Woman of Impact: Reshma Saujani

In 2020, Reshma Saujani was hard at work on her nonprofit, Girls Who Code, and raising her two children, a newborn and a 5-year-old. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and working mothers were plunged into unprecedented levels of stress and despair. As the primary caregivers in most households, moms attempted to balance work and family responsibilities largely without societal, governmental, or professional support. More than two million women were essentially pushed out of the workforce when child care centers and schools shut down, leaving careers and economic freedom behind.

Decades of progress feminists had fought hard to win was eroded almost instantaneously. This enraged Saujani. “I’ve spent my life building movements for women and girls to help them achieve freedom. I realized I could teach millions of girls to code but if I didn’t uplift their mothers, I hadn’t solved anything,” she says. 

In an op-ed published in The Hill in December 2020, Saujani proposed a “Marshall Plan for Moms” (a reference to the post-World War II program), which would pay mothers $2,400 a month. The following month, Girls Who Code bought a full-page ad advocating for the plan in the New York Times; it was addressed to President Biden and backed by celebrities such as Amy Schumer, Eva Longoria, Charlize Theron, and Gabrielle Union, among others.

Saujani soon realized that a single policy plan was not enough.

“What started as a call for a historic investment in moms in a moment of crisis evolved into something so much bigger,” explains Saujani. “The pandemic had exacerbated deeply entrenched structural issues that were holding women back, and I realized that the only way out was to create foundational changes in our homes, our workplaces, and our communities. This was more than a moment in time, this was a much needed movement.” 

This January, the Marshall Plan for Moms became Moms First — the only organization of its kind, which aims to mobilize mothers around childcare, paid leave, and equal pay. “Mothers have been told that we’re the problem, but the reality is that it's the structure that's the problem. [The system] was never built for moms,” Saujani says. “If the vast majority of women will become mothers or caregivers at some point in their lives, that structural support is critical.”

For women to achieve true economic equality and freedom, workplace culture needs a major overhaul — one that includes conditions for mothers. Saujani is building Moms First to get policies and campaigns in place that will transform workplaces, government, and society. Affordable child care — tied directly to a mother’s ability to work and climb the corporate ladder — is at the top of the priority list. The organization teamed up with theSkimm to start #ShowUsYourChildCare, a social media campaign that calls on companies including Verizon, Etsy, and DoorDash to be open about their child care policies. Mom’s First has also advocated for legislation around universal child care in New York City. 

“Child care, as a business model, is broken,” explains Saujani. “We pay child care workers less than what we pay zookeepers. I hate that parallel. But it puts it into perspective. We do not value or respect the people who care for our children. And the vast majority of those people are women of color.”

During the pandemic, the federal government provided $24 billion dollars in funding to keep child care centers afloat as a part of the American Rescue Plan Act. This investment allowed more than 70,000 child care centers serving 3 million children to continue operating. That funding ran out on September 30, causing a “child care cliff.” Centers must raise costs to stay open. “Even before the pandemic child care was unaffordable. We’re the wealthiest nation in the world that spends the least amount on child care. Forty percent of families go into debt because of the cost of child care,” says Saujani.

But starting a movement focused on working mothers proved complicated. She’d raised more than $100 million in a decade for young girls’ education through Girls Who Code, but doing the same for moms was challenging in an unprecedented way. 

“When I started Moms First, a lot of progressive organizations were like, ‘Wait, why moms? Why not parents? Take the mother out of it,’” she shares. Saujani’s resolve didn’t waiver. “Why not moms when women do two-thirds of the caregiving work?” she posits, adding that on average women lose four percent of their income for every child, while men gain six; and women are the ones going through the physical act of childbirth, but often forced to return to work as little as two weeks later. 

She also didn’t anticipate the difficulties she would face trying to convince donors and stakeholders that organizing a movement for moms was one of the top causes of the moment. “If 85 percent of Republicans and Democrats believe we should have paid leave and [subsidized] child care, then why is it number 13 [in terms of legislative priorities] for Congress?” Saujani asks. “The issue is that we just don’t value women’s time. We don’t want to build a world where women are on equal footing.” 

For the past year, Saujani and her team have been educating moms about the issues and helping them take small actions, such as sending letters to Congress about the child care cliff. “We’re getting moms into building that muscle of taking action on that issue and I think that is really critical,” explains Saujani. “ We’re the vast majority of caretakers. We’re gonna take advantage of [the 2024 election] and bring together mothers on both sides of the political aisle and put [motherhood] before party.”

Saujani is used to taking on what seems like the impossible, from leading a march against racial prejudice at her school at age 13 to running for Congress in 2010 with no political background. She’s lived a powerfully packed life, but her proudest achievement has been becoming a mom to her two sons — and she’s not embarrassed to say so. “We have shame around wanting to mother and that is very much directly related to our identity as feminists,” says Saujani. “I want to crush it at my job and crush it as a mom. And I am fully committed to building a world that allows me to do that.”

Saujani says this is where feminism has failed women. Throughout the fight for equality, feminism didn’t keep working mothers in mind. “So much of the feminist movement was not focused on motherhood, but was focused on work.” 

Saujani hopes that, through Moms First, she can rebuild society so that the next generation of women don’t have to choose between motherhood and a career. “Moms should have the freedom to move in and out of the workforce without penalty.”