FACTS ABOUT THE UNITED STATE OF WOMEN SUMMIT
buzzz worthy. . .#stateofwomen
·
The
Department of Justice Office of Violence Against Women will release a
report summarizing the sustained impact of the Violence against Women
Act (VAWA) throughout communities across
the country, drawing from conversations with domestic violence, dating
violence, sexual assault and stalking service providers from over twenty
states and tribes.
UNITED STATE OF WOMEN SUMMIT
FACT SHEET: Government, Businesses and Organizations Announce $50 Million in Commitments to Support Women And Girls
Tomorrow,
ahead of the first-ever United State of Women Summit, the Obama
administration, private-sector companies, foundations and organizations
are announcing $50 million in commitments,
along with new policies, tools and partnerships that will continue to
expand opportunity for women and girls. These announcements include a
pledge by more than two dozen leading companies to take actions to
continue to close the gender pay gap, new resources
to empower community college students to negotiate their first
salaries, new campaigns to change how our country values caregiving and
improve portrayals of women in media, and enhanced global efforts to
promote gender quality worldwide. Each of these new
efforts build on the work that President Obama and his administration
have done since the day he took office ensure that women and girls have
equal rights, treatment and protections. He's signed major pieces of
legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay
Act – the first major bill he signed into law in January of 2009 – and
the Affordable Care Act. He's dramatically expanded fair pay and paid
leave protections. And his administration has systematically encouraged
cities and states to embrace policies like
higher minimum wage and paid leave.
Underpinning these actions, the President has spoken out and driven a conversation about treating women fairly. He convened the first-ever
White House Summit focused on working families to help build 21st
century workplaces that better support the needs of families and
companies. He has pushed for cultural change that gives women the
respect they deserve in schools and in workplaces,
and joined advocates in dramatically changing our country's approach to
sexual assault on campus and elsewhere. That conversation has spurred
changes in cities and states, businesses big and small, and schools from
pre-K to college.
To
continue this conversation, tomorrow the President and Vice President
will participate in the United State of Women Summit to highlight the
progress that has been made over the course
of this Administration, and discuss public and private sector solutions
to the challenges that still lie ahead. The First Lady will join Oprah
Winfrey for a conversation aimed to inspire the next generation of
women, shedding light on the progress the First
Lady and Ms. Winfrey has seen women achieve and to encourage young
women to take action so that progress continues for generations to come.
The
primary goal of the Summit is to build a roadmap for future
policymakers, stakeholders and advocates to continue to expand
opportunities for women and girls. The Summit is being convened
by the White House Council on Women and Girls, hosted in partnership
with the Department of State, the Department of Labor, the Aspen
Institute, and Civic Nation, and will bring together leaders across a
wide array of public and private sector industries,
along with students, advocates, entertainers, and athletes, to explore
six issue areas that are critical for women and girls: economic
empowerment, violence against women, health and wellness, civic
engagement, education and entrepreneurship. Learn more about
the work of the White House Council on Women and Girls here.
The new commitments,
resources and initiatives being unveiled tomorrow will build on the
progress we have made over the past seven and a half years – both
domestically and internationally
– on behalf of women and girls. They include:
Commitments from leading companies to join new White House equal pay pledge
·
Tomorrow,
highlighting the critical role that businesses must play in reducing
the national gender pay gap, the White House will announce a new private
sector engagement, called the
White House Equal Pay Pledge, for companies who share this commitment –
many of which are already taking steps on their own. Each company
signing this pledge commits to take action within their organizations by
conducting an annual company-wide gender pay
analysis across occupations, reviewing their hiring and promotion
processes, embedding equal pay efforts into broader enterprise-wide
equity initiatives, and identifying and promoting other best practices
that will help ensure wage fairness for all workers.
As part of this announcement, 28 companies have signed on to the
pledge, including Accenture, Airbnb, Amazon, American Airlines, BCG,
Buffer, Care.com, CEB, Cisco, Deloitte, the Dow Chemical Company,
Expedia, Inc., Gap Inc., Glassdoor, GoDaddy, Jet.com,
Johnson & Johnson, L'Oréal USA, PepsiCo, Pinterest, Popcorn Heaven,
PwC, Rebecca Minkoff, Salesforce, Slack , Spotify, Staples, and Stella
McCartney. Additional companies are invited to join this effort in the
coming months. The pledge and additional commitments
and statements from signatories can be found here. Read more about the gender wage gap in an updated report released by the White House Council of Economic Advisors, available
here.
