73% of private sector workers have no access to paid family leave. For the lowest-wage workers — disproportionately women, and even more so women of color — that number climbs to 95%.
In 2025, 11.3 million workers needed family leave — to recover after birth, care for a new baby, or tend to a sick family member — and couldn’t take it. Two-thirds say the reason was simple: they couldn’t afford to go without a paycheck. In the 37 states without paid leave programs, women lose an estimated $19 billion in wages every year.
A door was supposed to open in 1993. For most workers, it never did.
In 1984, Donna Lenhoff — general counsel at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund — typed the outline of what would become the Family and Medical Leave Act. After a federal court struck down California’s maternity leave law as discriminatory against men, she decided to reimagine it entirely. Not maternity leave. Family and medical leave. Gender-neutral, broad enough to cover childbirth, illness, and caregiving — built to last.
The following nine years, Lenhoff and her colleagues built a 200 person coalition that stretched across ideological lines, and fought to introduce the bill to Congress every single year. Blocked repeatedly by entrenched, well-funded opponents. Passed twice. Vetoed twice. They kept going.
In 1993, President Clinton signed the FMLA less than a month after his inauguration, calling it a response to a “substantial and growing need”. Donna and her coalition settled for unpaid because they feared anything more wouldn’t pass. Thirty-two years later, the U.S. remains the only wealthy nation on earth with no guaranteed paid family leave at the federal level.
Carrying the Flag
Chamber of Mothers is a nonpartisan nonprofit organizing mothers as a political force. With more than 45 local chapters, they’ve held over 60 bipartisan meetings with Congress — turning lived experience into legislative pressure on paid leave, childcare, and maternal health. They’ve been consulted by members of Congress on childcare policy and paid leave proposals, and in 2024 partnered with the White House to convene global leaders to co-design a new way forward for American mothers and families. Their chapters don’t just show up in D.C. — they testify before state legislatures, organize community resources, and run for office.
Moms First, founded by Reshma Saujani, is mobilizing the 85 million moms in the U.S. alongside businesses, employers, and allies to make paid leave and affordable childcare the baseline, not the exception. During the 2024 presidential election, Moms First elevated childcare as a top economic issue and secured on-the-record commitments from both major party campaigns — a historic first. They’re also building tools — like PaidLeave.ai — to make sure benefits actually reach the mothers they’re meant to serve. The fight for paid leave, Saujani argues, is the unfinished business of gender equality — and Moms First isn’t waiting for Washington to catch up.
The Coalition Keeps Growing
Donna started writing. Two hundred people helped her fight. Chamber of Mothers and Moms First are making sure it doesn’t stop here — and they’re doing it with a coalition Donna could only have dreamed of. Because the math has always been on our side: 85 million mothers, decades of overwhelming public support, a policy every other wealthy nation on earth has managed to figure out. What’s missing isn’t the will of the people. It’s the political will of the people we elect.
This Women’s History Month, we honor Donna Lenhoff’s relentless fighting — and every advocate who has refused to accept that the richest nation on earth can’t afford to pay mothers to recover. The fight for paid family leave isn’t history. It’s happening right now. And it won’t stop until every mother and birthing person gets the time they deserve.
Ready to act? Here’s where to start:
- Call your representatives and urge them to support the FAMILY Act — legislation currently in Congress that would guarantee up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for nearly every working person in the U.S., regardless of where they live or work. Find your senator at senate.gov and your House rep at house.gov.
- Follow and amplify @chamberofmothers and @momsfirst.us — two organizations on the front lines of this fight, turning the power of millions of mothers into real legislative pressure.
- Know your rights. If you or someone you know needs to navigate existing leave benefits, PaidLeave.ai is a free tool built to help you find and access what you’re already entitled to.
