Oregon and the nation must do more to support working women and families through wage reforms and better funding for high-quality child care and preschool programs, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley told members of a roundtable forum at the University of Oregon this week.
Merkley was on campus Tuesday, July 1, to hear from parents, child care providers and researchers on the challenges women face entering and remaining in the work force, especially when it comes to affordable child care. Among the panelists were a UO graduate student and mother of two, the director of the Vivian Olum Child Development Center and several area parents and child care providers, along with Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy.
Federal policies need to be updated and funding for programs improved so the economy can benefit from the contribution of women in the work force while still supporting families, Merkley said. He said that today more than half of American workers are women, and of those 40 percent are the sole providers for their families — a sharp difference from 50 years ago.
“We’re in a position where the importance of women in the workplace cannot be overstated,” Merkley told the panel. “Unfortunately, too many of our policies are stuck in the 1950s.”
The problem with child care is twofold, Merkley said. The cost of care is out of reach for many low-wage families and drains the budgets of even middle-class workers, but at the same time pay for care providers remains so low it’s difficult to attract trained and skilled caregivers.
UO graduate student Rebekah Whittaker, who plans to become a teacher, told the panel she has had to take out additional student loans to pay for child care. Between her and her husband, she said student loan debt after graduation will total about $100,000 and will require monthly payments of $900 for decades after she graduates.
“The cost of child care is just enormous,” Whittaker said.
Merkley pointed out that in Oregon the annual cost of child care for the average family exceeds the average cost of university tuition. That discourages people from getting the education they need to fully participate in the economy and become contributing, tax-paying citizens and deprives the state of the kind of trained work force that attracts new businesses, and jobs, to the state.
“We need to invest in strategies that put more money back in the hands of average families,” Merkley said. “Our economy does better when every family has a fair shot at getting ahead.”
Included among the steps Merkley said need to be taken are increasing the availability and funding for child care and preschool programs, making high-quality child care more affordable, providing fair pay and adequate training for child care workers, making the child care tax credit permanent and tying it to inflation and making it easier to connect parents with appropriate care providers.
On the issue of women’s pay, Merkley advocates passing the Paycheck Fairness Act as part of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to help close the gap between men and women in similar jobs. He also called for increasing the federal minimum wage, increasing investment in job training and education, supporting women entrepreneurs and doing more to investigate wage discrimination.
“We’re here today because when women succeed, America succeeds,” Merkely said. “We have to create more economic security for women, raise wages for women and their families and ensure working parents who are supporting families have a fair shot to get ahead.”
―By Greg Bolt, Public Affairs Communications