Housing

Inadequate income, lack of affordable housing and demanding caretaking responsibilities force many women to live in substandard housing. Domestic violence and poor credit ratings are other factors that undermine housing options for women and girls. The Sub-Prime mortgage crisis has hit low-income women and people of color particularly hard, with long-range implications for their housing opportunities. Affordable, accessible, quality housing is essential, not only for the economic security of women and their families but for their health and safety as well.

Gender Equality as Smart Economics: A World Bank Group Gender Action Plan, Fiscal Years 2007-2010

This Action Plan seeks to advance women’s economic empowerment in the World Bank Group’s client countries in order to promote shared growth and accelerate the implementation of Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG3- promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment). The Plan would commit the World Bank to intensify and scale up gender mainstreaming in the economic sectors over four years, in partnership with client countries, donors, and other development agencies. The Bank group and its partners would increase resources devoted to gender issues in operations and technical assistance, in Results-Based Initiatives (RBIs), and in policy-relevant research and statistics. An assessment at the end of the four-year period would determine whether to extend the Action Plan’s timeframe.
 

URL: 
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/GAPNov2.pdf

FAST FACT: How the Safety Net is Failing Americans

January 12, 2010 posted by Kyla Bender-Baird


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Issue Brief: "Strengthening Income and Work Supports"

Included in "A Platform for Progress: Building a Better Future for Women and Their Families/Building Economic Security" A policy summary on Earned Income Tax Credit and reform of welfare policies and administration.

URL: 
http://www.nwlc.org/details.cfm?id=3318&section=infocenter
Member Organization: 

Report: “Women Hard Hit by the Worsening Economy Need Targeted Assistance” July 2008

URL: 
http://www.nwlc.org/pdf/WomenEconomicRecoveryJuly2008.pdf
Member Organization: 

Legal Momentum

Contact

395 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
Ph. 212-925-6635
Fx. 212-226-1066
http://www.legalmomentum.org
news@legalmomentum.org


Founded in 1970, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) is the country's oldest national legal advocacy organization dedicated to achieveing women's equality. Through strategic litigation, public policy advocacy, and broad education programs, Legal Momentum has been at the forefront of national efforts to achieve gender equality in the areas of economic justice, education, violence against women, child care, reproductive freedom, and family life.

 

 

Recently Posted

Employment Opportunities

Principal Staff

Elizabeth Grayer, President
E-mail: egrayer@legalmomentum.org
Sandra Brown Basso, Coordinator, Executive Department

Legal Department
Silda Palerm, Executive Vice President and Legal Director
Timothy J. Casey, Senior Staff Attorney
Françoise Jacobsohn, Program Manager
Michelle A. Caiola, Senior Counsel
Brigitte A. Watson, Program Coordinator

Immigrant Women Program
Silda Palerm, Executive Vice President and Legal Director

National Judicial Education Program
Lynn Hecht Schafran, Senior Vice President and Director
Eliana Theodorou, Program Associate

Government Affairs Department
Lisalyn R. Jacobs, Vice President for Government Relations

Communications Department
Astrid Fiano, Communications Associate

Development
Carol Noblitt, Chief Development Officer
Julie Repcheck, Deputy Director of Development
Roberta Taormina, Development Assistant

Finance and Administration
David Levin, Director of Finance and Administration
Cynthia D. Foulks, Office Administrator
Jonathan Goldberg, Systems Administrator

Member Experts:
Lynn Schafran – domestic violence and sexual assault
Michelle Caiola – pregnancy discrimination in the workplace
Tim Casey – women and poverty
Francoise Jacobsohn – women in male-dominated employment field
Silda Palerm

Areas of Expertise:

Affirmative Action, Discrimination, Employment & Unemployment, Immigration & Migration, Disparities, Housing, Legal Issues, Population & Reproductive Rights, Poverty, Safety Nets, Taxes & Tax Reform, Economic Development & Security, Education & Education Reform, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, Violence

Member Experts:


Projects & Campaigns

Child Care

As part of its on-going commitment to low-income families, Legal Momentum has long focused on the need for child care. Legal Momentum is broaening its work into a campaign to provide a comprehensive system of quality, affordable child care for every family in America.


Poverty and Welfare Reform

Legal Momentum supports the State Advocacy Project, an initiative that promotes child care, reproductive rights, employment rights, and ending domestic violence for low-income women.

Recognizing that 90% of adult TANF recipients are female, Legal Momentum views welfare as a women's issue. Currently, our work has focused on ensuring that a fair and sensible welfare policy that addresses the barriers to women's economic security will be implemented upon Congressional reauthorization.

