Updates on the Issues
NYC Launches Affordable Loans for Women-Owned Businesses
An initiative of the mayor’s office, the Contract Financing Loan Fund was launched by NYC Department of Small Business Services which allows minority- and women-owned businesses to apply for low-interest contract financing loans of up to $500K with interest rates capped at 3%. Despite their trillions in contribution to U.S. economy, women-owned businesses receive only 16% of conventional small business loans and 17% of SBA loans.
Source: Fortune.com
World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report
The Global Gender Gap Index was first introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 as a framework for capturing the magnitude of gender-based disparities and tracking their progress over time. The Index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, education, health and political criteria, and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparisons across regions and income groups. The rankings are designed to create global awareness of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them. The methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings are intended to serve as a basis for designing effective measures for reducing gender gaps.
View the grades of over 144 countries.
You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch
Why are well over a million and a half Americans over 50, people with decades of life ahead of them, unable to find work? The underlying reason isn’t personal, it’s structural. It’s the result of a network of attitudes and institutional practices that we can no longer ignore. The problem is ageism — discrimination on the basis of age. A dumb and destructive obsession with youth so extreme that experience has become a liability.
Souce: New York Times
Apple, Facebook, Other Major Companies Commit To Paying Women The Same As Men
The White House announced that 29 new private sector companies ― including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Target, Visa and General Motors ― have signed a pledge committing to closing the gender pay gap for their employees.
Source: Huffington Post
Expense Policies Are a Woman’s Problem
Household expenses are not covered because expense policies (and IRS codes) are still biased toward men. Most of these policies were created when men were traveling, and women were home taking care of the kids. When the male leaders of this world travel, there is an embedded assumption that they have women at home maintaining the hearth, cooking their meals, taking care of their children, feeding their dogs, watering their plants. They do not need to pay for these services, because it is built in as part of the traditional family unit.
Source: Medium
We Can No Longer Be Silent: How Intimate Partner Violence Affects Women of Color
The sexual abuse to prison pipeline, and its disproportionate effects on women of color and low-income women, is yet another demonstration of the relationships between: intimate partner violence, lack of mental health for low-income women, high rates of violence experienced by women of color, lack of economic independence for women, and the cultural causes and repercussions of this level of violence in these communities.
Source: NOW
Women in America’s Blue-Collar Communities Face the Biggest Pay Gap
The female working class earns a fifth less than men
A focus on vocational education in working-class towns helps men find good paying local jobs as manual laborers and machinists. For women in those same blue-collar milieus, it often means lower pay or no work at all, according to new Cornell University research.
Source: Bloomberg
Men Are Afraid to Take Parental Leave. Guess Why
But men actually have less to worry about, it turns out. Research has found that having a child boosts men’s careers. Dads get a “fatherhood bonus:” Their earnings increase more than 6 percent for each kid they have, one study found. Part of that has to do with the fact that many don’t take time off. But men are also perceived differently than women for having kids. Dads are seen as being responsible, while moms are perceived as distracted.
Parental leave policies are supposed to even out these imbalances, ensuring that new moms aren’t the only ones putting a dent in their career. All-encompassing leave policies shift some child-care responsibilities onto men, so they too can be seen as having priorities other than work. Everyone loses, so everyone wins.
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Testing of backlogged rape kits yields new insights into rapists and major implications for how sexual assaults should be investigated
The testing of nearly 5,000 forgotten and backlogged rape kits in Cuyahoga County has led to investigations, indictments, prosecutions—and, already more than 250 convictions.
But besides bringing justice to long-ignored victims and taking scores of violent offenders off the streets, the efforts of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force are also helping to change how law enforcement agencies and the academic community view and prosecute rape.
Source: Case Western Reserve University
Black women are now America’s most educated group. But they’re still underpaid.
A higher percentage of black women — 9.7% to be exact — are enrolled in college than any other racial or gender group, including white men, white women, and Asian women. It’s the first time in American history that black women are leading the way in education. While black women are the most educated group in America, they’re still making substantially less than their white male counterparts.
Source: Upworthy
Decades After ‘Boom-Boom Room’ Suit, Bias Persists for Women
Twenty-three women sued Smith Barney for sexual harassment and pay discrimination in an explosive class-action lawsuit filed 20 years ago this month. It became known as the “boom-boom room” suit, named after a basement party room at Smith Barney’s branch office in Garden City, N.Y. Nearly 2,000 women joined the case, exposing the sordid antics of Wall Street’s testosterone-driven culture.
Source: The New York Times
Being a Working Mom Will Cost You the Most in These Countries
A new study on 17 European nations and the U.S. examines how the gender pay gap changes post-child.
Source: Fortune
Women of color trail white women in leadership
According to a new study from the American Association of University Women (AAUW), women of color are the fastest-growing share of the female workforce but lag far behind white women in senior leadership. The study is “Barriers and Bias: The Status of Women in Leadership.”
Source: Network of Executive Women
If we had parental leave, our sons might still be alive today
When politics is not an abstraction: in a heartbreaking feature, two moms used their shared tragedies to address paid leave and better support for new mothers.
Source: USA Today