By Hillary Clinton: Women's Issues Are Family Issues, and Family Issues Are Economic Issues (HRC)
A HILLARY SUPPORTERS GROUP post:
A funny thing happens when you work on behalf of children and families. You start noticing how often politicians dismiss the problems you spend your time thinking about.
They think pre-K is about naptime, not creating lifelong learners. They think unequal pay isn’t a problem, despite plenty of evidence that families rely on women’s earnings and they are being shortchanged. And forget about affordable child care, paid family leave, or paid sick days. They don’t want to hear any of it.
Well, I am a proud lifelong fighter for so-called "women’s issues." I believe that what’s good for women is good for America.
Take child care. It’s a women’s issue. It’s also an economic issue. You can’t go to work every day if you can't afford a safe place to leave your kids.
Paid family leave is a women's issue. It's also an economic issue. Without it, when you have a baby or someone in your family gets sick, you risk losing pay—or even your job.
Equal pay is a women's issue. It's also an economic issue. When women aren’t paid fairly, or when they get penalized for having children, they have less money in their pockets—and their whole family gets shortchanged.
And every single one of these "women’s" issues is a men's issue, too. Men want their kids to get the best possible care. Plenty of dads want to stay home to bond with their new babies. Lots of sons are taking care of aging parents.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that affects women's lives and futures is a women's issue.
At a time when a majority of minimum wage workers across America are women, raising the minimum wage is a women's issue.
At a time when more women than ever are going on to higher education, making college affordable, providing child care for students who are parents, and helping people refinance their student debt are women's issues.
Protecting the real gains we’ve made through Social Security and Medicare and the Affordable Care Act; insisting that everyone deserves access to quality, affordable health care—you guessed it—women’s issues.
And protecting the equal rights of all Americans, no matter what they look like or who they love, is definitely a women's issue.
It’s a good thing we women aren’t afraid of hard work–because we have some hard work to do....
http://www.blogher.com/hillary-clinton-on-women-and-family via BlogHer