Recommendations to the Trump Administration Regarding Workplace and Health Policies Impacting Women and Families

SUMMARY

The Sex & Law Committee (Katharine Bodde, Chair) sent a transition memo to the Trump Administration urging it to implement a policy of family leave for all parents; address the high costs of childcare in a comprehensive manner; and protect women’s ability to time and space their children. The Committee addresses the administration’s proposal to provide six weeks of paid maternity leave and urges that it be expanded to include paternity leave, leave for foster and adoptive mothers (not just birth mothers), and family leave for workers to address their own serious health needs or to care for family members with serious health needs. The Committee also addresses President Trump’s proposal to offer a $5,000 tax deduction or a $1,200 tax credit for childcare, noting, inter alia, that childcare costs typically greatly exceed this amount, and that a tax credit approach reduces funding available to pay for other programs that affect low-income families in order to subsidize the comparatively well off. The Committee instead urges investment in a comprehensive system of subsidizing childcare, including HeadStart or universal Pre-kindergarten. The Committee also underscores the need to uphold Roe v. Wade and to leave in place regulations under the Affordable Care Act that have fostered greater equity in compensation between women and men by requiring that health plans provide coverage for women’s health needs comparable to that of men.