Employment

Legal Momentum supports placing women in non-traditional jobs, such as firefighting and law enforcement, as well as construction trades and technology fields. Following the World Trade Center disaster of 9/11/2001, Legal Momentum launched Women Rebuild NY/Women Rebuild America, a program designed to further training and job opportunities in these areas.

Immigration

Legal Momentum advocates on behalf of battered immigrant women and victims of trafficking. The organization's Immigrant Women Program, based in the Washington, DC office, has extensive contact with grass-roots organizations and works with federal legislators to ensure the rights and protections of immigrant survivors of violence and sexual abuse. We also advocate for immigrant women to receive economic benefits to which they are lawfully entitled.


Violence against Women

Legal Momentum crafted the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) and currently leads the fight for passage of the Victims Economic Security and Safety Act (VESSA).

Under our Economic Rights for Survivors of Abuse (ERSA) program, we are litigating cases on behalf of women whose careers and well-being are affected by domestic and sexual violence.


Law/Legal Issues

Legal Momentum's Project on Federalism monitors and seeks to educate the public about the Supreme Court's recent decisions limiting the federal government's ability to legislate such vital areas of national policy as violence in the home, guns in schools, protection of our environment, and many other civil and women's rights issues.

The National Judicial Education Program to Promote Equality for Women and Men in the Courts (NJEP), develops trainings, publications, and video curricula to educate judges and prosecutors on gender issues.

 

 

Reports & Resources

Child Care

Know Your Rights: Parents Receiving Public Assistance in New York City

Nowhere to Turn: New York City's Failure to Inform Parents on Public Assistance About Their Child Care Rights

Still Nowhere to Turn: New York City's Continuing Failure to Inform Parents on Public Assistance About Their Child Care Rights

Poverty and Welfare Reform

Legal Momentum. 2009. Ensuring the Economic and Personal Security of Women and Girls. 

www.legalmomentum.org/assets/pdfs/2009-legal-momentum-annual.pdf

Bonus for Building Real Opportunities for Poor Families: State Action Packet

Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973, Martha Davis (1993). Describes the emergence of welfare rights litigation in the 1960s and highlights the strategies of important constitutional cases.

Dangerous Indifference: New York City's Failure to Implement the Family Violence Option

Welfare Reform Information Packet (1998). Includes background on child exclusion (family cap) and illegitimacy ratio.

What Congress Didn't Tell You: This 50-state report begins to track state responses to welfare reform in the area of reproductive choice and specficially focuses on the illegitimacy bonus, the family cap, and the abstinence-only sex education funding.

Working First But Working Poor: The Need for Education & Training in Wefare Reform (Executive Summary and Full Report Available): A Study by Legal Momentum and the Institute for Women's Policy Research on how women welfare recipients are denied access to job training for good-paying jobs in fields traditionally populated by men.

Employment

Household Workers' Rights Under Federal Law Fact Sheet

Know Your rights: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Harassment and Workfare

Manual for Survival for Women in Nontraditional Employment

Nontraditional Employment for Low-Income Women: A Guide for Advocates

The Women of Ground Zero: A Documentary: A 12-minute film documenting the efforts of six women form various backgrounds who helped at the disaster site on and after 9/11.

Violence Against Women & ERSA:

Not Enough: What TANF Offers Family Violence Victims. 2010. 

The survey on which this report is based is a unique, comprehensive effort to understand when TANF successfully assists victims of family violence, and when the program falls short, leaving victims to fend for themselves. 

Action Packet: State Laws Can Help Domestic Violence Victims At Work

The Impact of Violence in the Lives of Working Women: Creating Solutions, Creating Change: Designed to aid employers, managers, supervisors, and human resource professionals, this guide explains how violence against women affects the workplace and how businesses can develop solutions that assist women employees who have suffered.

Protecting Women's Welfare in the Face of Violence: Critiques welfare reform proposals in light of data on the relationship between violence against women and poverty.

Report From the Front Lines: The Impact of Violence on Poor Women: This qualitative study demonstrates that domestic violence and poverty interact to keep women on public assistance. Also included is a copy of the Family Violence Amendment.

