The inequity harming America’s working women, mothers explored in new book

Reshma Saujani, attorney and founder of Girls Who Code, sat down with ABC News to discuss her book, "Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work," which explores the "big lie" of corporate feminism.

Saujani's new book challenges the myth of "having it all" and addresses the unfair expectations on women to be primary caregivers while navigating a system built by and for men.

She also discusses her organization called Moms First, a national nonprofit organization advocating for mothers.

ABC News interviewed Saujani about her initiative to unite and empower mothers to transform their workplaces, communities and culture so that moms can thrive.

ABC NEWS: Just in time for Women's History Month, our next guest has long advocated for policies that empower women and mothers, in particular, to achieve their full potential. She is an attorney, a civil servant, and the founder of an incredible group called Girls Who Code. It builds a pipeline for women in tech. She is Reshma Saujani and her book, "Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work," is being released in paperback tomorrow. Reshma, thanks so much for joining us.

RESHMA SAUJANI: Thanks, Juju, for having me.

ABC NEWS: And your work is so important. You sort of climb the corporate ladder, and you were convinced that just hard work and smarts can get you there. When you found out that that wasn't necessarily the recipe, what made you found Girls Who Code?

SAUJANI: Well, I realized that we need girls to be solving our world's biggest problems. You know, I'm the daughter of refugees, and when you get one of those tech jobs, you can march up into the middle class. And now, almost 10 years later, we've taught 700,000 girls to code. We've changed the pipeline of those graduating with CS degrees from 17% when I started to almost as high as 40% now. And so we know that our students are going to solve the biggest problems like COVID, climate and cancer.

ABC NEWS: And you refer to it as the Big Lie, which is this idea that, like, you can have it all, you can do it, girls. Girl power. What is the fallacy?

SAUJANI: That's right. I mean, I wrote "Pay Up" because I really realized I could teach millions of girls to code, but if I didn't help their mothers, I had not solved gender equality. And for so long, we tell women that you need to be fixed. You need more confidence. You have to power post, just get a mentor and everything will be fine. And that is a lie because 80% of women at some point in their career will become a mother. And you realize that living in a nation that doesn't have paid leave, that doesn't have affordable child care, the structural supports that we need to not just survive but thrive are not there. And so you'll fall out of the pipeline.

ABC NEWS: And so "Pay Up" is a roadmap for creating more gender equity in the workplace?

SAUJANI: Yes, it's a movement to say let's make workplaces work for moms finally, once and for all. And I've started an organization called Moms First that's fighting for paid leave, that's fighting for affordable child care. And we've done incredible work over the past three years. We've built the largest business coalition to fight for child care. We elevated child care to the presidential ticket. We've gotten a commitment from [President Donald] Trump and ]Vice President JD] Vance to finally fix child care once and for all. And we've built the largest movement of moms that are pushing for these changes in their workforce.

ABC NEWS: And we need equity at home, too. With household chores and parenting as well.

SAUJANI: That's right. To do the laundry and change the diapers and figure out, you know, what shoes to buy. I mean, women are doing two-thirds of the caregiving work at home, so most women have two and a half jobs. I always say, like I'm set up to fail before I've even had my cup of coffee in the morning. And so we wonder why we are the most educated population of women with the least amount of labor market participation. Because women give up, they downshift their careers.

ABC NEWS: You talk, you wrote this book during the previous administration and in this administration there are some setbacks and also this idea of returning to the workplace. Is that going to change the momentum in the way that women are looking for flexibility now?

SAUJANI: No, because I think women have had enough. I think the pandemic taught us that we're not the problem; that society needs to actually work for us, which means that you see movements of women that are pushing for flexibility in the workplace, whether and we need it at times, whether we're caregiving a parent or child.

I think that women have realized and families have realized that going into debt, 40% of Americans are in debt because of the cost of child care. Right here in New York City, we pay more for child care than we pay for our rent. That's saying a lot. And so if we are going to become the most talented country in the world, if we are going to continue to be competitive and innovative, we need to fix child care. It's the No. 1 problem that's facing Americans and are facing American families.

ABC NEWS: And so how do women advocate for that? Is that in the corporate sphere or with government?

SAUJANI: I think it's everywhere. I think we have to build the largest constituency of child care voters. You know, when we tell when parents say, you know, traffic's too high, we do congestion pricing, we should fix child care. We need to do it in the workplace.

We need to demand child care subsidies and benefits. We need to make sure that we take paid leave, and we encourage our husbands and our dads who want to take paid leave to take it, too. And we don't gaslight dads when they do, when they want to take care of their children.

ABC NEWS: I appreciate that very much, Reshma Saujani. The future of women and work. It's called "Pay Up" (and why it's different than you think.) It's in paperback tomorrow. Thanks for joining us.

SAUJANI: Thank you, Juju, for having me.