Ms. Foundation

By Shyama Venkateswar, Ph.D.*

I joined a distinguished panel of researchers, advocates, and experts at the Yale Club on Thursday, January 19th when I presented our latest studies on increasing the access of low-income women to child care.

The panel was led by Jessica Sager, Co-Founder and Executive Director of All Our Kin, an innovative Connecticut-based program that has had significant success in training child care providers and increasing the economic security of low-income women.

To many of us, investing in child care is a no-brainer, but rigorous data from the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis showed that for every dollar invested in child care, the state of Connecticut earned $15-20 in economic benefits. In other words, child care not only pays for itself, but has a significant multiplier effect on the economy and on our society.

This week, New York moved one step closer to becoming the first state to enact a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Here's what the Ms. Foundation has to say about it:

The bill, which would guarantee domestic workers basic workplace rights like paid vacation and sick days, overtime pay, and at least one day off per week, was passed by the New York State Senate by a vote of 33-28. Though the legislation still has to be reconciled with an earlier version that was passed by the Assembly last year, and then signed into law by Governor Paterson, yesterday's vote in the bill's favor was a historic achievement, setting the stage for the passage of similar bills in states like California and Colorado.

Sunny Daly, Corporate and Foundation Relations Manager at the Ms. Foundation for Women and author of Changing Images of the Birth Control Pill: 1960-1973 has a great post up on the 50th Anniversary of the birth control pill.  Says Daly,

"we would do well to remember that a pill alone can never be "the great liberator" of women's lives. Though its development was a revolutionary step in the right direction, research shows that education -- about sex, sexuality, and the choices we all make in relation to the two -- remains the key to securing the reproductive health of women and girls in this nation and around the world -- not least of all, on the national front, in the aftermath of Bush's federally mandated abstinence-only curricula."

By Jacqueline Mumbey*

As part of its ongoing work on economic justice, the Ms. Foundation has recently posted two interesting pieces on our nation’s economic recovery. They share our concern here at NCRW that the efforts currently underway will not lead to an economic recovery for all: