The $15 min­i­mum would be a boon to low-wage work­ers, who are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly women. Accord­ing to the Nation­al Women’s Law Cen­ter , women hold two-thirds of all low-wage jobs nation­wide. And many of those women have fam­i­lies who depend on their earn­ings. Accord­ing to the Pew Research Cen­ter , 40 per­cent of house­holds with chil­dren depend on moth­ers as the sole or pri­ma­ry wage earn­ers across the country.

While a bill has yet to be pro­posed, there is strong move­ment that has secured pub­lic and leg­isla­tive sup­port. Since mid-2013, Seat­tle has been a hotbed of low-wage work­er ral­lies for a $15 min­i­mum wage, as part of the nation­al Fight for 15 move­ment backed by the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union. Accord­ing to a recent poll, 68 per­cent of the city’s pop­u­la­tion is in favor of the mea­sure, and all nine of the City Coun­cil mem­bers endorse the idea. Social­ist City Coun­cil mem­ber Kshama Sawant made it a cen­ter­piece of her cam­paign this fall, and new May­or Ed Mur­ray has said , ​“it is not a mat­ter of if we get to $15 per hour, but when and how.” A rec­om­men­da­tion is expect­ed to be deliv­ered to the city coun­cil by May.

As a nation­al con­ver­sa­tion on rais­ing the min­i­mum wage gains steam, all eyes are turn­ing to Seat­tle, where the city coun­cil appears poised to raise the wage floor to $15 per hour. Seat­tle would leapfrog Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and two neigh­bor­ing Mary­land coun­ties , where law­mak­ers vot­ed in Decem­ber 2013 to increase the min­i­mum wage to $11.50 per hour.

Take Alma May­or­ga, a Seat­tle work­er who earns $11 an hour as a home­care provider at Vic­to­ria Park, an afford­able senior liv­ing com­mu­ni­ty. She sup­ports her 9‑year-old daugh­ter and her 15-year-old son. For a fam­i­ly of three in Wash­ing­ton State, the pover­ty line is $19,790. For May­or­ga, a wage of $11 per hour comes out to approx­i­mate­ly $22,880 per year – just above that.

May­or­ga believes that the raise of the min­i­mum wage to $15 an hour would not only help her cov­er her essen­tial expens­es, but also give her a safe­ty net and a high­er qual­i­ty of life. She wants to be able to save for emer­gen­cies and to enjoy recre­ation­al activ­i­ties with her chil­dren. ​“I would like to take my chil­dren to the the­ater,” she says.

Seat­tle is hard­ly the only city where the move­ment towards a liv­ing wage is gain­ing ground. In addi­tion to the Mary­land and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. rais­es, activists in Chica­go recent­ly put out a bal­lot to gauge the pop­u­lar­i­ty of a $15 min­i­mum wage in the city. With 100 of the 103 precincts report­ing, 86 per­cent of vot­ers sup­port­ed the increase.

The min­i­mum wage isn’t what it used to be. The fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed min­i­mum wage of $7.25 would have to increase 47 per­cent to get back to its 1968 lev­el of $10.69, accord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice. This decline in val­ue has forced many low-wage work­ers to take on mul­ti­ple jobs just to keep up with the ris­ing cost of liv­ing. The prob­lem has been com­pound­ed by the fact that mid­dle-class jobs, such as man­u­fac­tur­ing, tex­tile work­ers, and cler­i­cal work, which were once syn­ony­mous with ben­e­fits and secu­ri­ty, are rapid­ly being replaced by low-wage work with lit­tle or no ben­e­fits in ser­vice indus­tries such as retail and food preparation.

The declin­ing val­ue of wages is an even larg­er issue for low-wage work­ers in expen­sive met­ro­pol­i­tan areas like Seat­tle. The aver­age cost of a two-bed­room apart­ment in Seat­tle was $1,138 per month in 2010 and the medi­an cost of a home was $420,000 in 2013, jump­ing 12 per­cent from the pre­vi­ous year.

Fam­i­lies like Mayorga’s have a dif­fi­cult time keep­ing up with the cost of liv­ing. Expens­es such as gas for her car can range from $150 – 170 each month, and the insur­ance for her car is $30 a month. She pays an addi­tion­al $800 a month in rent for her one bed­room apart­ment. When you add in clothes, food and oth­er bills, there is lit­tle left over for any­thing besides the bare essentials.

Rais­ing the wage is just one step in mak­ing cities like Seat­tle more afford­able for low-income women and their fam­i­lies. May­or­ga, like many low-wage work­ers, can’t afford Seattle’s ris­ing cost of child care. Accord­ing to the Seat­tle Times, Wash­ing­ton is the 11th most expen­sive state in terms of child care. Full-time day-care in Wash­ing­ton costs an aver­age of $11,450 a year, well beyond the reach of low-wage work­ers. ​“Many peo­ple don’t have child care,” says May­or­ga. ​“My moth­er and my son help me with my daughter.”

May­or­ga hopes that the Seat­tle city gov­ern­ment enacts more leg­is­la­tion to facil­i­tate a fair­er sys­tem for every­one. One way they could do this is by offer­ing free or low-cost child care ser­vices for work­ing moth­ers. May­or­ga not­ed that sub­si­dized child care would be good for work­ers because they could then ​“save their mon­ey for emer­gen­cies.” May­or­ga is also think­ing about her cowork­ers, whom she believes will reap the same rewards she will if the $15 min­i­mum wage pro­pos­al becomes real­i­ty: ​“They can buy more food, more clothes, and can save some money.”