Only 7% of U.S. Congress members are women with minor-age children, despite composing 18% of the country’s population. A Pew Research Center poll last year showed almost half of American women say family obligations are the reason men outnumber women in office. Now, female legislators seeking to correct this imbalance are advocating for policies that accommodate mothers in politics. Read more from The Christian Science Monitor.
#POTUS Biden on Mon called for major new spending initiatives to lower costs for #healthcare, #ChildCare & #housing & enough new taxes on the wealthy & major corporations to pay for those proposals & also shave $3 trillion off the #NationalDebt over the next decade.
That spending would be more than offset by dramatically increasing taxes on the wealthiest individuals & corporations, the WH said. #Biden’s #budget would increase the minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations to 21% from 15%. It would raise taxes on US multinationals’ foreign income to 21% from 10.5%, & eliminate some #TaxDeductions for executive compensation.
Work from home is here to stay, despite what many CEOs are demanding.
Women lead men in the WFH numbers. It's good to see that there're many of these jobs, but it also indicates that childcare is insufficient. Republicans don't support helping fund childcare & the social safety net.
"In February, 22.7% of employed adults teleworked or worked at home for pay, up from 20% last February. The comparable rate in Feb. 2020 was about 10%."
-C Rampell
Who's picking up the shortfall as the crisis in #childcare provision continues?
Grandparents: a recent survey suggest more than half of the UK's grandparents care for their grandchildren during the week.... 3 times as many women take early retirement to care for a family member (also reflecting problems in #socialcare) as men (15%/5%).
As retirement plans shift, for #women, we can add the 'granny track' to the 'mommy track' to factors changing their life trajectories.
If having #children is a belief in the future then ONS data showing the slow decline in 'total fertility' in #England & #Wales has now dropped to 1.49 children... well below the 2.1 replacement rate, is notable!.
Apart from economic issues (future #workforce etc.), this suggests two things:
the costs of having children is becoming prohibitive (from #childcare to #housing costs), and;
looking at their precarious lives prospective parents are deciding no to inflict this on the as yet unborn!
More Republicans have pledged to tackle the #childcare crisis.
O’Brien had her 2nd child, in 2022, not long before legislators were due to meet. Wanting more time to bond before returning to work -brought the newborn with her to Bismarck, where she snoozed thru Gov Burgum’s SOS address on her mother’s desk. She persuaded her colleagues to back a plan to invest $66M in childcare. R ldrs long resisted such spending. She argued -could help the state’s workforce shortage-. https://apnews.com/article/daycare-cost-child-care-assistance-0f7943d1b6f55dd4452ffd323e038a4f
With student #nurses dropping out of training (or not taking up posts) due to difficulties with #childcare (I'll leave aside the #gendered workforce Q. here), the scale of the problem with England's #NHS workforce planning is revealed by the fact that around 10% of all #nursing vacancies remain unfilled.
And of course, much of this shortfall is being filled by more expensive agency provision....
The failure to solve the staffing crisis in the NHS is just one more aspect of #Tory wrecking!