May 11, 2023 • 26 mins
Reshma Saujani is a leading activist and the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First. She has spent more than a decade building movements to fight for women and girls’ economic empowerment, working to close the gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently advocating for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. Moms First is a national movement with the purpose to enact sweeping cultural change to value women’s unseen and unpaid work and rebuild our broken system to make it possible for women to work and have kids.
You can follow Reshma on Instagram at @reshmasaujani and her website reshmasaujani.com
Cashing our Trillions is Hosted and Produced by Common Solutions Media and Yvonne So. You can connect with me on Instagram @yso_mom, LinkedIn @yvonnecot, or e-mail me at cashingourtrillions@gmail.com
Sound Engineering by Tiezheng Shen. You can reach him at dacapopresents@gmail.com
Cover artwork graphic design by Jessie Li. You can reach her at jessieli.pers@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi there. I'm Yvaughn and the reason I'm in your
ears right now is because I won a radio contest.
First off winning Amazing radio contests runs in the family.
In nineteen seventy one, my teenage mom Maureen won the
(00:23):
full set of Elvis Presley LPs for calling into her
local Canadian radio station. Amazing, right, I grew up listening
to all those records. So back to my story. I'm
an iHeart country listener and on one of my weekly
solo grocery runs aka mom Vacation, I heard an ad
(00:43):
sponsored by Seneca Woman and iHeartRadio searching for the next
great female podcaster. And this is the clincher, followed by
the Cody Johnson song Till You Can't. So I'm not
a big name podcaster with a budget to boot, so
I can't play you the song. And I'm gonna spare
you me singing the lyrics. But it goes if you've
(01:06):
got a dream, chase it, because a dream won't chase
you back. And something about that moment made me think,
you know, what the heck, why not why not give
it a try. As a mom, I'm always telling my
boys go for it. You never know if you don't try.
So this is definitely me taking a dose of my
(01:27):
own medicine, and thanks Cody Johnson for the extra push.
So when I got home, I googled Seneca Woman. I
had a vague idea of the organization founded by Kim Azzarelli,
an ambassador of Milan Vivie, and I knew the name
(01:50):
was a non Seneca Falls, a beautiful hamlet in the
Fingerlakes region of New York, the birthplace of women's rights
and also where my husband and I fell in love
twenty years ago. It felt like serendipity. I distinctly remember
staring at the website, scanning the faces of all these
women I've admired at all stages of my life and thinking,
(02:14):
Oh my gosh, like, how do I properly honor the
mission of this amazing organization. I'm looking at Andrea Jung
literally my mirror growing up. I remember receiving the Avon
catalogs and seeing her signature pearls and red lip, and
aspiring to be just as glamorous and as accomplished as
(02:35):
her one day. Diane van Forstenburg and Tory Birch my
dream team wardrobe staples during my working Days, Valerie Jarrett, Arizona,
Homegrown Cowgirl, Sandra Day O'Connor, Malala, Rushma Sho, Johnny who
is my inaugural guest, and my personal hero, Ambassador Madeleine Albright.
(02:55):
I have called seven American cities home since graduating from
George Town School Foreign Service, and I've purged so many
possessions along the way, But my signed copy of Madame's
Secretary remains one of my most treasured possessions. So where
do I fit it? In twenty twenty, a New York
Times article revealed that the economic windfall of American women's
(03:20):
unpaid hours of work around the house and caring for
relatives totaled one point five trillion dollars. And that's a
conservative estimate using minimum wage pre rampant inflation. So I
can relate as a stay at home mom for the
last ten years, one hundred percent of my work is unpaid.
(03:40):
You know, I'm very thankful for the privilege our family
can live off one income, which affords me the time
to dedicate myself to my boys and, more recently, my
community advocacy work promoting Asian American civic rights. But as
a former working girl, it really took me time to
come to terms that my self worth is not related
to my paycheck. For those of you who know me personally,
(04:04):
you know I like to dream of manifesting my aspirational thoughts.
So when I saw this number one point five trillion dollars,
you know that's eleven zeros, right, I thought, what would
it be like if woman cashed all these trillions? Imagine
if we monetize all this free work we do so
(04:28):
much would be different me Obviously economically we'd be better off,
but also socially, our work and our services would be valued.
At our iHeart podcast launch event, Milan from Seneca woman
said where there is an equal representation, public discourse is
short changed, and her words just really impacted me. Moms
(04:52):
need to be part of the conversation, and more than ever,
with so much social angst and uncertainty, we need to
be heard. My hope is that increasing public discourse around
moms will ultimately help in our progress to promote gender
equity and inclusive economic growth. This year, I hit a
(05:20):
big mom milestone. My youngest started part time preschool, which
means that for the first time in the ten years
since I became a full time mom, I had a
block of free time during the day, so I'm spending
part of that Okay, honestly a big chunk of that
time writing, interviewing, producing, and hosting this podcast. Since becoming
(05:43):
a mom, so much of my joy and achievements and
just life in general is tied to my boys. And
it hit me recently that cashing our trillions is the
first thing in a while that I've done by myself
for myself, and I got a say, it feels amazing.
I'm finding this community of moms that have such powerful
(06:07):
and impactful stories to share, and it's really breathed new
purpose into my life. I'm truly thankful for this platform
and thank you listeners for joining me on this ride.
