Female presidential candidates are pushing issues such as reproductive rights, maternal mortality, parental leave and childcare to the front of the political agenda.
America is the worst country in the developed world to be a mother. I do not make this claim lightly, but what other conclusion can you draw knowing that more women die during childbirth in the US than in any other rich, industrialised nation? That infant mortality rates are so high that women in the US are more likely to lose their baby in the first year of its life than mothers in any other developed country? That America is the only rich country not to guarantee its citizens paid parental leave? After all, only New Guinea, Suriname, and a few Pacific island nations share US policymakers’ view that a new mother could be compelled to return to her job while her stiches are still healing, her breasts are still swollen and engorged, and her baby is utterly helpless.
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A woman president, whether she is a mother or not, is no guarantee that America will address this national shame. But the 2020 Democratic field, which includes six women, is showing promising signs of taking these issues more seriously and committing to fix the problems that the 45 male presidents of the United States have left unresolved. Together the female 2020 candidates are helping shift the perception that maternal mortality, parental leave and early childcare are not marginal “women’s issues” but urgent national ones.
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Warren, Gillibrand, Klobuchar and Harris are turning motherhood into a powerful political tool, using their personal stories to help push policies that have been overlooked for too long. Their proposals have a knock-on effect, forcing other candidates to respond and match their ideas. As Michelle Ruiz observes in Vogue, it’s a measure of how much the politics of pregnancy and childcare have been overlooked that Gillibrand and her co-sponsor Rosa DeLauro introduced her Family Act in 2013, 3015 and 2017 and on all three occasions it failed to even make it out of committee. Next time, she might expect to have better luck.
[link:
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2019/05/america-worst-rich-country-world-be-mother-2020-could-change|
We will see. But the fact that it there will be a knock on effect, the irony of course it is coming at a time when woman's rights are under such fundamental attack.