President Donald Trump participated in a roundtable with female small business owners on March 27.
President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon, Ivanka Trump and female entrepreneurs convened in the White House's Roosevelt Room to discuss how to encourage women's involvement in business.
"Empowering and promoting women in business is an absolute priority in the Trump administration because I know how crucial women are as job creators, role models and leaders all throughout our communities," President Trump said.
"Today, women are the primary source of income in 40 percent of American households with children under the age of 15," he continued. "We also know that companies that promote women to senior leadership roles realize significantly better profits, according to statistics, than their competitors."
Here are four commitments President Trump, Vice President Pence and Ms. McMahon made during the roundtable.
1. Access to capital, markets and networks. "We must ensure that our economy is a place where women can work and thrive. We will continue to address the barriers faced by women professionals and entrepreneurs, including access to capital, access to markets and access to networks. We will make it very easy. It's going to be a lot easier. You do an amazing job. And for a while it was a very, very tough — almost impossible — job," President Trump said.
2. Affordable and accessible childcare. "My administration will also continue to advocate for policies that support working families, including making childcare more affordable and accessible. That's something that Ivanka Trump — now Ivanka Trump Kushner — that you really have been working on and feel so strongly about ... I actually talked about it a lot during the campaign, and Ivanka was right up front," Mr. Trump said.
3. Policies that favor business owners. "Women business owners and women-owned enterprises are an enormous force in the American economy, and I know this president is committed to continuing to promote the kinds of policies that will make it possible for your firms to grow, and for more women-led businesses to be born and to thrive all across America. The president is advancing an agenda of less regulation, less taxes, [making] investments in infrastructure, fair trade and addressing healthcare costs to make healthcare affordable," Vice President Pence said.
4. Support through the Small Business Administration. "I'm really excited to be at SBA because we do have our Women's Business Centers. We do have those centers to help guide, to help and advise, to help them do business plans. And we have them all over the country. So we welcome you to come in ... sometimes you just need a little wind beneath your wings. So we're going to help provide hard information, but also a little wind beneath your wings," Ms. McMahon said.
Click here to view the full transcript.