So come on, moms, chase this stream with me. My
(06:31):
first guest is Reshma show Johnny. She is a leading
activist and the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First.
She's spent more than a decade building movements to fight
for women and girls' economic empowerment, working to close the
gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently, advocating
for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. Mom's
(06:55):
First is a national movement with the purpose to enact
sweeping cultural change to value women's unseen and unpaid work
and rebuild our broken system to make it possible for
women to work and have kids. She's the mother of
two boys, Sean sixth and Side one. I just want
(07:17):
to note we recorded this episode before Mom's First name change,
so you'll hear us referring to the organization's previous name,
Marshall Plan for Moms. The name changed to Moms First
is a reflection of the progress Russia has made in
the last two years and a rallying cry to expand
the movement they've built together to finally put Mom's first Rashvin,
(07:45):
I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. As
you know, Catching Our Trillions is about centering the story
of moms and bring light and hopefully quantifying the unpaid
work we perform sustain our economy and our society. And
I just really admire the work that you do to
bring a voice and a face to our cause. So
first off, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I distinctly remember back in twenty twenty one when I
saw the New York Times for full page ad for
Marshall Plan for Moms. Everyone in our nation was still
under some type of COVID lockdown and zoom schools. This
is all like a real reality and just a raw
feeling for us. So seeing that ad just felt so empowering.
Everything you said really just really made sense, so powerful,
(08:29):
like put dollar figures on our work and pay us right.
So maybe start by giving us an overview of the
Marshall Plan for Moms three hundred and sixty plan and
an update on where you are sure.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I mean, when I launched the Marshall Plan for Moms,
it was really an up ed because I was sitting
there like angry in my bedroom. You know, I had
a newborn baby, I was homeschooling a six year old
that was saving my nonprofit, Girls Who Code from being
shut down. My entire exsycutive leadership team were working women
and we were just barely making it. And you know,
when they shut down this schools and came up with
(09:01):
this idea of hybrid learning where women would have to
or moms you know, would have to log on their
kids at nine o'clock ten o'clock, which literally then pushed
eleven million of us at the workforce. It just I
kept thinking to myself, like, where's the plan. You know,
you can't lose that many women for the workforce and
just think it's an on and off switch. And so
as I talked to the moms in my PTA, it
(09:21):
was very clear what everybody needed. We needed affordable childcare
because at that time half the daycarees nas were shut
down and we were constantly having to supplement you know,
our paid labor for unpaid labor. You know, we needed
paid leave because so many people were when they were sick,
we had to go back to work because they didn't
have appropriate care. And so it was really clear, right,
(09:42):
and we need to be paid fairly. We took out
an ad in the New York Times basically saying moms
don't work for free. We're not your social safety net.
And President by as you think about what you should
do in the first hundred days, this is what you
should do. And so you know, Marshall Plan for Mom
started off as a campaign two years ago. Now it's
become a nonprofit. If we really want gender quality in
our country, we have to finish the fight for moms.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And I just love how you really shift the narrative
to a need for more structural change. I think one
of the quotes that I've read of you is you said,
stop trying to fix the woman and instead fix the structure.
And I love that because I think as moms and
as women, so many times we're like, wait, what's wrong
with me? I can't find a job, or you know,
(10:24):
like I just I feel like I'm always playing catch up.
And it's maybe it's not about us, Maybe the system
wasn't made to accommodate us.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, and also like, look, how long have we been
talking about gender quality? Like how long have we been
trying to get to fifty to fifty? We're making incremental
progress or rolling it back, And it's because I think
in many ways, we've been focused on the wrong things.
We've been focused on trying to fix women. We think
that suddenly we get to the workforce that the reason
why we're not getting promoted, the reason why we're not excelling,
(10:54):
we're moving upwardly mobile, is because we're missing this skill.
We didn't color code our calendar. We just didn't have
a mentor, we didn't have a sponsor. And we're told
that everything we're given to read is like get more confidence,
embrace your ambition, do a power post before you enter
a meeting, right, so you're made to feel like, well,
I'm the problem. It's me, I'm the one who can't
(11:14):
cut it. We've always treated women in the workforce as
a nice to have and not a must have. And
so if we treated women in the workforces must have,
you would take a step back and say, well, why
are women leaving or downshifting? What are the things that
they need, the support that they need to get them
to stay. How do I offer that? And we know
(11:36):
that the number one thing that women need in order
to stay in the workforce is childcare. And so instead
of treating childcare as your personal problem that you have solved,
we would treat it as an economic issue that society
has to solve.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
For yes, affordable and accessible childcare is our number one
concern and ask, and yet it continues to be this
elusive moving target that gets kicked down the road and
cut from proposed legislation. The US ranks last among forty
one countries in government mandated paid leave for new parents.
