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Celebrating Unsung Heroines: “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana”

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Vivienne Heston-Demirel

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon In 2005 I traveled to Afghanistan to write a newspaper story about women entrepreneurs, women who turned to business to create jobs and hope for their families. I wanted to find a story that no one was writing about, a story that mattered. That story was Kamila Sidiqi.

Tags: Afghanistan

Change was promised, Change has come

Posted on May 29, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

May 27, 2009 posted by Linda Basch After nearly a month of anticipation, President Obama has finally announced his nomination for Supreme Court justice—and what a nomination! The President tapped Sonia Sotomayor, a New York federal appeals justice born to Puerto Rican parents and raised in housing projects in the South Bronx. In a world where most Latinas are far less likely to go on to college than any other group of women, only 2.9 % of Latina Women hold advanced graduate degrees, 10% of all Latina women are unemployed, and the number of female Hispanic Federal Court Judges can be counted on one hand, Sotomayor has risen above those odds to become the first ever Hispanic woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Her ascent from humble beginnings mirrors President Obama’s personal narrative; both overcame incredible obstacles to become role models for generations. For those in the Hispanic Community, her appointment is a glimmer of hope that the often silenced voice of the Hispanic, female minority has a better chance of being represented in public debates and decision-making.

Tags: Affirmative Action, Congress, diversity, gender, higher education, Latinas, lawyers, Obama, Obama Administration, politics, Sotomayor, women's leadership, Women's Media Center

Posted on May 01, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

May 1, 2009 posted by Shyama Venkateswar The recent health alert on swine flu has serious implications for those surviving at the margins of society without health care, paid sick leave, or other benefits. Women working in low-skill jobs are particularly vulnerable. Judith Warner's piece in the NYT brings much-needed attention to this issue: how to provide economic security for millions of women, particularly those who are single heads of households, working part-time jobs that are tenuously held at best.

Tags: Big 5, economic security, H1N1, health, health insurance, Healthy Families Act, Judith Warner, sick leave, swine flu

Enough is Enough—We NEED Fair Pay NOW

Posted on April 28, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

April 28, 2009 posted by Kyla Bender-Baird I post this today, in honor of Fair Pay Day, with a sense of both frustration and hope. I’m frustrated that three decades have gone by after the passage of the Equal Pay Act and we still don’t have pay equity. I’m frustrated that what progress we’ve made has been achingly slow and small. According to the National Committee on Pay Equity, the wage gap has closed by less than half of one cent per year since the Equal Pay Act of 1963. At the current rate of progress, it will take 50 years to close the wage gap. This is simply intolerable. It is unacceptable that after decades of feminist lobbying, women continue to earn only 78 cents for every man’s dollar. In some occupations, the gap is even wider. Among finance and insurance occupations, women earn 55.2 cents on the dollar and the wage gap among physician surgeons is 63.5%. Even as I write this, I’m struck by Michael Kimmel’s recent comment at a panel I attended , questioning why we discuss women’s wages as a function of men’s wages. Why not make male privilege and the gendered dynamics of the economy more visible by reversing the equation? Men make $1.28 for every woman’s dollar. Despite this frustration, however, I remain optimistic. This optimism springs from an unlikely source: the economic downturn.

Tags: Discrimination, economic security, equal pay, Equal Pay Act, fair pay, Feminism, financial crisis, gender, gender roles, Ledbetter, Obama Adminitration, pay equity, Paycheck Fairness Act, politics, Work/Life Balance

The Impact of the Global Recession

Posted on April 17, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

April 17, 2009 posted by Shyama Venkateswar The Gender Policy Group at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs organized a lively panel discussion on “Gender, Jobs and This Recession” on Monday, April 13, 2009. I was invited to speak on the panel along with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Melinda Wolfe, Subha Barry and Heidi Brown. Here are the main points that I addressed: The current economic crisis is unprecedented in terms of its global reach and impact; here’s what the current economic crisis looks like within the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that current unemployment stands at 13.2 million. 5.1 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. The subprime lending crisis has particularly hit hard women and people of color because of predatory lending practices. NCRW’s research has shown that African American and Latina women borrowers are most likely to receive sub-prime loans at every income level. Women are 32% more likely than men to receive subprime mortgages. In the financial sector, men’s unemployment in Feb was 6.9% while for women it was 6.6% There have been increased reports of women who were secondary breadwinners in their households having to now become primary wage earner because of layoffs. At the international level, the picture remains pretty grim as well:

Tags: African Americans, Asia, diversity, economic security, Employment, financial crisis, gender, immigration, Latinas, mortgages, Poverty, recession, trafficking