State-by-State Laws on Discrimination Against Domestic Violence Victims

State-by-State Laws on Domestic Violence Workplace Policies

State-by-State Laws on Employment Leave for Domestic Violence Victims

State-by-State Laws on Unemployment Insurance

Employment Rights for Survivors of Abuse (ERSA) General Brochure

Domestic Violence and Unemployment Insurance: A Manual for Clients and Advocates

Eligibility for Unemployment Benefits (also available in French)

Employment Rights of Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Domestic Violence Survivors

Job Protections & Accommodations for Disabilities Caused by Domestic Violence

Safety Planning in the Workplace: Protecting Yourself and Your Job (also available in Chinese, French, Hindu, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese)

Survivors' Right to Take Time from Work to Participae in Criminal Proceedings (also available in French)

Taking Leave from Work for a Family Member's Serious Condition

Taking Leave from Work for Your Own Serious Condition

Welfare-to-Work Programs

Welfare-to-Work Programs in New York

Workplace Discrimination Against Abused Women (also available in French)

Your Legal Rights When an Abuser Injures You at Work

Law/Legal Issues and NJEP:

National Judicial Education Program (NJEP)Publications List

Credibility in the Courts: Why is There a Gender Gap?

Implementation Resources Directory, a publication of the Gender Fairness Strategies Project: Provides an annotated list of actions taken and materials available to address gender bias in state courts that can be replicated or adapted in other jurisdictions.

Is the Law Male? Let Me Count the Ways: Illustrates the concept of the law as male by analogizing it to the medical community's treatment of the male body as the norm.

Overwhelming Evidence: Reports on Gender Bias in the Courts

There's No Accounting For Judges: Recounts recent cases in which judges imposed minimal sentences on wife beaters and murderers, the intense response of the communities in which these cases occurred, and the ways in which judicial selection, election, education, evaluation, and discipline can be used to prevent recurrence of this type of gender bias.

Women of Color in the Courts

NJEP curricula materials for judges and prosecutors also available.

Education

An Annotated Summary of the Regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (1997). A summary and an analysis of Title IX regulations, including housing and facilities, counseling, scholarships, and athletics.

Public Education Programs for African-American Males: A Women's Educational Perspective, Walteen Grady Truely and Martha F. Davis (1995). Reviews educational research data and theories relevant to recent public school programs targeting African-American males and analyzes the programs from a gender equity perspective.


Reproductive Rights

Drawing the Line: A Handbook for Creating Residential Picketing and Buffer Zone Laws in Your Community: Explores the legal basics of how to enact and implement residential picketing and buffer zone ordinances to protect clinics and their staff from anti-choice violence and harassment. It covers legal standards, perovides an overview of recent court decisions, and offers guidelines for drafting municipal ordinances.

Stop the Terrorism: Understanding Your Rights Under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE): Explains how you can use FACE in your community to prevent, stop, and redress anti-abortion tactics including clinic blockades and invasions, and acts of violence, intimidation, and property damage directed at those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services.

Legal Resource Kits:


Collections of materials providing general legal information are available on the following topics:

Divorce

Domestic Violence and Child Custody

Employment Sexual Harassment & Discrimination

Filing a Judicial Complaint in State Courts

How to Find a Lawyer (also available in Spanish)

Incest and Child Abuse

Sexual Harassment in Housing

Sexual Harassment in the Schools

Stalking

Violence Against Women

NOW LDEF also distributes the following publications of the National Center on Women and Family Law, which is now closed:

Analysis and Policy Implications of the New Domestic Violence Police Studies (1994).

Battered Women - Procedure for Change of Name and Social Security Number (1995).

Batterer's Pathology: Questions and Implications (1993).

Defending a Battered Woman Accused of Parental Abduction (1992).

The Effect of Woman Abuse on Children, 2nd. ed. (1994).

Guide to Interstate Custody: A Manual for Domestic Violence Advocates, 2nd. ed. (1995).

Improving the Health Care Response to Domestic Violence Through Protocols and Policies (1994).

Mandatory Arrest Laws (1994).

Mandatory Arrest: Problems and Possibilities (1994).

Mediation - A Guide for Advocates and Attorneys Representing Battered Women (1990).

Mediation and You (1991).

Mediator's Guide to Domestic Abuse (1989).

Mediation of Domestic Violence Cases (1994).

Medical Domestic Violence Protocols and Standards (1994).

Mutual Orders of Protection (1994).

National Handbook on Teen Dating Violence and the Law. For teens and college-age students.

Non-Disclosure Laws: Protection for Domestic Violence Victims (1994).

State Domestic Violence Laws Regarding Firearms (1993).

State Laws Exempting Battered Women from Mediation (1992).

Status of Marital Rape Exemption Statutes in the United States (1996).

Suing the Police After DeShaney (1995).

Voter Address Confidentiality for Domestic Violence Victims (1995).

Woman Battering: A Major Cause of Homelessness (1991).

Back issues of The Women's Advocate newsletter also available.

 

 

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