Almost one in three mothers ages 25 to 44 reported last summer that they were not working due to child care related issues.
More than four times as many women as men had lost their jobs as of the early fall, and a Bureau of Labor Statistics report found women accounted for all of the job losses in December, with Black and Latina women being hit the hardest.
Roanoke Democrat Sam Rasoul announced Tuesday that as lieutenant governor he would take action to get moms and families back on their feet with a Virginia Marshall Plan for Moms.
Rasoul, running for the Democratic Party nomination for lieutenant governor, is also committing a senior staff member of his lieutenant governor’s office to be a director of mothers advocacy, whose focus would be working with the governor and General Assembly to enact these policies.
Following a movement led by mothers and their advocates calling for a National Marshall Plan for Moms, Rasoul, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates since 2014, is calling for a package of policies aimed at addressing the disproportionate challenges faced by Virginia moms and families, including:
- Child care for all
- Ensuring all workers have paid family and medical leave
- Creating a caregiver income tax credit for $1000 in expenses incurred by an individual caring for a family member
- Expanding access to sick leave
- Increasing the minimum wage
- Instituting fair scheduling to require that businesses have predictable schedules for their employees
- Helping employers support moms through employer incentives for targeted career development that allow moms to make up lost ground
Read the Virginia Marshall Plan for Moms.
“Even before this pandemic, our economy did not work for families. We cannot accept any longer a status quo where having and raising children is a leading cause of poverty,” Rasoul said. “The way out of this problem, made much worse by the pandemic and economic crisis, is by following the data. And the data says: Invest in moms. Investing in moms is the surest, quickest path to economic recovery, and to creating a stronger, fairer economy than we had before.”
“Families thrive when mothers thrive. All of the data backs this up,” said Roanoke College history professor Ivonne Wallace Fuentes. “A Marshall Plan for moms is an opportunity to reimagine what a Virginia that works for mothers, and therefore works for families and works for children, might really look like.”
On Thursday, the Rasoul campaign will host a discussion with Virginia moms, moderated by Wallace Fuentes, on its Facebook page starting at 7:30 p.m.
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