(12:15):
The smallest amount of paid leave required in any other
of the forty nations is two months. You're listening to
cashing our trillions. In twenty twenty one, when Congress was
considering the Build Back Better Plan, many parts of the
American Families Plan, including just four weeks a paid family leave,
(12:38):
were cut out. The cost was calculated by the Congressional
Budget Office to be twenty two billion dollars a year,
or two percent of our military budget. But it was
quote unquote too expensive and cut from the plant. So
we're back to nothing. As Reshma points out, this lack
(12:59):
of support for moms maybe a true reflection of our
American value system.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We kind of think in America that women's place is
at home, and so we don't really make it possible
for them to work and have children. You know, if
men bore children, you wouldn't have workplaces that are open
nine to five, in schools that are open eight to three.
You would match those two, right like you would think
a little bit more strategically about how do we design
(13:26):
work at home to make it possible.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
On the topic of strategically designing work in home, let's
talk about the four weeks of paid family leave that
was cut from the American Family's Plan. Okay, so something
is better than nothing, but four weeks we can't even
agree to give moms four weeks of paid leave at
four weeks. Your baby is legally too young to be
(13:52):
accepted by licensed daycare. If you had a c section,
you're not even supposed to be driving at four weeks.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I don't think we we're really a society that values
mothers and children. It's not part of our ethos, it's
not part of our value system. We're I think we're
actually really seeing that and seeing the consequences of that.
So I always say that when we decide as moms,
when we decide enough is enough, it will change. But
yet we too are socialized into being martyrs and thinking, well,
(14:22):
that's just the way it is, and I just got
to either I got to suck it up and kind
of make it happen at all costs and to our
own detriment.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That that totally makes sense. I talked to Mallory McMorrow before,
she's a state senator from Michigan, and she was telling
me she's only the second sitting state senator to give
birth while in office. So if you wonder why there
aren't more laws that are made that are friendly towards mom,
it's because, like a lot of the people who are
in the halls of making decisions, are you know, don't
(14:51):
have our lived experience.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
No, I mean, I mean the workforces were built for
men who had stay at home partners at home, and
the vast majority of people in congress or in state
houses have stayed home, you know, stay at home spouses
that are women that are caring for the kids. And
so they don't have that same sense of this, like
you said, like barely being able to make it because
you're balancing so much that something's got to give it
some point. And so you're not solving for yourself, you're
(15:15):
not solving for a problem that you've actually experienced.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So how can we work together to kind of change this?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I think you finished the fight for quality if you
solve these three things again, our childcare, paid leave, and
pay inequity. So when you talk about the gender pay gap,
the gender pay gap is a motherhood penalty. When moms
are in the workforce and they have a kid, even
if they leave for a handful of months, they never
re enter at the same place. And so and oftentimes
(15:41):
like to get to that, right, we're so desperate to
get back into workforce. What do you say, pay me anything,
Pay me anything, I just want to work so that
gap never actually dissipates. And that's where it started. And
in twenty three straits actually single women without children make
more than men. So it's not a gender pay gap,
(16:01):
and it's not even a care pay gap. It's a
motherhood pay gap. The reality is is that that's an
algorithm solution. Every company can audit their pay look across
their spreadsheet and say am I paying moms different than
I'm paying dads? And literally build an algorithm and fix
it tomorrow. I mean, less than six percent of companies
(16:23):
are off in childcare. We know that moms can lose
forty percent of their income in a year, dads get
a six percent premium. The corporate sector has to stand
up and start seeing childcare as an economic issue and
start making change and instead of what you're seeing is
more of the private such rolling back, especially as we're
impending towards a recession, family friendly policies, and we need
to put an end to that immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
If you want to read more, this is a subject
of Rashma's most recent book, Pay Up, The Future of
Women and Work. It's so relatable and it's empowering because
we can see ourselves in all her anecdotal stories about
surviving motherhood, and she clears lays out the steps for
creating lasting change to really finish this fight for mom.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And so, like, what's I think so upsetting is that
we know what we need to do, but there's not
the will to do it. Listen, I built Girls Who
quote ever raised one hundred million dollars over ten years
run and largest women and girls nonprofit in the world.
We have the most generous policies. You know, when it
comes to paid leave. Everyone's having babies, and let me
(17:27):
tell you, she still gets done and then some right
and then some right. And so this kind of sense
of gloom and doom that if we start offering this
the people take advantage of it and then know who's
going to do the work, it's not true. I think
the second thing is we have to form an apolitical
identity of moms that are pushing for these issues. Again,
(17:49):
in this moment where reproductive rights have been rolled back,
where we've been pushed out of the workforce, where daycare
centers are still shut down, there's been no support given
on fixing the structure of care. You would I think
that women would be solely standing on the sides of
the party that has tried to do the most for them.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But we're not no.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And so until we decide no, no, no no, I am
going to only support the party that actually supports my childcare,
supports my paid leave, pays me fairly, make sure that
my kids don't have to be in shooter drills. Till
we decide enough is enough, nothing will change. No one
is going to save us. We have to save ourselves.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
This season, I'm talking to moms who are doing just that,
creating solutions to save ourselves. Later in the season, you'll
hear from June Care founder and CEO Gretchen Salier, who
created her company to tackle our childcare crisis by connecting
families who need childcare with stay at home parents who
can care for their kids at the local level, moms
(18:49):
are organizing. In another episode, you'll hear from my amazing
mom friends here in Arizona who started getting involved at
the school board level back in twenty twenty and continue
their advocacy as our school boards continued to be ground
zero for fierce culture wars over pronouns, curriculum, and book banning.
