WOMEN & GIRLS

Supporting and lifting up women is not only right, but it’s good economic policy, too.

Growing up, my role model was the astronaut Sally Ride. Seeing her fly to space, I knew I wanted to be just like her, so I secured an ROTC scholarship to study engineering, then joined the Air Force. But as I entered the workforce, I saw only a few people who looked like me. 

When my team and I sat down in early 2019 to plan for our service in Congress, I said emphatically that empowering women and girls would be a theme that wove together all of our work. And we’ve stuck to it. At the outset of my first term, I created two Congressional Caucuses to engage partners and elevate issues that empower professional women - the bipartisan Women in STEM Caucus and the Servicewomen and Women Veterans Caucus.

In Congress, I am delivering on these promises by:

  • Protecting women’s right to reproductive health. A woman’s health care decisions should be made between her, her doctor, and her faith – not politicians. With the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe, I am horrified by the notion that my daughters have fewer rights than I did at their age. The federal government needs to protect a woman’s right to control her own reproductive health. Full stop. I support the Women’s Health Protection Act, which codifies Roe, and will continue to oppose efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.

  • Empowering women to achieve their full professional potential. There’s work to be done in leveling the playing field. The first thing we have to do is close the wage gap, so I co-sponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act, which ensures equal pay for equal work. In addition, I’ve introduced and advanced bipartisan legislation to scale up access to affordable child care, expand the availability of paid family leave, and end pregnancy discrimination. Moreover, in my first term, I championed a bipartisan and historic effort to enact twelve weeks of paid parental leave for 2.1 million Federal workers, which I am working to expand to all Americans.

  • Lifting up and empowering women across the globe. Women’s rights must not be isolated to America. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I lead the effort to pass the UNFPA Funding Act, which would restore the U.S. contribution to the United Nations Population Fund, the international organization that is responsible for policy and programming related to women’s reproductive health and gender-based violence.