Just three weeks before the election, Forbes spoke with Reshma Saujani, founder of the advocacy organization Moms First, about her efforts to raise child care as an issue in this year’s presidential election. Excerpts from the conversation below have been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about how you pushed this issue in the election.
When I started this work a couple of years ago, I would talk to politicians and I'd say, why have we not passed child care? And they’d say, the problem is, it’s like number 13 on the list. It will never get done unless it’s prioritized.
We developed a strategy of how we get child care asked as a question [during the debates]. We got 15,000 moms to sign our petition. We reached out to women and moms inside the organization and said use your power or your influence to elevate this issue. And it happened. The question got asked. Both the candidates, Trump and Biden (at the time), just decided to talk about their golf game instead.
Then I got the opportunity to ask a question at [the Economic Club of New York]. … His people were informed of the kinds of questions he might get asked. … He was not prepared. He kind of botches the answer, and it becomes one of the viral clips of this election cycle. What was remarkable after that … was every single network was talking and debating about how to fix child care. Not just about his answer, but how do you fix child care?
So when the V.P. debate comes around, our question is front and center. They spent eight minutes talking about it. … You then see both of the candidates release statements or include in their policy platform their positions on child care. We made child care a central issue in this election. I think it just showed us we as moms have more power than we know.
What have they not yet said about what they're going to do that you want to hear?
One, I want to see more specifics. Two, I want to get a hard commitment that in the first 100 days this will be one of their priority issues. For both the candidates.
Child care as a business model is broken. You have a market issue and a supply issue. The government, quite frankly, with some help from the private sector, is the only one that can actually offer the subsidy to make it affordable for parents.
What about employers? What more could they be pushing the government to do?
It's no secret, whether it’s paid leave or child care, businesses have often been an impediment to passing legislation. So that has to change. That’s a lot of the work we’ve done at Moms First—really making it clear that it’s an economic issue. … I think in the pandemic, employers realized how much balancing women were doing because of child care.
Secondly, while we’re waiting for government to get it together, [employers] have to kind of fill in. More companies need to be offering child care benefits, child care subsidies. ... What are you [as an employer] doing from a leadership perspective to solve the child care problems in the community that you’re in?
What role do you see entrepreneurs playing in solving the child care crisis?
The [child care] industry is a multibillion dollar industry. It is ripe for disruption. … but in this moment where it's so hard to be an entrepreneur because of funding [shortages], I've seen a lot of innovations that are not getting their next round of funding. We're not seeing it through.
Has this year’s campaign gotten you more support from employers?
This has been probably one of the biggest professional accomplishments of my life—to see how how child care became elevated as an issue. … How do we make child care an economic issue? Check. How do we get it elevated as a top-tier issue that policymakers will start thinking about? Check. Now the next stage is how do we get it done? We've never been this close.
Well, there was the 1970s, when we almost had universal child care.
Yes. That was the last time we were this close.
We’ve grown by like 100%. When I started, people were like what are you doing? Why are you focused on moms? … It is easier to get companies to get buy in on this issue now. It no longer feels political. It feels economic. It's easier to get funding—and high-level funding—now.
What else are you up to these days?
I’ve just launched a new podcast on midlife. It is tied to our work.
We soul crush American women by making it so damn hard every step of the way, whether it is not being able to find child care, whether it's mental health issues, whether it's about our schools, whether it's about our promotions and job prospects. … For me, this podcast is to make women recognize that. It's a ruse, and we're falling for it. This could actually be the most powerful time of our lives. | 