Modernized protections against gender-based discrimination in the workplace
·
The
Department of Labor will publish a final rule comprehensively updating
its sex discrimination guidelines for federal contractors (including
subcontractors) for the first time
since the 1970s. The rule newly addresses a variety of sex-based
barriers to equal opportunity and fair pay in the workplace, including
pay discrimination; sexual harassment; pregnancy-related accommodations;
family caregiving discrimination; and discrimination
on the basis of gender identity or transgender status.
New
collaboration with Harvard Negotiating & Mediation Clinic to expand
career readiness resources through making available negotiation
training for community college students nationwide
·
Negotiation training can be critical
in helping workers of any age secure a good job, salary and benefits –
but many workers, especially women and those newly entering the job
market,
can face distinct barriers. Tomorrow, the Department of Education and
Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program – as
part of their program in negotiation training – are announcing the
development of a new toolkit for community college
students around the country to equip them with the knowledge and tools
that will better prepare them for starting a career and successfully
negotiating their first salary. In addition to being available for
community college students, the toolkit will be made
publicly available later this year – so will be an important readiness
resource for all those newly entering the job market.
·
The Department of Labor will award
more than $54 million in grants to give working parents the ability to
train for higher wage jobs while addressing barriers faced by those with
child care responsibilities. This will help working parents address
key barriers to participating in and successfully completing training
for middle-and high-skilled jobs in in-demand fields, as well as help
bridge the gap between the workforce development
and child care systems. By leveraging additional public and/or private
funding, the grants promote activities that address barriers to
accessing training and employment including co-location of training and
child care services; increased access through unconventional
training delivery times or locations; flexibilities related to
scheduling and child care exigencies; and improved access to child care
and other related participant supportive services. This more than
doubles the grant awards previously announced as part
of the Department’s Strengthening Working Families Initiative grant
program.
A New Coalition to Change How We Value Care in the 21st Century
·
Child and elder care are key to the
economic growth of our country and the wellbeing of our families, but
too often, we overlook the needs – and vital economic and social
contributions
- of paid and unpaid caregivers. Today Care.com, Caring Across
Generations, and New America are launching the “Who Cares Coalition,” a
unique partnership bringing together a corporation, advocacy campaign,
and think tank to spearhead a broad-based social change
movement redefining the cultural norms, behaviors, business practices,
and policies around caregiving in the US. The “Who Cares Coalition”
will reach millions of families and caregivers by uniting the world’s
largest online marketplace for family care; the
nation’s top advocate for families, caregivers and aging Americans; and
the leading, nonpartisan civic enterprise focused on creating new data
and policy analysis on caregivers and changing the narrative around
care.
New advertiser-led campaign to improve portrayals of women and girls across advertising and media
·
The Association of National
Advertisers (ANA) Alliance for Family Entertainment (AFE) will announce a
new initiative called “#SeeHer” to incentivize advertisers, content
creators
and the media to develop and showcase content that portrays diverse
women and girls authentically. The ANA is the largest representative
body for the marketing community in the United States, including over
650 member companies with 10,000 brands who collectively
spend more than $250 billion in marketing and advertising each year.
The AFE is a coalition of ANA members with family-driven brands. With
the launch of #SeeHer, the ANA will share toolkits to support the
campaign and lay out the roles of partner organizations
to ensure success.
New foundation-backed initiative to invest in young women of color
·
Seven women’s foundations are
announcing their commitment to launch a Young Women's Initiative in
2016, which will invest and catalyze resources to improve equal
opportunity and the
prosperity of young women, with a focus on young women of color and
those experiencing the greatest disparities in outcomes in our
communities. The Young Women's Initiative will be built on cross-sector
partnerships, including: government; philanthropies;
nonprofits; corporations; and, most importantly, the young women
themselves. The foundations announcing this commitment include the
Women's Foundation of Minnesota, California Women's Foundation,
Washington Area Women's Foundation, Dallas Women's Foundation,
The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham, Women’s Foundation for a
Greater Memphis and The Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts. The New
York Women’s Foundation previously launched a Young Women’s Initiative
in 2015.