Keeping Women on the Economic Agenda

Posted on April 03, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

April 3, 2009 posted by Kyla Bender-Baird Last night I attended a dynamic panel hosted by Legal Momentum on Women’s Economic Equality: The Next Frontier in Women’s Rights. The brilliant panelists duked it out, discussing the current economic situation, its impact on women, and in what directions we should be heading. Legal Momentum President, Irasema Garza, discussed the frustration that while historic legal victories were secured decades ago, this hasn’t translated into systematic equality for the majority of women in the U.S. Women continue to be steered away from training opportunities, segregated into low-wage jobs, and are 42% more likely to be poor than men. In the midst of this stalemate came a ray of sunshine: the election of Obama. With this historic election comes the opportunity to set new goals, reframe old debates, and shift the focus of our advocacy. In this light, Legal Momentum is calling for a Second Bill of Rights for Women. The bill must provide pathways to employment for women through job training and education; secure rights and supports to ensure women earn a living wage; ensure that public benefits provide an adequate safety net; and expand legal rights and support services for survivors of domestic violence. Heather Boushey brought her economic expertise from the Center for American Progress and laid out the current stark reality:

Tags: economic security, Employment, equal pay, financial crisis, gender roles, insurance, Obama Administration, Second Bill of Rights for Women

Posted on April 01, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

April 1, 2009 posted by Deborah Siegel Deborah Siegel is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild, creator of the group blog Girl w/Pen and a long-time friend of the Council. The following was originally posted on Recession Wire as Deborah's latest installment of her weekly column, Love in the Time of Layoff. Those who read this column know that I’ve been writing very personally about how the downturn has affected my relationship. In all honesty, I’m starting to fear that by focusing on what’s happening inside relationships, we may be losing sight of larger contexts—what could and should be happening in the structures that govern our lives. The personal is political, after all! Whoever invented the notion that a wife who earns less than her husband has a career that is, by definition, “expendable”? The ubiquity of this sentence—“she has an expendable career”—was brought home to me once again when I read Diane Clehane’s “Recession Marriage Wars” in yesterday’s Daily Beast. Clehane poignantly shares her frustration that for her, and for many working mothers she knows, “The recession means wives are under pressure from their husbands who tell them a sitter is now a luxury they can’t afford.” These are working mothers, mind you—women who have defined themselves by their careers for most of their lives and who know that being a good mom and having a great career are not mutually exclusive. As someone with big hopes of starting a family, and as a feminist, I’m thinking government-funded or employer-subsidized childcare is sounding like a pretty darn good idea right about now.

Tags: Care-giving, child care, Deborah Siegel, economic security, feminism, Feminism, financial crisis, gender, mothers, parents, Work/Life Balance, working mothers

Posted on March 30, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

March 30, 2009 posted by admin Last week, the Insight Center for Community Development convened 75 assets-building experts of color from around the nation for the Color of Wealth 2009 Policy Summit . During the Summit, experts met with members of Congress and policy staff to discuss the gap between people of color and whites in economic security and mobility. While most people are familiar with the stat that people of color are three times more likely to receive a sub-prime mortgage loan than white borrowers, even when qualified for a prime loan, the picture is actually much more stark. As Meizhu Lui, director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at Insight, discusses in her recent Washington Post op-ed, white families are five times more likely to have bank account than families of color. Furthermore, the racial wealth gap is actually widening. Says Lui,“The gap between the wealth of white Americans and African Americans has grown. According to the Fed, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family has only one dime. In 2004, it had 12 cents. This is not just a gap. It’s a deepening canyon. The overhyped political term ‘post-racial society’ becomes patently absurd when looking at these economic numbers.”

Tags: Affirmative Action, African Americans, diversity, economic security, mortgages, Obama, Poverty, race, wealth gap

Posted on March 11, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

March 11, 2009 posted by admin This just in: by executive order President Obama has created a White House Council on Women and Girls. As NOW stated in their press release, "We asked for a Cabinet-level office to work on women's issues, and we got the entire cabinet." The Council will headed by Valerie Jarrett and include every Cabinet secretary and head of every Cabinet-level agency. This is obviously a huge step. What do you think the first

Tags: Cabinet, NOW, Obama, Obama Administration, politics, White House, White House Council on Women and Girls, women's leadership

Posted on March 11, 2009 by NCRW NCRW

March 11, 2009 posted by Delores M. Walters* The disproportionate effects of the seized-up economy on citizens of color whether in housing, employment or educational opportunity soundly refutes the idea that “we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country” as the Wall Street Journal claimed one day after Obama’s election. Others take a more moderate stance: “For all our huge progress, we are not “post-racial,” whatever that means. The world doesn’t change in a day, and the racial frictions that emerged in both the Democratic primary campaign and the general election didn’t end on Nov. 4. As Obama himself said in his great speech on race, liberals couldn’t “purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap” simply by voting for him. Perhaps wealth accumulation is the most convincing indicator of racial disparity in America. As Dalton Conley points out, the net worth of African American families is only one-eighth that of White families which is not due to differences in education, earnings or savings rates, but due to the legacy of racial discrimination. Other groups, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, for example, exhibit wealth accumulation rates that mirror the statistics for Blacks, while Cubans mirror those for Whites.

Tags: African Americans, diversity, elections, Latinos, Obama, politics, race, wealth gap