Giovanni Rodriguez wanted french fries. It didn’t matter that his mother, Yolanda Begay, was having dinner with four other working mothers in a Mexican restaurant that didn’t have any, or that she was trying to talk. The four-year-old wanted french fries, and he wanted them now.

Once he was eventually distracted with markers and a coloring book – and having made him promise that he would at least try the cheese quesadillas – Begay was able to chat.

The 31-year-old mother, who works for 9to5 Colorado and is also a full-time student, had money worries on her mind.

“When I was [just] a full-time student, I was able to get assistance,” she said. “When I’m working they want to cut my benefits.”

“So now I have to make compromises and I have to work twice as hard and then it’s going to set me up to fail,” she said. “If I’m working minimum wage, because of the rising cost of rent, I have to make certain decisions. I have to make decisions like, OK, am I able to get groceries, am I able to afford my public transit this week, can I get the basic necessities that I need?”

Brenda Lozado, 47, looked across the table at Begay with a face full of sympathy. “I see myself in your story, that’s why I’m like, wow. Because I was a single mom, and deciding whether I use the money for groceries or ‘how am I going to get to work’. And we should not have to decide. Because both of those are very important things.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brenda Lozada, 47, on providing food for her children. Photograph: Bastien Inzaurralde/The Guardian

Lozado, home healthcare provider, mother of two and grandmother of two, added: “Providing a meal for your kids, you got to go to work to provide things for the home or for your kids. And that should never be an issue as a single parent.”

The two women had joined Agnes Terza, 48, a home and personal care aide, Melissa Benjamin, 38, a home health certified nursing assistant and Alejandra Viellejas, 29, a janitor/day porter, to talk about the issues facing working mothers in Denver, where the cost of living has gone up 13.5% in the last five years but wages have lagged behind inflation.

The women all work in industries being organized by the Fight For 15 campaign, which is pushing to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 per hour. At the moment, the Colorado state minimum is higher, at $8.31 per hour and lawmakers are considering putting an increase to $12.50 on the ballot.

But a few more dollars an hour won’t solve working mothers’ problems. As the women discussed, they’re paid less than male colleagues, they often struggle to find reliable childcare, they lack medical leave and they rarely even get paid time off – all issues that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has championed.

Viellejas put her worries very simply: she fears she has to work so much to afford food and housing that she isn’t a good enough parent. “I don’t have time to give to my child, to guide him, to show him, to make a good man out of him,” she said. “And I don’t want him to grow up like I did, alone, because my mom had to go to work. She was a single mother, too, and she left me at home, you know, because she couldn’t pay for a daycare.”

Viellejas said her son’s father refuses to pay child support, which makes things even harder. “I’m a single parent, struggling, I want to have enough time to give to him, to give him family values. And I don’t want him, you know ...

Lozado interrupted: “Thinking ‘Mama don’t have enough money, that I have to go do something’ ...”



Viellejas: “I mean, I cannot miss a day of work, because I have to pay rent.”



Lozado: “You have to bring food home. You have to have enough money to feed your children.”



Viellejas: “And it’s ... sometimes I have to work another job to do that, too.”

Hard work, it seems, is not enough.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yolanda Begay, 31 (right), feels that women like her are trapped in an inequitable system. Photograph: Bastien Inzaurralde/The Guardian

Benjamin, the nursing assistant, is married, but she still finds herself in a similar economic situation to the other women, hit by the gender pay gap and lack of affordable childcare.

“I make half as much as a man does, and yet I have the children I have, I go to work, I work 40 hours a week. And with that, I should be able to afford my rent and my food and my utilities and childcare if I need it. But I end up just working half the time so I can stay home with my children ... if I were to go to work double time and pay childcare, I’d still end up with just as much money. So you know, it doesn’t make any sense. And I don’t qualify for any assistance.”

She added: “I’m not even convinced there’s a middle class anymore. There’s the wealthy and the working poor.”

Terza, who lives with her adult daughter and her granddaughter, also talked about the struggles she faces to make ends meet – barely. “I juggle, you know. I’ve been struggling with bills and ... they [home healthcare companies] don’t give you benefits, they don’t give gas [money], they don’t pay for my mileage, and you take care of all these sick people in their homes. And then when you get home with this low paycheck, again, you’re struggling. The money’s not enough for us to take care of our family. No vacation, no sick pay, no benefits.”

“Is there going to be any change or are we just going to juggle?” she asked. “We can struggle and we won’t be able to afford everything. We can’t send our kids to college. Forget that … I almost lost my home.”

Lozado, who is also living with a daughter and granddaughter, has been in that situation, too. “We need to have better pay across the board. Minimum wage is not stable enough for us to survive. A lot of us, we are one door outside of being homeless.”



“There was a time that I was really sick, I was out of work for a whole month. And because of me being out of work for a whole month, I was a month behind in bills. And me, I don’t like borrowing from nobody, because it’s almost like they’ve got a chokehold on you. You owe them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Agnes Terza, 48, on the struggles to make ends meet. Photograph: Bastien Inzaurralde/The Guardian

All the women who were home healthcare aides lacked paid medical leave, which can leave both them and their clients vulnerable. Benjamin said: “When I go into people’s homes, I need to be well. I take care of people with Aids, I take care of people with cancer. They don’t need to get pneumonia from me. So it’s not just about me as a home care worker, it’s about raising the standard of home care not only for myself, but for the people I take care of.”

Terza, too, has seen the negative effects that her lack of paid sick leave can have on clients. “I was sick last year with Type A flu virus. I couldn’t take one day, and they told me to wear a mask on my face to go to my client. She’s 84.”

She said friends were taking in housemates in their 40s and 50s, working multiple jobs just to pay bills. “This is what we call working women: no retirement benefits, no health benefits, and no vacation. I haven’t taken a vacation for … since I started home healthcare.”

Begay feels that women like her are trapped in an inequitable system. “We talk about the American dream, and they show this all the time, and this is why they have the advertisements. It’s like we’re these rats to them, and they’re holding up the cheese. And we’re trying to get it, and then we end up in a dead end, and then we have to go around.”

“It’s like we’re always in the same place,” she explained, “And there’s no way we’re getting out.”

Benjamin, like the other women at dinner, think efforts to reduce income inequality and promote economic justice, have been deliberately misconstrued by the media and politicians. “We’re not asking to be rich,” she said. “We just want to make sure we have food on the table and our rent paid; we just want to make sure that our shelter and our heat and our food and our children are taken care of. We’re not asking to live in luxury. We’re not asking anyone to give up their wealth to give to us.”

She added: “We’re just asking them to tone it down a little bit so it works, so this society works for everybody that works in this society.”