Academics and Advocacy Groups Launch a Policy Platform to support Marginalized Girls
·
The Girls at the Margin Alliance, a
group of more than 150 alliance members, steered by The National
Crittenton Foundation, Rights4Girls, the National Women’s Law Center,
Georgetown
Center on Policy and Inequality and Girls Inc, will launch a policy
platform that will propose concrete, actionable recommendations to
ensure that marginalized girls and young women are met with system
responses that honor their experiences and voices, provide
opportunities for them to heal, develop their strengths, overcome
challenges, ensure their safety, and support them in building thriving
lives. This platform will provide a framework for change for all
organizations and individuals dedicated to the potential
of girls and young women. The Alliance was created to advance the best
interest of girls who are marginalized by their communities, and often
by their families and by the systems charged with their care.
New report and convening on early educator compensation
·
Tomorrow,
the Departments of Health and Human Services and Education are
releasing a new report on the compensation of the early care and
education workforce. The report examines
the low – and often poverty level – wages that child care providers and
early educators receive, the vast majority of whom are women, the
growing demand for high-quality early education to both support working
families and foster children's early brain development,
and the key role that early educators and child care providers play in
preparing the next generation of girls, and all young children, for
success. To organize around solutions that address this issue, the Obama
Administration will co-host a convening on June
15th with early childhood stakeholders, in partnership with the
National Head Start Association, the National Association for the
Education of Young Children, the National Women’s Law Center, and the
Service International Employees Union.
Enhanced global efforts to empower women and promote gender equality worldwide
·
The
U.S. Department of State will release a new strategy for women’s
economic empowerment across the globe. The strategy will outline four
broad policy objectives: promoting women's
equal access to resources and services, promoting women's equal access
to decent work, promoting women's entrepreneurship, and addressing
overarching issues that impede women's economic participation, such as
gender-based violence. The State Department's
overseas missions and domestic offices and bureaus will use the
strategy to guide their efforts to support women's economic
participation and pursue gender integration across their portfolios.
·
The
White House will announce updates to two global strategy cornerstones
of the U.S. Government’s commitment to advancing human rights and
promoting gender equality worldwide. The
updated U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence
Globally, jointly led by USAID and the State Department, reflects our
growing understanding of gender-based violence, including historic
provisions for vulnerable populations, such as lesbian
and transgender women. Established in a 2012 Executive Order in order
to prioritize U.S. foreign policy and programs to combat gender-based
violence worldwide using a whole-of-government, interagency approach, it
lays out the tools the U.S. Government is employing
to prevent and combat this scourge. Annually, the
State Department and
USAID contribute approximately $150 million to support projects all
over the world that support women’s and community groups broadly. USAID
alone has reached more than five million survivors of GBV with vital,
sometimes life-saving services in more than
40 countries worldwide, and has awarded more than $17 million in
dedicated incentive funds to support innovative pilot programs,
research, and scaled best practices to address GBV in 15 countries.
·
Likewise, the newly updated National
Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security will provide the framework for
U.S. efforts to increase participation of women in peace processes,
prevent
sexual violence in conflict, empower women to prevent violence, and
ensure that women and girls have equal access to relief and recovery
resources.
More
than $20 million in new commitments to the Let Girls Learn Initiative
to support the 62 million girls around the world who are out of school
with the opportunity to attain an
education:
·
CARE
is committing to reach three million adolescent girls, by investing $15
million dollars in six countries through its Udaan “Second Chances”
school program. Through this new commitment,
Second Chances will broaden from India into Afghanistan, Yemen,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, and Malawi to double its reach. This
program provides an intensive, nine month curriculum to help girls who
were unable to finish primary school, catch up to their
peers. Through Second Chances, some of the world’s most marginalized
girls have returned to school and some have even gone on to college.
With a 95 percent success rate, CARE plans to broaden this program with
the support of ministries of education, corporations,
foundations, and local organizations.