(19:10):
Rushma and I continue our conversation about the importance of
engaged moms at the local level. But I did see
the New York City Council pass a childcare legislative package. Yeah,
that included the creation of a Marshall Plan for moms.
So I would assume that a lot of what you
just talked about is going to be incorporated into that
task force. Absolutely walk us through this process, because I
would think other moms who feel inspired by your advocacy
(19:33):
to push for this, can push for something similar in
their own communities.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Handful of moms in the city council were like, we're
going to do this, and so there are moms in
every state legisture and every city council, on every school
board because Sarah, what can we do to again support
and create policies that help us and when we help us,
we help our kids. The marsh it's the first still
for universal childcare. It's again looking at the policies are
(20:00):
happening at every level in the city to see how
we can support mothers. You know, whether it's providing support
for daycare center workers, whether it's increasing the amount of
pay that daycare centers get down, whether it's training zoning laws,
we need to have a task for it's looking at
these issues across the city from every single front, and
I get and you're absolutely right. I think that that's
something that moms across the country can work. I think
(20:21):
that while we might not pass legislation federally for some time,
we have the opportunity to make innovations in the cities
and the states.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
I feel like marshall Plan for Moms has recently waited
into school board politics. There was an attempt to ban
Girls who Codes.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Oh, they were banned. So what happens is I learn
about this ban on a Saturday. I email the school
district like, I'm thinking they're still banned. I found out
on Sunday that they've been unbanned, but they were banned
for a year plus change. The school then denies that
they ever quote banned the books. We then get all
the data, the evidence. It's like crazy, and then finally
(20:59):
this issues like a retractions. Yes we banned the books,
but it was just crazy surreal week where you know, one,
it wasn't just girls who code books that were banned.
It was books about Grace Hopper. I mean, you realize
that they were coming for our bodies and now they're
coming for our minds, and so we really have to
(21:20):
pay attention because again it's it's very hard to know
when books are banned. Who knows, well.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
You have to go into your local school district that
talks about like us moms getting involved in like city politics, right,
because it's all kind of all intertwined. I mean, I
live here in Arizona and we have extremists trying to
take over our school board. They're getting into this. They're
they're coming for us.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
They're coming for They're coming for our girls. They're coming
for our girls. And it has nothing to do with
pornography and all this other stuff that they tried to
distract you from. They're also coming for sex education.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And this is so critical at a time we're area rights,
particularly at a time where actually girls are rich in
puberty much earlier now. So like we have got to
start paying attention. We've got to fight back.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, it's about control.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's about control. It's absolutely about control. And they're so
vicious and intimidating that we are like oh no, no, no, no,
want to get no, no, no, no, no, you have
to get in that arena.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Roll up your sleeves moms. There are so many fronts
where we can work to finish this fight for moms.
We need to push for federal policies, hold corporations accountable
for greater transparency in their childcare and paid leave policies.
And we need to have boots on the ground and
get involved locally. Where Reshma just argued, we may have
(22:46):
the best chance for an acting, meaningful change, and we
can explore and engage in the new frontier of Web three.
Don't worry. I have you covered later in the season,
and I have gen x NFT founder Sarah Monson talk
all things Web three and creating a community of and
(23:07):
four moms in this space. In the meantime, check out
Choice dow, a global community of volunteer activists and Web
three enthusiasts who are funding and engaging in the fight
for reproductive rights. Oh yeah, Reshma's a founding member. Can
we talk a little bit about your involvement with Choice
(23:27):
Dow too. I think when we talk about sure, I'm
having to advocate for institutional structural change, book banning, you know,
limiting women's rights to abortion. This is all really connected
and it's a concerted effort to hold us back. So
I just think it's so brilliant your involvement with Choice
dow as testament how we're just going to collace around
shared interests and communities in the future.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Choice dow is essentially ability to use Web three to
kind of, like again, gather resources, support, boots on the ground,
and money, you know, to find and money to make
sure that we have reproductive access and the new innovations happen.
And we have to basically get involved in every single
space and Web three people would say it's so browie
it's only men, but no, it's it's women too. But
(24:10):
we have to get more women involved. And I think
the movements of the future are going to involve Web
three es and so we have to be a part
of that and learn from it. So it's been an
amazing kind of experience and learning how you put a
dowt together, How does it work? How you create a
platform where everybody can kind of get involved and vote
and participate, that no one owns anything, that everybody has
(24:32):
a voice.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Is it mostly moms in this now?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, it's mostly actually not moms.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
We need to get more moms in here.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Look, I think that like moms are really tired, and
I think we define a lots of different ways to
engage moms in the political process and figure out how
we can meet them where they're at. I mean, that's
what we're doing at the Marshal Plant for moms and
the mom's army that we're building as we move into
the next two to four years, because we got to
fight at all fronts, you know, because it's coming for
us at all fronts.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
My last question our our guests is how will you
cash your trillions?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to cash my trillions on moms and unorganizing
moms and finish this fight.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I'm with you, Rashm. Thanks for listening and joining me
on this first episode of Cashing Our Trillions. I'm so
excited to have you all on board, and I can't
wait to introduce you to all the amazing moms I've
had the honor to speak to this season. See you
(25:30):
next week. This episode was produced by me and sound
edited by Shen. Cashing Our Trillions is part of the
Seneca Women Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a
story to share, please email us at Cashingartrillions at gmail
(25:50):
dot com. Make sure you subscribe to the show on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts, and
if you liked what you heard, please take a moment
to rate and review it. It would really mean so
much to me. Thank you for listening.
