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Like many black women in the south, I come from a family of carers. Almost every woman on my mother’s side – my mother, aunts, grandmother, and great-grandmother – cared for white families on the separated Mississippi Gulf Coast. Their stories are the story of the American economy: they are based on the backs of black women who have been undervalued, underprotected, and underpaid for centuries. For generations, the economy has left caregivers and families who need care but cannot afford it. And children whose education depends on the zip code in which they were born.

Over the past two years in Virginia we have made intergenerational strides to eradicate systemic inequalities and exclusions that have been burned into our systems. I brought in my personal experiences to drive this generation forward. In honor of the domestic workers in my family and with the help of Care In Action advocates, I fought to pass the Bill of Rights for Domestic Workers to make Virginia the first state in the south to protect workers by ending Jim Crow exclusions from the era of the minimum wage, anti-discrimination laws, health and safety laws in the workplace, and protection against wage theft. This draft law corresponds to the federal legislation proposed by the Senate at the time. Kamala Harris. And just last week I was partying with domestic and domestic workers when the minimum wage in Virginia rose for the first time since 2009.

Today, as we rebuild from COVID, our approach in Virginia needs to build on that of the Biden-Harris administration: We need to better redeem by eliminating inequalities in our economic and educational systems that the COVID-19 crisis exposed and exacerbated Has.

America relies more than ever on the care industry to keep the country moving. And childcare is at the interface between black women in the workforce and black mothers who raise children. But the rising cost of childcare has exacerbated inequality in education, 154,000 black women across the country left the workforce alone in December, and caregivers – who are disproportionately black women – are still one of the most underpaid groups in the country. To close the performance gap, support black mothers, and pay black women the wages they deserve, we need to introduce universal childcare.

As governor, I will model Virginia.

Prior to the pandemic, Virginia was facing a crisis in childcare affordability – ranked 41st nationwide in childcare affordability. During the pandemic, nearly 40% of childcare facilities closed their doors. Because of this, I was the first Virginia gubernatorial candidate that year to ever call for universal childcare and early childhood education to be introduced to every family in the Commonwealth. My plan is investing $ 4 billion in our early childhood system and making childcare a public necessity, not a luxury.

This investment has brought immediate benefits: higher educational outcomes for mothers, increased parental participation and subsequent increases in family income. Early childhood education programs for marginalized communities demonstrate the long-term success of childcare and early education, including a 39% increase in IQ rates by age 5 and a 17% increase in graduation rates.

We start by setting the cost of childcare. When I became the first pregnant delegate in Virginia’s history, I learned firsthand how difficult it can be to find quality, affordable childcare.

Working mothers, especially working black mothers, have been hardest hit by childcare closures over the past year, and the impossible decision to leave the workforce to look after children has remained. Across the country, black families are more likely to live in “childcare deserts” and more often cite costs as an obstacle to finding childcare than white families. And COVID-19 has made it even more difficult to find affordable childcare. No family should choose between keeping their job and looking after their child.

So, as governor, I will make it my top priority that every family with a child from birth to four years of age has access to childcare they can afford, which means access to affordable childcare for more than 500,000 children in the Virginia improved.

To do this, we have to invest in the care industry. About 1 in 5 childcare workers are black women – compared to 7% of the total workforce. And while childcare workers overall are dramatically underpaid and one in ten incomes is below the poverty line, the pay gap exists for black women workers who averaged $ 12.98 an hour versus white female carers who earned an average of $ 14.38 an hour by late spring 2020, 35% of childcare workers in Virginia had reported a drop in wages. Nurses are essential to the structure of our economy and the time has come to pay them substantial wages. I will make sure that every childcare worker makes at least $ 15, and I will create more than 80,000 additional jobs in the care industry as governor. Investing in care means investing in our future.

With President Biden’s announcement last week of his American family plan, including a $ 225 billion investment in childcare, we have a crucial starting block as we begin to fairly rebuild our economic and educational systems. But we have to go further to uplift families and workers who have been left behind for too long. It is for this reason that I plan to make Universal Child Care the blueprint for achieving justice in America.

Black women have done the job of keeping the country going. It is time for the country to work for us too.

SUBJECTS: op-ed