Arizona Leaders React to Joe Biden’s Agenda Promoting Equality for Women

While Donald Trump is stuck in a time warp, thinking that the great majority of women in the suburbs are housewives, Joe Biden, living, in the current reality of 2020, released his agenda for promoting equality for women across Arizona and the nation.

This 23-page plan (please click here to read it in its entirety,) acknowledges that:

“Women — particularly women of color — have never had a fair shot to get ahead in this country. Today, too many women are struggling to make ends meet and support their families and are worried about the economic future for their children.”

Stating that “his daughter is entitled to the same rights and opportunities as his sons… Biden will pursue an aggressive and comprehensive plan to further women’s economic and physical security and ensure that women can fully exercise their civil rights.”

 What is in Biden’s plan to Promote Equality for Women?

 The components of the plan include helping women:

• “Improve economic security.”
• “Expand health care access and tackle health inequities.”
• “Navigate work and families.”
• “End violence against them.”
• “Protect and empower them around the world.”

 Among the specific policy proposals are:

• “Pass the Equal Rights Amendment.”
• “Enforcing equal pay for men and women.”
• “The ability to organize unions and collectively bargain easily.”
• “Address harassment and discrimination in the workplace.”
• “Provide increased safety on college campuses.”
• “Increased opportunities for STEM careers.”
• “Eliminate the tipped minimum wage.”
• “Reducing maternal mortality.”
• “Uphold Roe V Wade and fully fund Planned Parenthood.”
• “Access high quality and affordable childcare.”
• “Paid Family Leave.”
• “Reauthorize the Violence Against Woman’s Act.”
• “Increase Visas for Domestic Violence Survivors.”

 Reaction among Arizona’s Leaders.

Several leading Arizona state legislators advanced their support for the 2020 Democratic Presidential Nominees agenda for women.

Arizona State Senator Victoria Steele, in a statement released by the Arizona Democratic Party, said:


"For the past four years, Donald Trump’s utter contempt for women’s fundamental rights has been on full display. Trump promised time and again that he would ‘do more for women than anybody else,’ but over the course of his presidency, Trump has done nothing but wage relentless attacks on women’s rights, from spiking our health care costs and gutting protections for preexisting conditions to blocking equal pay for equal work and hiking our taxes. Now, Trump’s failed coronavirus response is hitting women particularly hard, threatening our health, our safety, and our paychecks. Arizona women deserve better than Trump’s record of broken promises, and that’s why we’ll throw him out of office come November and elect Joe Biden as President.” 

Another State Senator, Rebecca Rios, wrote:


“Joe Biden’s new Women’s Agenda is the perfect answer to the last four years under Donald Trump. Joe knows how critical these issues are to working families because he’s been on the frontlines of these fights for decades, including passing the Violence Against Women Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. I’m proud to stand with Joe Biden in fighting for the issues that matter most to women around Arizona and America.”


State Representative Kelli Butler relayed:


“Joe Biden knows that every issue is a women’s issue — health care, the economy, education, national security — and that our daughters deserve every right that our sons have. We need a President who recognizes that when women succeed, Arizona succeeds too. From investing in women-owned small businesses to expanding our access to higher education and job training opportunities, I know that Joe Biden will fight with us for a more equal country for all of us.”

Moving Forward

The Biden Campaign cited statistics from the National Women’s Law Center to justify their plans to promote equality for women.

Some points people need to consider moving forward.

• 13.3 percent of women in Arizona live in poverty. The national number is 12.0 percent. 33.4 percent of women who head households in Arizona are impoverished. The national percentage is 33.8. About ten percent (9.4) of elderly women in Arizona live in poverty. The national figure is 11.1 percent.
• Arizona women make 84 cents for every dollar a white man makes. The national number is 82 cents. The numbers are worse for African American (66 cents Arizona and 62 cents nationwide) and Latina (55 cents and 51 cents) women.
• 13.2 percent of women aged 19 to 54 are medically uninsured in Arizona. The national number is 11.9 percent.

If the numbers showed only one percent of women were medically uninsured and in poverty and made once cent less than men, that would be one percent and one cent too much.

If voters want to move from the Trump agenda of breaking promise after promise to women on a variety of topics like health and child care, then they should select Joe Biden and his unannounced Woman Vice Presidential choice 97 days from now on November 3, 2020.