Hi there. I'm Yvaughn and the reason I'm in your
ears right now is because I won a radio contest.
First off winning Amazing radio contests runs in the family.
In nineteen seventy one, my teenage mom Maureen won the
(00:23):
full set of Elvis Presley LPs for calling into her
local Canadian radio station. Amazing, right, I grew up listening
to all those records. So back to my story. I'm
an iHeart country listener and on one of my weekly
solo grocery runs aka mom Vacation, I heard an ad
(00:43):
sponsored by Seneca Woman and iHeartRadio searching for the next
great female podcaster. And this is the clincher, followed by
the Cody Johnson song Till You Can't. So I'm not
a big name podcaster with a budget to boot, so
I can't play you the song. And I'm gonna spare
you me singing the lyrics. But it goes if you've
(01:06):
got a dream, chase it, because a dream won't chase
you back. And something about that moment made me think,
you know, what the heck, why not why not give
it a try. As a mom, I'm always telling my
boys go for it. You never know if you don't try.
So this is definitely me taking a dose of my
(01:27):
own medicine, and thanks Cody Johnson for the extra push.
So when I got home, I googled Seneca Woman. I
had a vague idea of the organization founded by Kim Azzarelli,
an ambassador of Milan Vivie, and I knew the name
(01:50):
was a non Seneca Falls, a beautiful hamlet in the
Fingerlakes region of New York, the birthplace of women's rights
and also where my husband and I fell in love
twenty years ago. It felt like serendipity. I distinctly remember
staring at the website, scanning the faces of all these
women I've admired at all stages of my life and thinking,
(02:14):
Oh my gosh, like, how do I properly honor the
mission of this amazing organization. I'm looking at Andrea Jung
literally my mirror growing up. I remember receiving the Avon
catalogs and seeing her signature pearls and red lip, and
aspiring to be just as glamorous and as accomplished as
(02:35):
her one day. Diane van Forstenburg and Tory Birch my
dream team wardrobe staples during my working Days, Valerie Jarrett, Arizona,
Homegrown Cowgirl, Sandra Day O'Connor, Malala, Rushma Sho, Johnny who
is my inaugural guest, and my personal hero, Ambassador Madeleine Albright.
(02:55):
I have called seven American cities home since graduating from
George Town School Foreign Service, and I've purged so many
possessions along the way, But my signed copy of Madame's
Secretary remains one of my most treasured possessions. So where
do I fit it? In twenty twenty, a New York
Times article revealed that the economic windfall of American women's
(03:20):
unpaid hours of work around the house and caring for
relatives totaled one point five trillion dollars. And that's a
conservative estimate using minimum wage pre rampant inflation. So I
can relate as a stay at home mom for the
last ten years, one hundred percent of my work is unpaid.
(03:40):
You know, I'm very thankful for the privilege our family
can live off one income, which affords me the time
to dedicate myself to my boys and, more recently, my
community advocacy work promoting Asian American civic rights. But as
a former working girl, it really took me time to
come to terms that my self worth is not related
to my paycheck. For those of you who know me personally,
(04:04):
you know I like to dream of manifesting my aspirational thoughts.
So when I saw this number one point five trillion dollars,
you know that's eleven zeros, right, I thought, what would
it be like if woman cashed all these trillions? Imagine
if we monetize all this free work we do so
(04:28):
much would be different me Obviously economically we'd be better off,
but also socially, our work and our services would be valued.
At our iHeart podcast launch event, Milan from Seneca woman
said where there is an equal representation, public discourse is
short changed, and her words just really impacted me. Moms
(04:52):
need to be part of the conversation, and more than ever,
with so much social angst and uncertainty, we need to
be heard. My hope is that increasing public discourse around
moms will ultimately help in our progress to promote gender
equity and inclusive economic growth. This year, I hit a
(05:20):
big mom milestone. My youngest started part time preschool, which
means that for the first time in the ten years
since I became a full time mom, I had a
block of free time during the day, so I'm spending
part of that Okay, honestly a big chunk of that
time writing, interviewing, producing, and hosting this podcast. Since becoming
(05:43):
a mom, so much of my joy and achievements and
just life in general is tied to my boys. And
it hit me recently that cashing our trillions is the
first thing in a while that I've done by myself
for myself, and I got a say, it feels amazing.
I'm finding this community of moms that have such powerful
(06:07):
and impactful stories to share, and it's really breathed new
purpose into my life. I'm truly thankful for this platform
and thank you listeners for joining me on this ride.
So come on, moms, chase this stream with me. My
(06:31):
first guest is Reshma show Johnny. She is a leading
activist and the founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First.
