Throughout the past 12 months of COVID, women emerged as history-makers in government, business, union halls, workplaces and family homes. From the White House to the house down the street, women’s collaborative leadership skills and perspectives helped forge solutions to unprecedented challenges to America’s physical, psychological, emotional and economic health.

A woman is now vice president and the tie-breaking vote in the Senate as financial relief and pro-union bills make their way through Congress. Women are among the key officers of our labor movement at the national, state and local levels, fighting for gender equity and the good wages and benefits that only a union contract can bring. Union women in New Jersey are using the skills they gained through the nationally acclaimed Women in Leadership Development (WILD) program to uplift men and women who were laid low by the pandemic.

Women share the front lines in every sector of labor, contributing mightily to the science of vaccines and therapeutics, caring tirelessly for the sick and dying, educating remotely and in person, and performing essential work in retail, food preparation, transportation, communications, construction, and much more.

Some of the history that today’s women are making won’t be written up in books, but all of their heroic actions are helping preserve working families, the backbone of our middle class.

The New Jersey State AFL-CIO thanks women everywhere and celebrates Women’s History every day.