By Carla Thompson Payton, vice president for program strategy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

This past year we saw in stark terms how our infrastructure of care fails most Americans. Nearly 3 million women left the labor force in the past 16 months, many due to a lack of care options. One year of living with Covid-19 undid 30 years of progress for women’s labor-force participation, jeopardizing family economic security and increasing the racial wealth gap. For too long, we have left families to shoulder the burden of caregiving and working without common-sense protections.

This reality recently led my organization, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, to join seven other grant makers in supporting the Care for All With Respect and Equity Fund, or CARE Fund — a five-year, $50 million investment to build a comprehensive and equitable care infrastructure.