Equal Pay, Health Care, and Access: What a Biden Presidency Means for Women

The longtime champion for equal rights is getting ready to launch his bold, comprehensive plan to further women’s economic and physical security.

The women have spoken, or rather, they have voted. Particularly women of color, who overwhelmingly said they voted for Joe Biden for president of the US. In fact, preliminary results from exit polls conducted by Edison Research suggest nearly 9 in 10 Black women voted for Biden, while roughly 7 in 10 Latina women said they voted for the president-elect.  

“For me, it was really a no brainer: Who else has my best interests at heart? Who else has shown me that, consistently?” Ann V. Tudela, a Peruvian American from Miami-Dade County, told The Americano. “He’s been [fighting for women’s rights] for years.”

A Longtime Ally

As president, Biden has promised to pursue a comprehensive plan to further women’s economic and physical security, as well as ensure that women can fully exercise their civil rights. But this is not a new agenda for the man who in the early 1990s worked to recruit more women to run for the US Senate, and then urged them to become members of the Judiciary Committee.

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Biden also introduced and worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)—back in the day when some still questioned whether spousal abuse was really its own kind of crime—and called the legislation that was first signed into law 25 years ago, his “proudest” moment in the Senate.

‘A Champion for Women’

The women who worked closely with Biden during his long government career agree he “consistently selected women for senior staff roles, treated them with respect, and gave them opportunities to blaze new trails,” said Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, former deputy secretary of energy, NSC official and Biden Senate staff member. Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice has called him “a champion for women.”  

Granted, that is a broad, often-used term during elections. But in the case of Joe Biden, its meaning can be found not only in the political arena but, most tellingly, in the personal moments that take place away from the cameras.

Elizabeth Alexander, former press secretary to then-Sen. Biden, recalls times when Biden would tell male staffers and senators who were repeatedly interrupting a woman to pipe down, so he could hear what she was trying to say.

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“[Then] there’s the time another senator asked one of his female staffers to make coffee. [Biden’s] response, that female staffer later told me, was that he’d make the coffee instead,” says Alexander.

What Women Want

Aware that women hold only 32% of the wealth men have accumulated, and that women of color only hold pennies on every dollar a white man holds, Biden’s plan aims to:

• Ensure equal pay for women as well as promote investing in women-owned small businesses.

• Expand access to education and training, and strengthen pay and benefits in careers disproportionately filled by women.

• Facilitate access to health care and access to high-quality, affordable health care for all women, including veteran, incarcerated and LGBTQ women.  

• In the United States, women overwhelmingly take on the responsibility of caring for their families. Biden, who has taken care of aging parents and has been a single parent, wants to bolster access to affordable child care, and care for older Americans and people with disabilities, as well as provide paid leave and other workplace benefits and protections.

Read Biden’s Plan for Women HERE.