To the Editor:

As we celebrate Mother’s Day 2015, the status of mothers in America presents a very mixed picture.

Women comprise roughly half of the American workforce, yet they earn about three-quarters as much as men do and have far less upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that less than 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies have female chief executives.

A new report by WalletHub analyzed state dynamics focusing on child care, professional opportunities and work-life balance to determine which states are the best and worst places for working moms. New York ranked 17th, well behind many other of the New England states. The website reported that New York ranked No. 8 in child care, 16th in professional opportunities and 38th in work-life balance.

AAUW expects those numbers to improve somewhat thanks to actions by the NYS legislature this year. Once Gov. Cuomo signs a number of measures into law, the 10 million women of the state will have a Fair Pay Act, pregnancy accommodation, and legislation that would strengthen protections against sexual harassment in the workplace.

But even with this good news in NY, the national picture is troubling. A woman in the United States faces a one in 1,800 risk of maternal death, according to an annual report by the charity Save the Children, the worst of any developed country in the world. An American woman is more than 10 times as likely to die from a cause related to pregnancy as those in Belarus, Poland and Austria.

The State of the World’s Mothers 2015 report is a global index that ranks the best and worst places to be a mother based on the latest available data on indicators like political status, economics, education, children’s well-being and maternal health. In 2015, it ranks the U.S. at No. 33 of 179 surveyed countries—down two spots from last year.

While in nearly every state, Millennial women are more likely than Millennial men to have a college degree, Millennial women also have higher poverty rates and lower earnings than Millennial men. (Millennials are people who reached adulthood about the turn of the 21st century.)

A report by the Urban Institute found that millennial women are reproducing at the slowest pace of any generation in U.S. history. Childbearing fell steeply in the years immediately following the “Great Recession,” with birthrates among women in their 20s declining more than 15 percent between 2007 and 2012.

And although more women are receiving high school diplomas and completing college than ever before, too many women either do not graduate high school or finish their education with only a high school diploma.

In general, while women’s economic security is directly linked to their family incomes, women tend to be concentrated in “pink ghetto” fields that lead to jobs with relatively low wages. Even women who do go into higher-paying fields still earn less than their male peers. This helps explain why, in 2013, about 14.5 percent of women ages 18 and older had family incomes that placed them below the federal poverty line, compared with 11 percent of men.

The retirement penalty for these gender wage gaps is striking: By the time a college-educated woman turns 59, she will have lost almost $800,000 throughout her life due to the gender wage gap. And the status of women differs notably by race and ethnicity, wAith Hispanic women having the lowest median annual earnings compared to other women.

There are policy solutions that would help improve the well-being of mothers and their families. One important policy that newborn babies and their parents need - but that the vast majority of American families don't have – is access to paid family leave. It helps to combat poverty, give children a healthy start, lowers infant mortality by more than 20%, and helps lower the wage gap between men and women.

Paid family leave insurance in New York State will make it easier for parents—both mothers and fathers—to care for newborn or newly adopted children without undue financial hardship. It will provide crucial support when a family member becomes seriously ill.

St. Lawrence County AAUW