the greatest wage penalties for unpaid caregiving and are also overrepresented in low-wage paid caregiving, creating even wider disparities: Black mothers, for example, earn just 50 cents for every white father’s dollar. Too often women have little choice but to “lean out” after having children, while women in leadership positions may find their only option is to step down to care for a spouse or elderly parent.
It doesn’t have to be this way. 2020 has opened millions of Americans’ eyes to both the critical importance of meeting caregiving needs for all and the persistence of structural inequality, creating an opening for transformational change that cuts across work, care, and equality.
What We're Planning
Dismantling discrimination and eliminating caregiving barriers requires a multi-pronged strategy. We are policy researchers, community organizers, and culture and communications experts joining forces to advance policies that would for the first time ensure that everyone in the U.S. can care for family members and their own health while succeeding at work. We will: 1) create a first-of-its-kind resource mapping caregiving policies nationwide and measuring their adequacy and accessibility across gender, race, class, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI); 2) mobilize workers across states to advance solutions that will accelerate women’s power, economic success, and leadership; and 3) create a media campaign to raise awareness of policy barriers and change attitudes about caregiving.
This unique partnership brings together organizations and leaders with decades of experience driving essential change in people’s lives using research, grassroots action, and culture change. Powerful synergies among these organizations will enable us to meaningfully shift policies and public attitudes around equality and caregiving through data, action, and culture change:
- Data: WORLD and BRITE will produce evidence measuring whether existing caregiving policies widen or narrow inequalities across gender, race, class, disability, and SOGI, and build comparative data to illustrate what more inclusive, feasible, and effective policies would look like.
- Action: Family Values @ Work and Caring Across Generations will bring together grassroots movements led by and with women who have been historically marginalized, and deepen partnerships across movements concerned with caregiving, gender, and racial equality while ensuring joint decision-making by the women most impacted.
- Culture Change: Promundo will extend this initiative’s reach across genders and the private sector by reaching men and top corporate leaders to create allies to accelerate women’s power and influence. TIME’S UP will work with top entertainment and cultural leaders to transform messaging about caregiving and gender equality. Hattaway Communications will develop a media strategy to move mindsets around the fundamental importance of meeting everyone’s caregiving needs to our country’s future.
Together, we will ensure evidence on gender and racial impacts reaches movements and the general public to maximize impact in the lives of all women. We will elevate new policies that can serve as models for accelerating equality, while targeting the removal of existing barriers that have long been hidden in policy details.
Who We Are
We are a team with the experience and imagination to change hearts, change minds, and change policy.
Contact Us
For further information on Accelerating Gender Equality, please contact araub@ph.ucla.edu
