Mothers Want Federally Funded Childcare. Why Are These Koch-Funded Women Opposing It?

Mothers Want Federally Funded Childcare. Why Are These Koch-Funded Women Opposing It?
5/6/2022 by Alyssa Bowen and Ansev Demirhan
Well-funded right-wing women use their identities as mothers to weaponize disinformation about popular progressive policies with well-documented benefits, from childcare to healthcare.


Heather Ahearn of the American Federation of Teachers (front) tries to block the sign of Arrah Nielsen of the anti-feminist Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), during a rally on April 19, 2005, announcing two bills in the House and Senate designed to help close the gender wage gap. (Tom Williams / Roll Call / Getty Images)

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, women in heterosexual relationships were spending 37 percent more time, or two hours a day, doing unpaid household and care work than their male partners, according to a report published in early 2020. The pandemic has exacerbated this gender gap, with more than 10 percent of women reporting new caregiving responsibilities. The International Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has called the disproportionate decline in women’s workforce participation, fueled by the demands of additional unpaid care work during the pandemic, a “momcession.”

As parents and mothers in particular struggled, federally-funded childcare, which would alleviate financial hardships from working while raising families, seemed like a genuine possibility. The Biden administration’s Build Back Better (BBB) bill, an estimated $2 trillion climate and social spending package that passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate, included breakthrough childcare and early education provisions that would increase access for most families. However, special interest groups funded by corporations and the ultra-wealthy—like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and Americans for Prosperity, all of which have close ties to libertarian billionaire Charles Koch—went all out in attacking Build Back Better.

Staffers from the Koch-funded “Independent Women’s Forum” (IWF) also attacked BBB, pejoratively referring to the bill as “Build Back Broke,” specifically going after its childcare and paid family and medical leave provisions. IWF and its sister group, the “Independent Women’s Voice” (IWV), have put a woman’s face on the corporate-funded assault on pro-woman policies. IWF is a 501(c)(3) group that pushes out the austerity messaging favored by its funders, and IWV is its 501(c)(4) advocacy arm. IWF is a pay-to-play operation that has taken money from corporations and industries, like vaping and fossil fuel, and then written in favor of public policies these industries prefer without disclosing their financial relationship.

IWF and IWV seem to play a special role within the right-wing dark money infrastructure. (Dark money organizations receive money from donors whose identities are kept secret from the public to make significant expenditures to influence elections and government policy.) Independent Women’s Voice is a pay-to-play operation that has taken money from corporations and industries, like vaping and fossil fuel, and then written in favor of public policies these industries prefer without disclosing their financial relationship. In recent months, IWF fellows and staffers have appeared in the media, identified as mothers without revealing their ties, to promote their right-wing talking points. This tactic lends a woman’s face to anti-feminist policy positions while reproducing social inequalities for families across generations by opposing policies and structures that would advance equality and improve economic mobility. On issue after issue—from paid leave, the Equality Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, all of which they oppose—IWF and IWV position themselves against policies favored by most women and that would benefit almost all women. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that IWV has received substantial donations from men. A rare glimpse into IWV’s funders in 2010, before donor disclosure laws became even weaker as a result of Citizens United and its progeny, showed that 89 percent of their reported donors were not women but actually wealthy white men.

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https://msmagazine.com/2022/05/06/childcare-koch-women-independent-womens-forum/