She's spent more than a decade building movements to fight
for women and girls' economic empowerment, working to close the
gender gap in the tech sector, and most recently, advocating
for policies to support moms impacted by the pandemic. Mom's
(06:55):
First is a national movement with the purpose to enact
sweeping cultural change to value women's unseen and unpaid work
and rebuild our broken system to make it possible for
women to work and have kids. She's the mother of
two boys, Sean sixth and Side one. I just want
(07:17):
to note we recorded this episode before Mom's First name change,
so you'll hear us referring to the organization's previous name,
Marshall Plan for Moms. The name changed to Moms First
is a reflection of the progress Russia has made in
the last two years and a rallying cry to expand
the movement they've built together to finally put Mom's first Rashvin,
(07:45):
I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. As
you know, Catching Our Trillions is about centering the story
of moms and bring light and hopefully quantifying the unpaid
work we perform sustain our economy and our society. And
I just really admire the work that you do to
bring a voice and a face to our cause. So
first off, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I distinctly remember back in twenty twenty one when I
saw the New York Times for full page ad for
Marshall Plan for Moms. Everyone in our nation was still
under some type of COVID lockdown and zoom schools. This
is all like a real reality and just a raw
feeling for us. So seeing that ad just felt so empowering.
Everything you said really just really made sense, so powerful,
(08:29):
like put dollar figures on our work and pay us right.
So maybe start by giving us an overview of the
Marshall Plan for Moms three hundred and sixty plan and
an update on where you are sure.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I mean, when I launched the Marshall Plan for Moms,
it was really an up ed because I was sitting
there like angry in my bedroom. You know, I had
a newborn baby, I was homeschooling a six year old
that was saving my nonprofit, Girls Who Code from being
shut down. My entire exsycutive leadership team were working women
and we were just barely making it. And you know,
when they shut down this schools and came up with
(09:01):
this idea of hybrid learning where women would have to
or moms you know, would have to log on their
kids at nine o'clock ten o'clock, which literally then pushed
eleven million of us at the workforce. It just I
kept thinking to myself, like, where's the plan. You know,
you can't lose that many women for the workforce and
just think it's an on and off switch. And so
as I talked to the moms in my PTA, it
(09:21):
was very clear what everybody needed. We needed affordable childcare
because at that time half the daycarees nas were shut
down and we were constantly having to supplement you know,
our paid labor for unpaid labor. You know, we needed
paid leave because so many people were when they were sick,
we had to go back to work because they didn't
have appropriate care. And so it was really clear, right,
(09:42):
and we need to be paid fairly. We took out
an ad in the New York Times basically saying moms
don't work for free. We're not your social safety net.
And President by as you think about what you should
do in the first hundred days, this is what you
should do. And so you know, Marshall Plan for Mom
started off as a campaign two years ago. Now it's
become a nonprofit. If we really want gender quality in
our country, we have to finish the fight for moms.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
And I just love how you really shift the narrative
to a need for more structural change. I think one
of the quotes that I've read of you is you said,
stop trying to fix the woman and instead fix the structure.
And I love that because I think as moms and
as women, so many times we're like, wait, what's wrong
with me? I can't find a job, or you know,
(10:24):
like I just I feel like I'm always playing catch up.
And it's maybe it's not about us, Maybe the system
wasn't made to accommodate us.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, and also like, look, how long have we been
talking about gender quality? Like how long have we been
trying to get to fifty to fifty? We're making incremental
progress or rolling it back, And it's because I think
in many ways, we've been focused on the wrong things.
We've been focused on trying to fix women. We think
that suddenly we get to the workforce that the reason
why we're not getting promoted, the reason why we're not excelling,
(10:54):
we're moving upwardly mobile, is because we're missing this skill.
We didn't color code our calendar. We just didn't have
a mentor, we didn't have a sponsor. And we're told
that everything we're given to read is like get more confidence,
embrace your ambition, do a power post before you enter
a meeting, right, so you're made to feel like, well,
I'm the problem. It's me, I'm the one who can't
(11:14):
cut it. We've always treated women in the workforce as
a nice to have and not a must have. And
so if we treated women in the workforces must have,
you would take a step back and say, well, why
are women leaving or downshifting? What are the things that
they need, the support that they need to get them
to stay. How do I offer that? And we know
(11:36):
that the number one thing that women need in order
to stay in the workforce is childcare. And so instead
of treating childcare as your personal problem that you have solved,
we would treat it as an economic issue that society
has to solve.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
For yes, affordable and accessible childcare is our number one
concern and ask, and yet it continues to be this
elusive moving target that gets kicked down the road and
cut from proposed legislation. The US ranks last among forty
one countries in government mandated paid leave for new parents.
(12:15):
The smallest amount of paid leave required in any other
of the forty nations is two months. You're listening to
cashing our trillions. In twenty twenty one, when Congress was
considering the Build Back Better Plan, many parts of the
American Families Plan, including just four weeks a paid family leave,
(12:38):
were cut out. The cost was calculated by the Congressional
Budget Office to be twenty two billion dollars a year,
or two percent of our military budget. But it was
quote unquote too expensive and cut from the plant. So
we're back to nothing. As Reshma points out, this lack
(12:59):
of support for moms maybe a true reflection of our
American value system.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
We kind of think in America that women's place is
at home, and so we don't really make it possible
for them to work and have children. You know, if
men bore children, you wouldn't have workplaces that are open
nine to five, in schools that are open eight to three.
