Celebrating Women's Equality and Entrepreneurship

Celebrating Women’s Equality and Entrepreneurship
On Thursday, I was pleased to join women small business owners at Casa Bonampak in the Mission District for a roundtable to discuss job creation, job security, and health security for America’s women and their families. The event was hosted by Women’s Initiative and Working Solutions, two nonprofit organizations working to train and assist other entrepreneurs; enabling women to become self-sufficient, independent, and empowered. Together, women business owners make San Francisco’s economy stronger, more diverse, and more dynamic.

Women play a vital role in stimulating and driving the expansion, health, and success of our economy. As of last year, women-owned firms had an economic impact of $3 trillion annually, translating into more than 23 million jobs. By 2018, women small businesses are expected to create more than 5 million new jobs.

My Democratic colleagues and I are committed to the number one priority of the American people – job creation. Our Make It In America initiative lays out a plan to keep American jobs on our shores and build a thriving industrial, technological, and manufacturing base for our economy. This effort invests in innovation, clean energy, and new technologies and demands China and other nations play by the rules. Congress must focus its efforts on revitalizing our nation’s economy and putting the American people back to work.

Congresswoman Pelosi joins women small business leaders at Casa Bonampak in San Francisco.

One hundred years ago, the state of California joined a growing national movement toward progress and civil rights: extending the core blessing of democracy – the right to vote – to our state’s women. Nine years later, the entire country followed suit, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment – a watershed moment in our ongoing pursuit of liberty, justice, and equality, our heritage and our hope.

Today, as we mark the 91st anniversary of Women’s Equality Day, we celebrate, commemorate, and honor the work and success of those brave leaders who moved the dream of women’s equality one giant step closer to reality: America’s suffragettes.

The struggle of these courageous leaders continues in our time: in the fight for equal pay for equal work; in the battle for true equality in business and government, in law, medicine, and the arts. We must continue to ensure that women have access to job training, education and the chance to make better lives for themselves and their families. With women as our families’ primary caregivers, we must preserve Americans’ health security, and strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.