Updated: May 15, 2012 Index:
Newsweek magazine released a report this week measuring the global state of women’s progress. The report ranked 165 countries based on the following five factors: women’s treatment under law, workforce participation, political power, access to education, and access to health care. The findings highlighted a definitive correlation between a nation’s level of equality for women and its GDP. The 20 countries at the top of Newsweek’s list all have democratically elected governments and GDPs of more than $200 billion. The United States was ranked eighth-best, with Iceland at the top of the list.
AAUW believes that women’s ability to access education, job training, and health care is vital to America’s progress. By increasing the number of educated, well-trained women in the workforce, the United States will boost its economy and lay a foundation for future generations.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for September 23, 2011.
On Monday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released an update to its 1999 and 2002 reports on the status of female college professors, focusing on women in MIT’s Schools of Science and Engineering. Among the updated report’s findings were that progress has been made in growing the number of women in faculty and administrative roles and by fostering a more accepting environment. The report also identified areas of continuing concern, such as lack of adequate child care support and insufficient formal policies in place to address gender-based sexual harassment.
AAUW supports promoting and strengthening women’s involvement in science, technology, engineering and math at all levels. We also agree that sexual harassment is a continuing critical concern. Our own Holly Kearl, LAF Program Manager, has been working this month with AAUW Community Action Project grantee Holla Back DC! to conduct a groundbreaking community safe audit in Washington, D.C., one of many ways we’re combating sexual harassment.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for March 25, 2011.
On Tuesday, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (R-WI) introduced a bill to speed ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The legislation (H.J. Res. 47) would remove the deadline for ratification and render the Constitution amended once three additional states ratify. The last congressional deadline for state ratification ran out in 1982 with ratification from only 35 of the needed 38 state legislatures. Highlighting the continued importance of ratifying ERA, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently noted his belief that the Constitution does not currently prevent discrimination on the basis of sex.
AAUW is one of over 25 organizations to have endorsed Baldwin’s bill, consistent with our 2009-2011 Public Policy Program. We oppose all forms of discrimination and support constitutional protection for the civil rights of all individuals.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for March 11, 2011.
The Obama Administration released a new report entitled Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being. The report, which is the first of its kind since the Kennedy administration released a similar study in 1963, was created in support of the White House Council on Women and Girls. The study compiles data from a handful of Federal agencies, and shows that while women have surpassed men at all levels of education, they only earn 75 percent of what similarly educated men earn. While the report does not contain surprising news about the status of women, it represents the Obama dministrations commitment to the advancement of women and serves as a comprehensive data source for equal pay advocates.
AAUW will continue working to pass important pay equity provisions which will protect employees and work toward closing the pay gap. AAUW has been working closely with the president's team to ensure that breaking through educational and economic barriers for women is on top of the executive branch's agenda.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for March 4, 2011.
The Center for Women Policy Studies has released a fact sheet on state-level anti-human trafficking legislation in 2010. The fact sheet highlights the laws passed this year in state legislatures across the country aimed at preventing, tracking, and stopping human and sex trafficking into the United States. It is estimated that tens of thousands of men, women, and children are trafficked into the United States each year. Recently enacted measures include interagency task forces and commissions, regulations on International Marriage Brokers, and in California, a law which requires high-earning companies to disclose their efforts to ensure that supply chains are free of trafficked persons. As of this year, 43 state legislatures have passed laws making human trafficking a state felony offense.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for March 4, 2011.
WASHINGTON — The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has signed an amicus “friend of the court” brief in support of the plaintiffs in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. On March 29, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument to determine whether the case can move forward as a class action. AAUW — one of 34 groups to sign the brief — will also provide financial support through its Legal Advocacy Fund to defray the expenses of six of the lead plaintiffs.
Lead plaintiff Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart employee, has alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotion policies and practices in Wal-Mart retail stores. If she and the other plaintiffs prevail at the Supreme Court, their case will become the largest class-action civil rights suit in the nation’s history, comprising approximately 1.6 million female Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club employees.
“AAUW believes that all these women deserve their day in court and that the Supreme Court should allow the case to proceed as a class action. It is the vehicle through which 1.6 million women can pursue justice,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “By herself, Betty Dukes is fighting a Goliath, but by banding together with other women and having AAUW stand behind her, she has a strong, powerful voice in the struggle for equity and fairness.”