You would match those two, right like you would think
a little bit more strategically about how do we design
(13:26):
work at home to make it possible.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
On the topic of strategically designing work in home, let's
talk about the four weeks of paid family leave that
was cut from the American Family's Plan. Okay, so something
is better than nothing, but four weeks we can't even
agree to give moms four weeks of paid leave at
four weeks. Your baby is legally too young to be
(13:52):
accepted by licensed daycare. If you had a c section,
you're not even supposed to be driving at four weeks.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I don't think we we're really a society that values
mothers and children. It's not part of our ethos, it's
not part of our value system. We're I think we're
actually really seeing that and seeing the consequences of that.
So I always say that when we decide as moms,
when we decide enough is enough, it will change. But
yet we too are socialized into being martyrs and thinking, well,
(14:22):
that's just the way it is, and I just got
to either I got to suck it up and kind
of make it happen at all costs and to our
own detriment.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
That that totally makes sense. I talked to Mallory McMorrow before,
she's a state senator from Michigan, and she was telling
me she's only the second sitting state senator to give
birth while in office. So if you wonder why there
aren't more laws that are made that are friendly towards mom,
it's because, like a lot of the people who are
in the halls of making decisions, are you know, don't
(14:51):
have our lived experience.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
No, I mean, I mean the workforces were built for
men who had stay at home partners at home, and
the vast majority of people in congress or in state
houses have stayed home, you know, stay at home spouses
that are women that are caring for the kids. And
so they don't have that same sense of this, like
you said, like barely being able to make it because
you're balancing so much that something's got to give it
some point. And so you're not solving for yourself, you're
(15:15):
not solving for a problem that you've actually experienced.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
So how can we work together to kind of change this?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I think you finished the fight for quality if you
solve these three things again, our childcare, paid leave, and
pay inequity. So when you talk about the gender pay gap,
the gender pay gap is a motherhood penalty. When moms
are in the workforce and they have a kid, even
if they leave for a handful of months, they never
re enter at the same place. And so and oftentimes
(15:41):
like to get to that, right, we're so desperate to
get back into workforce. What do you say, pay me anything,
Pay me anything, I just want to work so that
gap never actually dissipates. And that's where it started. And
in twenty three straits actually single women without children make
more than men. So it's not a gender pay gap,
(16:01):
and it's not even a care pay gap. It's a
motherhood pay gap. The reality is is that that's an
algorithm solution. Every company can audit their pay look across
their spreadsheet and say am I paying moms different than
I'm paying dads? And literally build an algorithm and fix
it tomorrow. I mean, less than six percent of companies
(16:23):
are off in childcare. We know that moms can lose
forty percent of their income in a year, dads get
a six percent premium. The corporate sector has to stand
up and start seeing childcare as an economic issue and
start making change and instead of what you're seeing is
more of the private such rolling back, especially as we're
impending towards a recession, family friendly policies, and we need
to put an end to that immediately.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
If you want to read more, this is a subject
of Rashma's most recent book, Pay Up, The Future of
Women and Work. It's so relatable and it's empowering because
we can see ourselves in all her anecdotal stories about
surviving motherhood, and she clears lays out the steps for
creating lasting change to really finish this fight for mom.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
And so, like, what's I think so upsetting is that
we know what we need to do, but there's not
the will to do it. Listen, I built Girls Who
quote ever raised one hundred million dollars over ten years
run and largest women and girls nonprofit in the world.
We have the most generous policies. You know, when it
comes to paid leave. Everyone's having babies, and let me
(17:27):
tell you, she still gets done and then some right
and then some right. And so this kind of sense
of gloom and doom that if we start offering this
the people take advantage of it and then know who's
going to do the work, it's not true. I think
the second thing is we have to form an apolitical
identity of moms that are pushing for these issues. Again,
(17:49):
in this moment where reproductive rights have been rolled back,
where we've been pushed out of the workforce, where daycare
centers are still shut down, there's been no support given
on fixing the structure of care. You would I think
that women would be solely standing on the sides of
the party that has tried to do the most for them.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But we're not no.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And so until we decide no, no, no no, I am
going to only support the party that actually supports my childcare,
supports my paid leave, pays me fairly, make sure that
my kids don't have to be in shooter drills. Till
we decide enough is enough, nothing will change. No one
is going to save us. We have to save ourselves.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
This season, I'm talking to moms who are doing just that,
creating solutions to save ourselves. Later in the season, you'll
hear from June Care founder and CEO Gretchen Salier, who
created her company to tackle our childcare crisis by connecting
families who need childcare with stay at home parents who
can care for their kids at the local level, moms
(18:49):
are organizing. In another episode, you'll hear from my amazing
mom friends here in Arizona who started getting involved at
the school board level back in twenty twenty and continue
their advocacy as our school boards continued to be ground
zero for fierce culture wars over pronouns, curriculum, and book banning.
(19:10):
Rushma and I continue our conversation about the importance of
engaged moms at the local level. But I did see
the New York City Council pass a childcare legislative package. Yeah,
that included the creation of a Marshall Plan for moms.
