How to be Part of a Paid Maternity Solution as a Small Business Owner
We’ve been talking a lot about maternity leave with our community, and for good reason! The United States is 1 of 6 countries in the world with NO paid maternity leave. Recently, congress had a potential plan of allowing a 12 week policy, which moved to a 4 week policy, which is now back to a 0 week policy.
If you feel disheartened when you hear this, you’re not alone.
It’s frustrating when patriarchal policies are still so prevalent and unveiled.
Policies that show our health and wellness isn’t a priority, our work comes before family, and that WE as women don’t matter.
It’s heavy to say the least.
Here at Pursuing HER Purpose, we want to bring light to these topics because they are deeply important to us. We want to get you as fired up about them as we are *AND* we also want to provide a lens of possibility.
It can be easy to hear these statistics and think, why even try?
But that’s not how advocacy works and that’s not how change happens, so we want to offer some opportunities for YOU to be part of the solution.
And guess what, if there is one thing that women entrepreneurs are dang good at, it’s finding solutions to complex problems.
Here are three ways that you could help support your small business to have paid maternity leaves for you and your employees.
Job Exchange: My pelvic floor PT clinic was born from this model. Two small business owners were running separate clinics and decided to team up to help each other cover their maternity leaves so each could be paid (and pay their staff). If you run a service-based business, think of potential opportunities in your community or network where you could give and receive support from someone in the same line of business as you. I love this model so much because it’s not only supportive for paid leave, but it’s also women supporting women at its core.
Charge Enough: I’m calling you out (or lovingly calling you in), but most women just simply don’t charge enough. We are experienced, have amazing programs and services, spent years on our education, AND we have important values -- that needs to translate into how you price your offers. Unfortunately, it’s a cyclical problem if you undercharge that scarcity and lack trickles down to how you can show up for your employees (and yourself). Small businesses that I know who do an amazing job living out their values (like providing great employee benefits and charitable donations) are able to do that because they charge enough.
Be an advocate: Remember that your voice and vote count. We voted these people in, and it’s their job to speak on our behalf. You can find out who represents you here.
This website has a simple way to email your representative in a matter of 2 minutes. Seriously, it’s that simple. And while you’re on this site, send it over to your friends, coworkers, partners, parents, etc. and have them flood their representatives' inboxes too.
Today, 1 in 3 Americans lack access to a single day of paid leave to care for themselves or their loved ones -- that’s 113 million people, overwhelmingly women, communities of color, and low-wage working families. And 1 in 4 women go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth to a child. Paid leave has broad bi-partisan support from 65% of Americans and it’s good for businesses.
We need to push our government to support its people.
I am SO proud to be an advocate for better policies for women AND families with you.
On Purpose,
Kat
P.S. If you read this post and had some black and white thoughts pop in about why this won't work for you, I challenge you to think “What if this did work? What would that look like?” If we are where our attention is, do you want your attention to be focused on defending why this isn’t possible? Or focused on potential outcomes that can create the kind of world we want to live in? <3
