Cecille Joan Avila is a policy analyst at Boston University School of Public Health. She tweets @cecilleavila.
Paid family and medical leave has been the main focus lately, but paid sick leave is equally important. I talk more about its importance and why it matters for women’s health in Prism:
[Paid sick leave] addresses those who hold up society but are often invisible. They are women and nonbinary folk, and especially those who either choose not to have children, or cannot bear the children they want. They are the women who care for family members in need at home after long days of caring for others in medical facilities. They are the women with no one to depend on but themselves, who still care for the needs of others by working hourly shifts at the grocery store or holding service industry jobs—deemed essential last year, but since forgotten.
Whether an individual has paid sick leave currently depends either on the state they reside in or their employer. Continuing without a federal paid sick leave policy will only serve to exacerbate pre-existing disparities, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic eases in parts of the United States. Read the full piece, here!
Research for this piece was supported by Arnold Ventures.
