When women succeed, America succeeds.
This was more than just a slogan for Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. She championed this ideal throughout her nearly forty-year career in Congress. She was no stranger to being first – first woman to serve as House Minority Whip, Minority Leader of the House and Speaker of the House.
But her legacy is not just that of firsts – Pelosi wanted to ensure she would not be the last.
As a champion for the Affordable Care Act, Pelosi made sure women’s healthcare would not be overlooked or left behind. She helped secure provisions requiring maternity coverage, preventive services, such as contraception, and protections for women with preexisting conditions, including pregnancy, breast cancer or domestic violence histories, while also prohibiting the longstanding practice of charging women higher premiums because of gender. Thanks in part to her efforts, an estimated 10 million women gained health insurance coverage since 2010. When disagreements over abortion coverage put passage of the ACA in jeopardy, she never swayed from ensuring a woman’s healthcare decisions stayed between her, her family and her provider.
In recent years, when it has felt as though decades of progress have been undone and young women today have fewer rights than our mothers and grandmothers, Pelosi remained a constant, steady voice for hope. She led historic efforts to protect reproductive health and rights through House passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act in 2021 and the Right to Contraception Act in 2022.
Her commitment to women extended beyond healthcare and reproductive rights. She consistently fought for fair pay, paid leave, and workplace protections, advancing policies that make the workplace more equitable for women. Early in her congressional career, she supported the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and spent the next three decades fighting for paid leave, recognizing its vital importance to millions of working families.
One of the most significant achievements of those efforts was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill signed into law by President Obama in 2009. After the Supreme Court’s disappointing decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, the law strengthened workers’ ability to challenge pay discrimination and, in Pelosi’s own words, “injected fairness, reason, and common sense back into our policy.” She continued this fight through repeated House passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act in 2009, 2019, and 2021 – a bill to strengthen equal pay protections and help close the gender wage gap.
A monumental victory came in 2019 when Congress passed the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act (FEPLA), providing federal workers with paid parental leave. Pelosi helped secure FEPLA in the final passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, guaranteeing paid parental leave to our nation’s 2.1 million public servants.
Amidst the early chaos and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pelosi worked to ensure families did not have to choose between their health and their livelihoods. After relentless efforts to negotiate across the aisle in Congress, as well as with the White House, her efforts led to the passage of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which was signed into law in March 2020. The legislation included protections for frontline workers, free coronavirus testing, increased Medicaid funding, and strengthened food security initiatives. Pelosi also fought to ensure the law guaranteed 10 days of paid sick leave and 10 weeks of paid family leave for child care. While eligibility requirements limited who qualified for leave and protections expired at the end of 2020, Pelosi’s efforts nonetheless led to the first national paid leave policy enacted in this country, and its success demonstrated the need for permanent policy.
After tireless efforts to secure paid family leave in the Build Back Better Act, Pelosi worked to bridge divisions within the Democratic caucus, uniting progressives and moderates behind a House package that included four weeks of paid family and medical leave. While the provision was later stripped from the final legislation in the Senate, the House vote marked the closest Congress has come to creating a national paid leave program.
Speaker Pelosi has been an undeniable force in American politics. She elevated issues too often dismissed as “women’s issues” into national priorities and repeatedly reminded the country that women are the “key to America’s Success.”
Nothing embodies that sentiment better than the path she has forged for the women who followed her. As a leader within the Democratic Party, she built a caucus that elevated women to leadership roles and created a pipeline of women running for office. Today, women make up nearly half of House Democrats.
The issues Pelosi tackled throughout her career reflect the broader challenges faced by women around the country when it comes to advancing their careers, supporting their families, and building lives for themselves. Affordable health care, bodily autonomy, economic freedom, and workplace equality cannot be minimized to a single policy issue or bill. They are all connected to one another and integral to women’s ability to live prosperous, fulfilling lives on their own terms. Each victory that Pelosi fought for brought the country one step closer to equity and justice for all women in America, and the foundation she built will ensure that this vital work continues.
For nearly fifty years, Nancy Pelosi demonstrated what is possible when women lead. Her career transformed the halls of Congress as well as the lives of millions of women and families across the country. “When women succeed, America succeeds” was never just a slogan for her but the guiding principle that built a legacy far greater than any title she held.
Thank you, Madam Speaker.
