In honor of  Women's History Month, U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez presents a blog post, Big Ideas to Help Women Succeed.

In this post, he states that in this Women's History Month, the Labor Department honors all women in government and public service and also celebrates those who work behind the scenes to build a brighter future for our nation and their families.  The Department is working to expand opportunity for women on a variety of fronts as listed below:

• Encouraging  progress on paid leave, so working parents don't have to choose between the job they need and the family they love.
• Extending minimum wage and overtime protections to millions of home-care workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are women.
• Working towards closing the pay gap between men and women through rulemaking and improving the availability of pay data.
• Helping women know their rights at work, including the laws that protect them when they are pregnant.
• Centralized resources for women who want to pursue careers in nontraditional occupations with the Women Build, Protect and Move America portal.

Tom Perez also broadens his perspective by applying the human capital theory into the U S labor market.  He states that from a pragmatic calculation,  empowering women is about maximizing our human capital in a complex and competitive world, that we can't unleash our full economic potential unless we're fully investing in a population that accounts for about half of our workforce.  This is an excellent point and a clear vision for the Department.