By Danielle Paquette | The Washington Post | May 8 2017:
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has a cure for the lackluster economy. It has nothing to do with interest rates.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen has prescribed an unusual remedy for the United States’ aging, low-growth economy: harness the under-tapped pool of female talent.
Yellen, the first woman to run the country’s central bank, said the lack of family-friendly work policies stifles women’s participation in the labor force and ultimately stalls growth.
“A number of factors appear to be holding women back,” she said last week at a conference celebrating the admission of women to Brown University more than a century ago, “including the difficulty women currently have in trying to combine their careers with other aspects of their lives, including caregiving.”
The remarks broke the norm for a leader who typically sticks to monetary policy, prompting praise on Twitter from liberal lawmakers.
“Supporting women in the workforce isn’t just a ‘women’s issue’ – it’s an economic issue,” Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) tweeted Monday in reference to Yellen’s speech.
“First woman to head @federal reserve says #equalpay, #paidfamilyleave, #childcare will lift women & economy,” wrote Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.).
Not everyone lauded her step into the labor realm, however.
George Selgin, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the libertarian Cato Institute, said he’d rather see the Fed chair focus on monetary policy. Yellen’s speech on boosting working women, he added, seemed to be a “sideshow.”
“It’s as if you see somebody whose job it is to cut the grass,” he said, “and they’re going out and giving a lecture on how to trim some bushes.”
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