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For Immediate Release: March 24, 2009
Contact: Ranit Schmelzer or Adrienne Ammerman, 202-588-5180
Remarks of Marcia Greenberger
Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center
at the
Democratic Women’s Working Group Discussion on the Benefits to Women and Children on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes a number of measures that are especially important to women and children. Today, I’ve been asked to touch briefly on two areas: child care and education.
The Recovery Act included $2 billion in additional funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant – which means that states will soon be receiving something they have not seen in a long time: new federal funds for child care. This presents states with a tremendous opportunity to assist more low-income families with child care costs. And at a time when federal child care assistance is provided to only one in seven eligible children, this infusion is long overdue.
States with waiting lists will now be able to serve more families and states that currently do not have waiting lists can make more families eligible by raising their income eligibility limits. The new funding will also enable states to improve the quality of care, with a substantial amount of funding targeted toward improving the quality of care for infants and toddlers. In addition, the Act provides $1 billion for Head Start and $1.1 billion for Early Head Start.
With these measures, the Recovery Act will help parents afford the child care they need to work, reduce parents’ financial burdens during these difficult economic times, and provide more children the safe, stable care and early learning experiences they need. It will also create or save jobs for child care providers – who are primarily women – and help them keep their programs in business.
The Act also includes essential funding for education – including early education – and education and job training. The Act allocates $53.6 billion to the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund to support education, which will be used, among other purposes, to improve educational outcomes for students and avoid teacher layoffs. The Recovery Act also includes $13 billion for education programs for disadvantaged children, which could include early childhood programs; over $11 billion to local education agencies for Individuals with Disabilities Education Act programs for children ages 3 to 21; and over $15 billion to increase the maximum Pell grant by $500 over two years. The ability to afford college is important for everyone, but for women especially, it is a matter of dollars and cents. It is not until the average woman has some college education that she is able to earn more than the average man who lacks a high school diploma.
Finally, the Act also includes substantial investments for training and employment services for dislocated workers, youth and adults. For example, it designates $20 million for transportation and technology training for minorities, women and economically disadvantaged individuals. Because many of the jobs to be created with Recovery Act funds are in fields that are nontraditional for women, training is particularly important to enable them to gain the benefits of these jobs. And at a time of record-level unemployment, when over 14 million women – many of them single heads of households – are poor, this funding is critically needed.
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