I’ve seen a lot of partisanship and gridlock in Washington since I began my career with the Republican Main Street Partnership nearly 20 years ago. The more I see of it, the more I believe that we need more women in government. Every country in the world that has brought a critical mass of women into their legislatures has experienced better and less adversarial government.
That’s the inspiration behind the Women2Women Conversations Tour that I founded in 2014. My goal was to bring together Main Street’s congresswomen with women outside of the Beltway, and to engage them in a dialogue about commonsense policy ideas that have broad bipartisan support. What we learned was that in spite of the narrative you hear from televised talking heads, women around the country aren’t preoccupied strictly with social issues. They’re more focused on everyday concerns about their families, their children, and their aging parents.
{mosads}In every part of the country we’ve visited, women from all walks of life have joined us, from moms in Indianapolis who are worried about their children’s safety, to high-flying career women in Atlanta, to pioneering leaders like former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. If you’ve heard the drumbeat about the “Republican war on women,” you might imagine that these conversations were only about women’s healthcare and reproductive rights. But we quickly learned that all issues are women’s issues.
One of the biggest lessons was that women around the country are certainly interested in the economic approaches that Republican women in Congress are promoting, such as growth-oriented economic policies, tax reform, and responsible investment in our national infrastructure. But they’re more deeply concerned about issues that have a disproportionate impact on women and families — and they want Main Street’s congresswomen to address them.
That’s why Main Street’s women in Congress created the Women2Women Policy Agenda. They feel obligated to the hundreds of women we’ve met and heard from around the country. We want to show them that they have a voice, and to fight for their concerns.
We heard over and over again from our audiences that despite the progress toward gender equality in recent decades, women still bear a heavier burden than men when it comes to balancing work and childcare. And two-thirds of those who care for the ill, the aged, and the disabled are women.
So the first part of our agenda addresses policies that help women in their capacity as caregivers. For instance, we heard a lot about the affliction of mental illness, which touches nearly every family in this country. There’s an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats to come together to enact comprehensive reforms around mental health and the interrelated problems of substance abuse, which form a key part of our women’s agenda.
Our agenda also include proposals for greater workplace flexibility, so that women can better balance the demands of work and family. There’s also a pressing need for greater investment in research that can accelerate the discovery of medical cures, particularly with regard to cancers and diseases that disproportionately afflict children.
We heard repeatedly that women want children to have a good start in life and to face as few barriers to success as possible. Our agenda supports efforts to provide for greater opportunity and social mobility, particularly for people from disadvantaged backgrounds and difficult circumstances. These include greater investment in early childhood education and development, measures to help students and their families with the growing burden of paying for college, and initiatives to encourage government and the private sector to work together to improve the lives of some of the most vulnerable Americans.
Women want their families and loved ones to be safe. They understand that our security depends on the strength and preparedness of our military as well as our government’s defense against terrorism. That’s why our agenda includes measures to keep our brave women (and men) in uniform from harm on the field of battle, and ensure that they receive every possible medical, educational, and vocational opportunity upon their return to civilian life.
We also heard that we need to do more as a nation to remove the barriers and glass ceilings that women still face. A good start would be for everyone in Washington to listen to these concerns and take to heart the message we heard beyond the Beltway: All issues are women’s issues.
Chamberlain is president of Main Street Advocacy and founder of the Women2Women Conversation’s Tour.