They represent half the population, folks.

The main women’s economic policies the White House supports are the following: an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, the passage of the anti-discriminatory Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, (exceedingly modest) increases in funding for child care and job training programs, expanding a few of those ever-popular tax credits for working families, and the usual terrifying-sounding public-private “projects” and “initiatives.”

And by the way, there’s also “Making Progress Toward Solutions for Paid Leave.” You’ll notice that the latter doesn’t include actually enacting a national paid leave policy. As White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett explained earlier in the week, a paid leave program would require raising taxes. For Obama and other anti-paid-leave Democrats like Hillary Clinton, such an action would be unthinkable, apparently.

Other national Democrats are bolder. Late last year, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced a paid family and medical leave bill in Congress. But on the whole, the Democrats’ economic agenda for women is disappointingly tepid. There are many economic policies the Dems could be advocating, but are not—including pay equity legislation, an executive order to improve low-wage federal contractor jobs, and yes, a comprehensive child care system.

Unfortunately, given the anti-feminist, anti-labor extremism of today’s Republicans, it’s unlikely that even the mildest items on the Democrats’ work-and-family agenda will be enacted any time soon. That the Democrats are loudly talking up work-and-family issues after over twenty years of neglect is a hopeful sign. If they talk the talk, then maybe eventually they’ll walk the walk.