·
Oracle
is committing to invest more than $3 million in direct and in-kind
funds over the next 12 months to promote and support educational
opportunities for adolescent girls around
the world. Under this Let Girls Learn commitment, Oracle Academy,
Oracle Women's Leadership (OWL) communities, Oracle's Diversity &
Inclusion program, and Oracle Volunteers will offer more than 65 direct
educational events and support conferences, summer computing
camps, and codefests for girls, reaching more than 55,000 students
around the globe and inspiring them to explore and pursue opportunities
in STEM fields. The Oracle Education Foundation and Oracle Volunteers
will teach girls coding, electrical engineering,
and project management through four immersive girls-only workshops.
Oracle also plans to expand the work of its Oracle Academy program in
Egypt by making an additional investment of nearly $1 million in
resources and services over the next four years as part
of a new partnership with the Ministry of Education in Egypt to expand
computer science education for girls in nine newly developed STEM
schools. These schools, also supported by USAID, will provide three
years of paid secondary education for each girl.
·
The
International Rescue Committee (IRC) is committing to deliver new
programs worth $1 million to adolescent girls in the most
conflict-affected states in Africa and the Middle East,
including programming that addresses how violence impacts girls’
learning and their ability to access education services. Through its
education and GIRL SHINE programs, IRC will target the hardest-to-reach
adolescent girls with an in-school and out-of-school
enhanced package of services, including girl-only safe spaces and
discussion groups, life skills and social and emotional skill
development curricula, remedial support in math and reading, parent and
caregiver support groups, and an interactive visioning program
that breaks down barriers, reduces violence, and ensures increased
access to education.
·
The Hershey Company is committing to
support projects that will empower and educate adolescent girls through
a $250,000 three-year commitment to the Peace Corps’ Let Girls Learn
Fund.
The Hershey Company has a long history of giving underserved children
the resources they need to be successful. Tomorrow, the company will
advance this shared social purpose through this new commitment to Peace
Corps’ Let Girls Learn Fund.
·
PayPal is featuring Peace Corps’ Let
Girls Learn Fund in its Back to School charitable giving campaign this
August as part of an effort to raise awareness and encourage millions of
PayPal U.S. users to support Let Girls Learn projects around the world.
In addition to encouraging customers in the U.S. to support the Peace
Corps’ Let Girls Learn Fund, PayPal will add 1 percent to each donation,
ensuring that 101 percent of every gift made
by PayPal U.S. users reaches Let Girls Learn projects.
·
American Airlines, through its
Change for Good partnership with UNICEF, commits to expanding support
for adolescent girls’ education by working with UNICEF’s “Let Us Learn”
initiative.
American commits to build upon Let Us Learn's successes to-date,
including awarding more than 4,000 scholarships to girls in Madagascar
to help them enroll and stay in school through the lower secondary
level, and helping over 8,000 out-of-school adolescent
girls enroll in non-formal classes that provide flexible learning
opportunities in Nepal.
·
Just Like My Child Foundation (JLMC)
is committing to reach an additional 10,000 vulnerable adolescent girls
with their Girl Power Project® in Central Uganda, thereby doubling
their
current program reach by 2020. An initial investment from the Toni Ko
Foundation will launch the JLMC’s $250,000 commitment. The Girl Power
Project® was created to empower adolescent girls and to reduce barriers
that prevent adolescent girls from completing
secondary school. The Girl Power Project® (GPP) “System in a Box” is an
evidence¬-based, innovative, targeted, and scalable mentoring program
totaling more than 60 hours of training over two years. It addresses the
complex needs of vulnerable adolescent girls’
aged 10¬-15, by ensuring that they stay in school and avoid obstacles
in the transition to secondary school. The GPP® empowers girls to live
healthy lives by avoiding forced child marriage, HIV transmission, early
pregnancy, rape and disease.