In 2001, Dukes and other lead plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in order to pursue the case as a class action. Wal-Mart appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, then to a three-judge panel of the same court, and then to the full court en banc, all affirming the district court’s decision. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. A decision in favor of Dukes and the other lead plaintiffs would open the door for these women to pursue their discrimination case.
AAUW is a leader in the fight for pay equity. The alleged gender discrimination in pay in this case contributed to AAUW’s decision to support the lead plaintiffs. The AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund offers financial and organizational support for workplace-based cases that have the potential to provide significant protection for all women. Since 1981, LAF has disbursed nearly $2 million to more than 100 plaintiffs to help offset their legal fees in sex discrimination cases and has been instrumental to the success of many cases.
- from AAUW's Action Network for March 3, 2011.
This week, representatives from AAUW joined more than 250 women from around the world for the 55th U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. The CSW’s theme of access and participation for women’s and girls’ education and training in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics was informed by AAUW’s recent Why So Few? report and AAUW was asked to participate on multiple levels. AAUW Chief of Strategic Advancement Jill Birdwhistell gave remarks during a panel discussion on Wednesday. Earlier today, AAUW Senior Researcher Andresse St. Rose participated in a parallel CSW discussion organized by AAUW.
Do your part to spark girls’ interest in science! Learn more about AAUW’s role in the 10 for 10 campaign to introduce girls to the field of engineering.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for February 25, 2011.
Five women candidates under the age of forty are running for office in the midterm elections. While these young women do not have children, they may be sensitive to the unique issues facing young working women and families such as paid parental leave, reproductive rights, and childcare costs. Currently, women senators and representatives make up just 17 percent of Congress and of those members, only 10 have young children. The presence of these few young mothers has had an impact on the hill, which now provides childcare and nursing rooms on the Capitol grounds
AAUW believes that creating work environments that help employees balance the responsibilities of work and family is good public policy—good for workers, good for families, and good for business.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for October 29, 2009
Although one could "easily compile statistics to make the case that women -- at least Western women -- are already empowered," the "evidence isn't particularly persuasive to the one group that should know: women," contributing writer and blogger Lisa Belkin writes in a New York Times Magazine opinion piece. "After all, you could compile a whole other set of figures that show just how far from empowered we are," she says, adding that "measuring women's power by looking only at women -- and by looking mostly at the workplace -- paints a false picture." Belkin explains, "Telling women they have reached parity is like telling an unemployed worker the recession is over. It isn't true until it feels true."
Belkin argues that today's men "are at a turning point women reached several decades ago, when the joint demands of work and home intensified." According to Joan Williams, author of "Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter," women's dilemma in balancing their jobs with the rest of their lives has long been that "the workplace has changed in their favor, but home hasn't." Williams said that men "have the opposite problem. More is expected of them at home, but expectations have not shifted at work." Belkin writes that this "explains why the percentage of fathers in dual-income households who say they suffer work-family conflict has risen to 59% from 35% since 1977."
Belkin continues that "if men can find no relief from the pressures of work, they are not going to be able to fit into the revamped economy of home," adding that even when men are offered flex policies, they "don't use them as much as American women do." While there are "some practical reasons for these discrepancies," Belkin writes that what "[o]ften ... look like causes are really effects -- we make assumptions about sex roles and then reinforce them with our behavior."
She writes, "Empowering American women can no longer focus only on women -- on leveling playing fields or offering mothers 'on-ramps' and 'off-ramps' or shattering ceilings one at a time." Belkin argues, "All those efforts must continue, yes. But none will succeed if we don't change our expectations for men." She concludes, "Or, more accurately, men's expectations for themselves" (Belkin, New York Times Magazine, 10/21).
A new report by the Pew Research Center reveals that college educated white women are now just as likely as those without higher education to get married, ending the phenomenon frequently called a “marriage penalty” for women with college educations. The results, which use data from 2008, also show that the typical age of marriage for college educated women as well as those without college educations is 28 and that 84 percent of women are married before age 40. Although the findings indicate that college-educated women are now more likely to marry and to do so earlier than in the past, the narrowing marriage gap appears to be primarily due to the diminishing rate at which women without college educations are marrying.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for October 15, 2009
In response to the growing presence of women running for elected office, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University is launching The 2012 Project, a national, non-partisan campaign to identify and increase the number of women in legislative office. The campaign focuses on women from the baby boomer generation.