So I would assume that a lot of what you
just talked about is going to be incorporated into that
task force. Absolutely walk us through this process, because I
would think other moms who feel inspired by your advocacy
(19:33):
to push for this, can push for something similar in
their own communities.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Handful of moms in the city council were like, we're
going to do this, and so there are moms in
every state legisture and every city council, on every school
board because Sarah, what can we do to again support
and create policies that help us and when we help us,
we help our kids. The marsh it's the first still
for universal childcare. It's again looking at the policies are
(20:00):
happening at every level in the city to see how
we can support mothers. You know, whether it's providing support
for daycare center workers, whether it's increasing the amount of
pay that daycare centers get down, whether it's training zoning laws,
we need to have a task for it's looking at
these issues across the city from every single front, and
I get and you're absolutely right. I think that that's
something that moms across the country can work. I think
(20:21):
that while we might not pass legislation federally for some time,
we have the opportunity to make innovations in the cities
and the states.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
I feel like marshall Plan for Moms has recently waited
into school board politics. There was an attempt to ban
Girls who Codes.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Oh, they were banned. So what happens is I learn
about this ban on a Saturday. I email the school
district like, I'm thinking they're still banned. I found out
on Sunday that they've been unbanned, but they were banned
for a year plus change. The school then denies that
they ever quote banned the books. We then get all
the data, the evidence. It's like crazy, and then finally
(20:59):
this issues like a retractions. Yes we banned the books,
but it was just crazy surreal week where you know, one,
it wasn't just girls who code books that were banned.
It was books about Grace Hopper. I mean, you realize
that they were coming for our bodies and now they're
coming for our minds, and so we really have to
(21:20):
pay attention because again it's it's very hard to know
when books are banned. Who knows, well.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
You have to go into your local school district that
talks about like us moms getting involved in like city politics, right,
because it's all kind of all intertwined. I mean, I
live here in Arizona and we have extremists trying to
take over our school board. They're getting into this. They're
they're coming for us.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
They're coming for They're coming for our girls. They're coming
for our girls. And it has nothing to do with
pornography and all this other stuff that they tried to
distract you from. They're also coming for sex education.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And this is so critical at a time we're area rights,
particularly at a time where actually girls are rich in
puberty much earlier now. So like we have got to
start paying attention. We've got to fight back.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, it's about control.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's about control. It's absolutely about control. And they're so
vicious and intimidating that we are like oh no, no, no, no,
want to get no, no, no, no, no, you have
to get in that arena.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Roll up your sleeves moms. There are so many fronts
where we can work to finish this fight for moms.
We need to push for federal policies, hold corporations accountable
for greater transparency in their childcare and paid leave policies.
And we need to have boots on the ground and
get involved locally. Where Reshma just argued, we may have
(22:46):
the best chance for an acting, meaningful change, and we
can explore and engage in the new frontier of Web three.
Don't worry. I have you covered later in the season,
and I have gen x NFT founder Sarah Monson talk
all things Web three and creating a community of and
(23:07):
four moms in this space. In the meantime, check out
Choice dow, a global community of volunteer activists and Web
three enthusiasts who are funding and engaging in the fight
for reproductive rights. Oh yeah, Reshma's a founding member. Can
we talk a little bit about your involvement with Choice
(23:27):
Dow too. I think when we talk about sure, I'm
having to advocate for institutional structural change, book banning, you know,
limiting women's rights to abortion. This is all really connected
and it's a concerted effort to hold us back. So
I just think it's so brilliant your involvement with Choice
dow as testament how we're just going to collace around
shared interests and communities in the future.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Choice dow is essentially ability to use Web three to
kind of, like again, gather resources, support, boots on the ground,
and money, you know, to find and money to make
sure that we have reproductive access and the new innovations happen.
And we have to basically get involved in every single
space and Web three people would say it's so browie
it's only men, but no, it's it's women too. But
(24:10):
we have to get more women involved. And I think
the movements of the future are going to involve Web
three es and so we have to be a part
of that and learn from it. So it's been an
amazing kind of experience and learning how you put a
dowt together, How does it work? How you create a
platform where everybody can kind of get involved and vote
and participate, that no one owns anything, that everybody has
(24:32):
a voice.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Is it mostly moms in this now?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, it's mostly actually not moms.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
We need to get more moms in here.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Look, I think that like moms are really tired, and
I think we define a lots of different ways to
engage moms in the political process and figure out how
we can meet them where they're at. I mean, that's
what we're doing at the Marshal Plant for moms and
the mom's army that we're building as we move into
the next two to four years, because we got to
fight at all fronts, you know, because it's coming for
us at all fronts.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
My last question our our guests is how will you
cash your trillions?
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to cash my trillions on moms and unorganizing
moms and finish this fight.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I'm with you, Rashm. Thanks for listening and joining me
on this first episode of Cashing Our Trillions. I'm so
excited to have you all on board, and I can't
wait to introduce you to all the amazing moms I've
had the honor to speak to this season. See you
(25:30):
next week. This episode was produced by me and sound
edited by Shen. Cashing Our Trillions is part of the
Seneca Women Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. If you have a
story to share, please email us at Cashingartrillions at gmail
(25:50):
dot com. Make sure you subscribe to the show on
the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts, and
if you liked what you heard, please take a moment
to rate and review it. It would really mean so
much to me. Thank you for listening.
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