·
AOL,
a media technology company with a mission to connect consumers and
creators, is taking action in support of Let Girls Learn by announcing
the Let Girls Build Challenge. The Challenge,
powered by Citizen AOL and AOL’s #BUILTBYGIRLS platform, calls for
young women to use the power of technology to conceptualize tech-enabled
solutions to the problems facing the #62million girls without access to
education. The Challenge will conclude with
a final "pitch off" to a live audience, as part of the #BUILTBYGIRLS
Challenge, which young women with a background in entrepreneurship to
fund tech projects built by other girls. Through the Let Girls Build
Challenge, AOL and Let Girls Learn will provide
the resources, funding, and mentorship needed to empower the leaders of
tomorrow to help open the doors to education globally. For more details
please go to builtbygirls.com/letgirlsbuild.
New resources to support efforts to combat and prevent violence against women
·
The
Department of Justice, through its Elder Justice Initiative and its
Office for Victims of Crime with support from the Office for Access to
Justice, and the Corporation
for National and Community Service, will announce Elder Justice
AmeriCorps, a $2 million grant program to provide legal assistance and
support services to victims of elder abuse, neglect and exploitation –
the majority of whom are women – and to promote pro
bono capacity building in the field. This grant to Equal Justice Works
will be the first ever army of new lawyers and paralegals to help
victims of those who prey on our nation’s elders.
·
The
Department of Justice, through its Office on Violence on Women (OVW),
is investing $3.2 million in new initiatives to prevent domestic
violence homicides. This
includes $700,000 for the establishment of a new National Resource
Center on Domestic Violence and Firearms to improve the criminal justice
system’s response to domestic violence homicides involving firearms, as
well as a new $900,000 technical assistance
grant award to a consortium of organizations that will work closely
with OVW to provide enhanced training and technical assistance to
implement an effective firearms response at the local, state, and tribal
levels. OVW has also entered into a partnership with
the National Network for Safe Communities (NNSC) at John Jay College of
Criminal Justice to launch the new $1.6 million National Intimate
Partner Violence Intervention Initiative (NIPVII). NIPVII will work with
three cities, to be selected as part of the demonstration
pilot, to replicate a successful strategy for reducing intimate partner
violence and homicides. The National Institute of Justice will oversee
an evaluation of the initiative through a grant to Yale University.
Additionally, OVW will announce the addition
of two new cities, Miami, FL and Winnebago County, IL, as replication
sites for the Lethality Assessment Program model. This model was
included as part of OVW’s Domestic Violence Homicide Prevention
Demonstration Initiative, established in 2012.
·
The Department of
Justice, through its Office on Violence Against Women, will award nearly
$1.2 million to two organizations to help jurisdictions implement the
Department
of Justice Guidance on Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law
Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, which was
released by the Attorney General in December 2015. Through training and
technical assistance, these grants will develop
resources and build the capacity of law enforcement and advocacy
organizations to improve responses to domestic and sexual violence
victims.
·
Tomorrow the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) will release a special report, Down the Road: Testing
Evidence in Sexual Assaults. It highlights findings from NIJ-supported
action
research projects in Houston and Detroit, where two multidisciplinary
teams of criminal justice professionals developed effective strategies
to address the large numbers of sexual assault kits that had not been
submitted for DNA testing. The report offers
key lessons for improving responses to sexual assault based on research
findings from Houston and Detroit and discusses NIJ’s forensic and
social science research portfolios as they relate to using biological
evidence to solve sexual assaults.
·
The Department of Health and Human
Services’ Administration for Children and Families Office on Trafficking
in Persons has partnered with the Office on Women’s Health to create a
training for healthcare and social service providers offering
trauma-informed services to survivors of human trafficking. This will be
complemented by a new initiative to collect data to improve
understanding of how trafficking survivors interact with the
health system and with social service providers, and will begin in
August 2016.
·
The
Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) will invest
$1.35 million in holistic services for American Indian and Alaska Native
victims of sex trafficking in urban
settings. Organizations awarded funds through this investment will be
supported by Project Beacon, a training and technical assistance project
that will help service providers’ work to promote the healing of sex
trafficking victims. OVC will support Project
Beacon through an additional investment of $450,000.
·
The
Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, through its National Girls Initiative, will provide an
additional $700,000 in funds to support eleven
community programs in Iowa, Hawaii, New York, California, Texas,
Connecticut, Washington state, and the District of Columbia, that are
working with young women and girls at-risk of entering the juvenile
justice system. These programs are culturally-responsive,
and build on girls’ strengths to empower them to build brighter
futures.
