UWLP Blog - Childcare

Utah Women & Leadership Project has released the first of five white papers that share the results of a comprehensive statewide study conducted in the fall of 2025.

Utah Women & Leadership Project has released the first of six white papers that share the results of a comprehensive statewide study conducted in the fall of 2024.

Researchers conducted a statewide study to establish a baseline of public perceptions about the awareness, understanding, and attitudes around challenges Utah women and girls face. This summary includes childcare, child sexual abuse, and gender pay gap.

UWLP provides a research update to its 2018 childcare report, which focuses on childcare needs, childcare accessibility, challenges faced by childcare providers, emerging childcare policy changes, and what Utahns can do to help improve the childcare landscape in the state.

Did you miss this Fall forum? Don't worry! You can read about it and watch the full recording here.

Did you miss this Spring Symposium event? Don't worry! You can read about it and watch the full recording here.

The UWLP White Paper Series offers research-based reports on specific issues that impact Utah girls and women, along with related policy recommendations. Childcare is a vital part of our state’s social and economic infrastructure and is increasingly critical for working parents.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected workers across the globe, and women in the workforce have been disproportionately impacted. In this brief, we focus on qualitative findings regarding care work experiences—including caring for people other than one’s own children—during the pandemic.

This research and policy brief sheds light on some of the nonwork-related effects of COVID-19 on women in Utah’s labor force, particularly those with children in the home. Learn about how COVID-19 has had an impact on childcare and homeschooling.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 has impacted every Utahn in significant ways. Yet, research has found that women have been even more negatively impacted than men. For example, nearly 3 million American women have left the labor force over the past year and not returned.

National and global reports have argued that women's employment and careers have been disproportionately impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn about how this has impacted the women of Utah.

The COVID-19 pandemic that reached Utah in March of 2020 has had an enormous impact on the way companies do business. Many companies adjusted work practices and policies in other ways to support their employees during a challenging time.

On October 13th, the Utah Women & Leadership Project hosted a Women’s Leadership Forum entitled “Utah Women in 2020: Challenges, Opportunities, and Next Steps.” Read the recap here.

How does Utah fare in comparison to the rest of the nation? Utah is home to 287,803 small businesses that have 572,888 employees—46.2% of Utah’s workforce. In 2016, Utah was ranked 8th for women-owned businesses, 11th in growth by number of firms, 4th in growth by revenue, and 30th in growth by employment.

Utah fathers recognize the strong influence local culture can have on the way their daughters develop their sense of self. The state’s distinct environment, with its own set of social norms, can affect girls and young women in both positive and negative ways. Fathers can work to support their daughters’ efforts to navigate cultural influences.

This idea sheet is based on a 2019 gathering of 25 elementary school principals and other administrators who met to discuss ways they can support girls in Utah, both in educational success and in many other areas of life.

This idea sheet is based on a 2018 gathering of 25 mothers who are raising school-aged daughters in Utah. With the knowledge that mothers are one of the most powerful influences in a girl’s life, this discussion focused on various topics, including culture, confidence and self-discovery, education, personal and social development, and resilience.

Childcare is an important consideration for millions of American families; 71% of all women with children under 18 are in the labor force, comprising one-third of the total female workforce in the U.S. Further, childcare costs are becoming increasingly burdensome; in the U.S. generally, and in 33 states specifically (including Utah), the annual cost of childcare is higher than the cost of in-state tuition at a four-year public college.

Many factors contribute to the gender disparity in the amount of time men and women spend doing unpaid care work. Countries where traditional gender norms are still deeply entrenched, including many developing nations, have some of the highest differences in the amount of unpaid care work performed by women and men.

In October of 2017, the Utah Women and Leadership Project along with the YWCA of Utah brought a group of experts together to identify current resources/strengths, challenges, and potential interventions that would help Utah caregivers. What follows are their recommendations organized by category.

Did you know that 72% of Utah’s adult women work? In Utah, women make up 44% of the total workforce. Utah Women and Education researchers have conducted in-depth research to shed light on why more young women around the state are not attending and graduating from college.

Utah Women and Education Project researchers conducted in-depth research in 2010 to discover why more young women around the state are not attending and graduating from college. We discovered that fathers in Utah have a significant influence on their daughters’ college choices and regarding graduating from college.

In March 2017, the Utah Women and Leadership Project along with the YWCA of Utah brought a group of experts together to identify current resources/strengths, challenges, and potential interventions that would help Utahans have access to child care. What follows are their recommendations organized by category.

I have come to realize that I am a product of “hardy stock” –a line of strong women. Both my mother and her mother were born in Pacific Junction, Iowa, a town that regularly experiences the flooding of the Missouri River. When I asked my mother “why do people stay?” Her reply was, “It’s their home, where would they go?”

Over the past half-century or so, Utah women’s participation in the labor force has steadily increased at a rate of about 8% per decade. According to the most recent (2015) U.S. Census Bureau estimates, women in Utah make up 43.9% of the state workforce, which is slightly lower than the national workforce.

In this blog we highlight the results from the first two research questions analyzed: “Why does Utah struggle with getting more women in leadership roles?” and “What do you think about Utah women, leadership, and confidence?” Data on these questions were gathered from the UWLP LinkedIn group.

In many ways am a walking billboard for young Utah mother stereotypes. I met my husband in high school, we married when I was 20. I spend my days taking our two daughters, ages 2 and 4, to playdates with friends or story time at the library. We frequently attend Sunday dinners and group birthday celebrations.

You were more likely to be prepared when you started school if your mother had a college degree. You were more likely read too. If your mother had to work, she was more likely to find a family-friendly job that provided some flexibility and/or higher pay, allowing her to spend more time with you.

A Bolder Way Forward Childcare & Pre-K Programs Spoke