Nov 15, 2021
By most accounts, this seemed to be the year that a federal paid family leave policy would finally become a reality. The pandemic had been the most powerful indicator yet that American workers—only 23% of whom had access to paid leave—desperately needed the financial support. Many low-wage workers, who are disproportionately people of color, could not take sick days without sacrificing their paychecks. (In 2020, barely 8% of those workers had any paid family leave.) Even the business community had, at last, come around to the idea of national paid leave, in part because many companies had reaped the benefits of the temporary paid leave provisions passed in response to the pandemic.
And women had dropped out of the workforce at staggering rates, beset by job losses and the unequal burden of caregiving responsibilities. “We always talk about [paid leave] as an issue for all workers, not just women,” says Sherry Leiwant, the copresident of advocacy group A Better Balance. “But the fact of the matter is that the job of caring for family has fallen on women.”