AAUW supports closing the political leadership gender gap. AAUW’s Elect Her initiative specifically focuses on increasing the number of women running for public office. Elect Her trains and encourages young women to run for student government and helps women view themselves as political candidates for the future. For more information, click here.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for August 6, 2009
Women with no children remain the norm in the upper echelons of high-level management, according to a recent study conducted by the Harvard Business Review. The higher a woman advances in her career, the more likely it is that she has no spouse or children, whereas the opposite is true for men. Tangentially, employers continue to discriminate against women with children, despite their credentials, when compared to equally qualified applicants. This, in turn, may lead women to choose between either having a family or a career.
AAUW believes that creating work environments that help employees balance the responsibilities of work and family is good public policy - good for workers, good for families, and good for business.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for June 4, 2009
AAUW released policy recommendations Friday based on a new report from Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress that highlights the rise of women in the workforce while emphasizing that working women and their families lack critical support. The Shriver Report-A Woman's Nation Changes Everything is a comprehensive account of the status of women, who for the first time in history are half of the workforce in the U.S. One of the co-editors of the report, Heather Boushey, is also a former AAUW Fellow.
Read AAUW's policy recommendations based on the report, then download our Program in a Box to see how you can turn the recommendations into action with your branch or community. Read our press release and other news coverage, including blog and Twitter updates. For all this and more, see AAUW's new webpage devoted to our response to A Woman's Nation.
- from AAUW's Washington Update for October 16, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. - AAUW has provided detailed policy recommendations that will help society's institutions catch up with the women's progress detailed in The Shriver Report-A Woman's Nation Changes Everything. AAUW's recommendations on a variety of subject areas, including pay equity, work-life balance, and education, can be found at AAUW.org.
A Woman's Nation emphasizes one of the most remarkable changes of the past half century: the movement of millions of women into paid employment. Women now make up half of all workers in the United States, a stunning shift from just a few generations ago.
"There hasn't been a comprehensive account of the status of women in more than 45 years," said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. "Given the nation's rather complicated economic situation, this report could not have come at a better time. AAUW is taking the lead on providing policy recommendations and grassroots action items for our members and others who are interested in issues affecting working women. These recommendations are aimed at continuing to improve women's status and strengthening the economic security of their families."
The report highlights the rise of women in the workforce while emphasizing that working women and their families lack critical supports. An opinion poll linked to the report found that women and men both want to change social norms to improve family and economic security, particularly on issues of balancing work and life.
"Women have broken through many barriers in the last 45 years, but there is still much to be done to adequately respond to women's-and men's-changing roles. We only need to look at the stark reality for working women who are simultaneously caring for children or parents to know this is true," said Lisa Maatz, AAUW director of public policy and government relations. "Even though there are laws on the books to promote equity in education and income, it does not necessarily mean that those laws are enforced and that women are being given a fair chance. CAP's timely report and AAUW's policy recommendations help bring those subjects to the forefront as women move forward in true, equal partnership with men."
The report is divided into various chapters, each focusing on its own topic area. AAUW is providing policy recommendations for five chapters, including education and pay equity, because we believe that the laws and regulations about work must be updated to meet the needs of today's workers. In the area of education, AAUW is advocating to strengthen the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), to improve access to higher education, and to ensure educational equity through Title IX. To advance pay equity, AAUW is focusing on building on the successful passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by enacting the Paycheck Fairness Act, advancing pay equity within the federal government, and improving and advancing equal opportunity in the workplace.
AAUW is especially pleased to note that one of the co-editors of the report, Heather Boushey, is a former AAUW Fellow. "It's immensely gratifying to AAUW members, who have been supporting our fellowships and grants for more than 121 years, to see their support of women scholars come to such amazing fruition," said Hallman. "Boushey is a senior economist at the Center for American Progress and a well-known expert on women and the economy." In addition, AAUW Senior Researcher Catherine Hill provided peer review support for the chapter on education.
Read The Shriver Report - A Woman's Nation Changes Everything.